Robert A. Heinlein Quotes

But goodness alone is never enough. A hard, cold wisdom is required for goodness to accomplish good. Goodness without wisdom always accomplishes evil.

After all, why be good? How many will actually believe it of us?

Virtue is not an end in itself. Virtue is not its own reward or sacrificial fodder for the reward of evil. Life is the reward of virtue-and happiness is the goal and the reward of life.

...virtue is not merely a state in conformity with the right principle, but one that implies the right principle; and the right principle in moral conduct is prudence.

A man who knows all goods and all truths, as many as can be known, but does not shun evils, knows nothing.

It is much more intelligent, more practical, to be good rather than evil.

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

I'd always found goodness more interesting then evil, though I was aware this wasn't the most general view. To my mind, it took more work and more courage to be good, an opinion continually reinforced by my own shortcomings.

The feeling of right or wrong is the beginning of wisdom.

Of all the things of a man's soul which he has within him, justice is the greatest good and injustice the greatest evil.

Wisdom is better than weapons of war; but one sinner destroyeth much good.

The highest morality may prove also to be the highest wisdom when the half-told story comes to be finished.

It still remains true that no justification of virtue will enable a man to be virtuous.

Sensibility appears to me to be neither good nor evil in itself, but in its application. Under the influence of Christian principle, it makes saints and martyrs; ill-directed, or uncontrolled, it is a snare, and the source of every temptation; besides, as people cannot get it if it is not given them, to descant on it seems to me as idle as to recommend people to have black eyes or fair complexions.

When goodness is lost, it is replaced by morality.

There is no virtue in curiosity. In fact, it might be the most immoral desire a man can possess.

People need a moral code, to help them make decisions. All this bio-yogurt virtue and financial self-righteousness are just filling the gap in the market. But the problem is that it's all backwards. It's not that you do the right thing and hope it pays off; the morally right thing is by definition the thing that gives the biggest payoff.

It's better to die doing good than to live doing evil.

And one of the elders of the city , said , speak to us of good and evil. And he answered : You are good in countless ways , and you are not evil when you are not good .

There must be in prudence also some master virtue.

We care about moral issues, nobility, decency, happiness, goodness—the issues that matter in the real world, but which can only be addressed, in their purity, in fiction.

In ethics, prudence is not an important virtue, but in the world it is almost everything.

The order of nature [is] that individual happiness shall be inseparable from the practice of virtue.

If one must do a wrong, it's best to do it pursuing power-otherwise, let's have virtue.

A moral choice in its basic terms appears to be a choice that favors survival: a choice made in favor of life.