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Quotes from Farmer in the Sky — Robert A. Heinlein

1907–1988 United States

← All quotes by Robert A. Heinlein

14 quotes

Horses can manufacture more horses and that is one trick that tractors have never learned.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

I think girls should be raised in the bottom of a deep, dark sack until they are old enough to know better.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

You can only grieve so much; after that it’s self pity.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

I’m not raising any kids to be radioactive dust.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

Bill, why is it that some apparently-grown men never learn to do simple arithmetic?

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

It was so darn quiet you could hear your hair grow.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

“People have a funny habit of taking as ‘natural’ whatever they are used to—but there hasn’t been any ‘natural’ environment, the way they mean it, since men climbed down out of trees.”

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

For three hundred years the race had glazed windows. Then they shut themselves up in little air-conditioned boxes and stared at silly television pictures instead. One might as well be on Luna.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

I looked it up later; he was right. Dad is an absolute mine of useless information. He says a fact should be loved for itself alone.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

Gravity’s books have got to balance.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

I said, “What do you think about it, Paul?”
The boss smiled gently. “I don’t. I haven’t enough data.”

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

See how involved it gets? Clover, bees, nitrogen, escape speed, power, plant-animal balance, gas laws, compound interest laws, meteorology—a mathematical ecologist has to think of everything and think of it ahead of time. Ecology is explosive; what seems like a minor and harmless invasion can change the whole balance.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

Life is not merely persistent, as Jock puts it; life is explosive. The basic theorem of population mathematics to which there has never been found an exception is that population increases always, not merely up to the extent of the food supply, but beyond it, to the minimum diet that will sustain life—the ragged edge of starvation.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

I’m going to put it to you straight. Never mind about being chief engineer of a planet; these days even a farmer needs the best education he can get. Without it he’s just a country bumpkin, a stumbling peasant, poking seeds into the ground and hoping a miracle will make them grow.

Farmer in the Sky (1950)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Robert A. Heinlein (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.