Quotes from Methuselah's Children

“When it don’t rain, the roof don’t leak; when it rains, I can’t fix it nohow.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“was no such thing as a “dangerous weapon,” there were only dangerous men.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“That’s what I was trying to find out when we were rushed off on this damned safari. They have unusual intestinal flora and it may have something to do with that. But I think it has to do with the fact that they never stop growing.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“It’s not that easy. You can make omelet from eggs, but not eggs from omelet.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“Correct or not, he felt himself to be a useless pensioner, an impotent object of charity.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“Life is short, but the years are long.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“light-months—and it was now possible to infer by parainterferometric methods that the star (ZD9817, or simply “our” star) had planets of some sort.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“A committee is the only known form of life with a hundred bellies and no brain.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“Any custom is man-made and is therefore a finite attempt to describe an infinity of relationships. It follows as the night from day that any custom necessarily has its exceptions.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“It is contrary to our customs to permit scientific knowledge to be held as a monopoly for the few. When concealing such knowledge strikes at life itself, the action becomes treason to the race.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“Citizens are urged to tolerate cheerfully any minor inconvenience this may cause them; your right of privacy will be respected in every way possible; your right of free movement may be interrupted temporarily, but full economic restitution will be made.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

“Whenever the citizens fix their attention on one issue to the exclusion of others, the situation is ripe for scalawags, demagogues, ambitious men on horseback.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Methuselah's Children

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“The key point is that these patterns, while mostly stable, are not permanent: certain environmental experiences can add or subtract methyls and acetyls, changing those patterns. In effect this etches a memory of what the organism was doing or experiencing into its cells—a crucial first step for any Lamarck-like inheritance. Unfortunately, bad experiences can be etched into cells as easily as good experiences. Intense emotional pain can sometimes flood the mammal brain with neurochemicals that tack methyl groups where they shouldn’t be. Mice that are (however contradictory this sounds) bullied by other mice when they’re pups often have these funny methyl patterns in their brains. As do baby mice (both foster and biological) raised by neglectful mothers, mothers who refuse to lick and cuddle and nurse. These neglected mice fall apart in stressful situations as adults, and their meltdowns can’t be the result of poor genes, since biological and foster children end up equally histrionic. Instead the aberrant methyl patterns were imprinted early on, and as neurons kept dividing and the brain kept growing, these patterns perpetuated themselves. The events of September 11, 2001, might have scarred the brains of unborn humans in similar ways. Some pregnant women in Manhattan developed post-traumatic stress disorder, which can epigenetically activate and deactivate at least a dozen genes, including brain genes. These women, especially the ones affected during the third trimester, ended up having children who felt more anxiety and acute distress than other children when confronted with strange stimuli. Notice that these DNA changes aren’t genetic, because the A-C-G-T string remains the same throughout. But epigenetic changes are de facto mutations; genes might as well not function. And just like mutations, epigenetic changes live on in cells and their descendants. Indeed, each of us accumulates more and more unique epigenetic changes as we age. This explains why the personalities and even physiognomies of identical twins, despite identical DNA, grow more distinct each year. It also means that that detective-story trope of one twin committing a murder and both getting away with it—because DNA tests can’t tell them apart—might not hold up forever. Their epigenomes could condemn them. Of course, all this evidence proves only that body cells can record environmental cues and pass them on to other body cells, a limited form of inheritance. Normally when sperm and egg unite, embryos erase this epigenetic information—allowing you to become you, unencumbered by what your parents did. But other evidence suggests that some epigenetic changes, through mistakes or subterfuge, sometimes get smuggled along to new generations of pups, cubs, chicks, or children—close enough to bona fide Lamarckism to make Cuvier and Darwin grind their molars.”
― Sam Kean, quote from The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code

“This means it will take about a thousand million million million million years for the earth to run into the sun, so there’s no immediate cause for worry!”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Brief History of Time: From the Big Bang to Black Holes

“Whoa,” said Akimi. “Check out the statues. They’re hardly wearing any clothes.”
― Chris Grabenstein, quote from Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics

“The human being either asserts autonomy by heroic self-assertion or seeks safety through fusing with a superior force: that is, one either emerges or merges, separates or embeds. One becomes one’s own parent or remains the eternal child.”
― Irvin D. Yalom, quote from Love's Executioner: & Other Tales of Psychotherapy

“Don’t tell him to stop but don’t let him play my song too long. There are others he should be playing.”
― Anyta Sunday, quote from rock

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BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.