Starship Troopers

"… I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue and thoroughly immoral doctrine that violence never settles anything I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms." He sighed. "Another year, another class — and for me another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think." Suddenly he pointed his stump at me. "You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the citizen and the civilian?" "The difference, I said carefully, "lies in the field of civic virtue. A citizen accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not." "The exact words of the book," he said scornfully. "But do you understand it? Do you believe it?"

"But if you want to serve and I cant talk you out of it, then we have to take you, because thats your constitutional right. It says that everybody, male or female, should have his born right to pay his service and assume full citizenship — but the facts are that we are getting hard pushed to find things for all the volunteers to do that arent just glorified KP. You cant all be real military men; we dont need that many and most of the volunteers arent number-one soldier material anyhow...[W]eve had to think up a whole list of dirty, nasty, dangerous jobs that will ... at the very least make them remember for the rest of their lives that their citizenship is valuable to them because theyve paid a high price for it ... A term of service is ... either real military service, rough and dangerous even in peacetime ... or a most unreasonable facsimile thereof."

"The historians cant seem to settle whether to call this one "The Third Space War" (or the "Fourth"), or whether "The First Interstellar War" fits it better. We just call it "The Bug War" if we call it anything, which we usually dont and in any case the historians date the beginning of "war" after the time I joined my first outfit and ship. Everything up to then and still later were "incidents," "patrols," or "police actions." However, you are just as dead if you buy the farm in an "incident" as you are if you buy it in a declared war."

"Ah yes, [life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness]... Life? What right to life has a man who is drowning in the Pacific? The ocean will not hearken to his cries. What right to life has a man who must die to save his children? If he chooses to save his own life, does he do so as a matter of right? If two men are starving and cannibalism is the only alternative to death, which mans right is unalienable? And is it right? As to liberty, the heroes who signed the great document pledged themselves to buy liberty with their lives. Liberty is never unalienable; it must be redeemed regularly with the blood of patriots or it always vanishes. Of all the so-called natural human rights that have ever been invented, liberty is least likely to be cheap and is never free of cost. The third right?—the pursuit of happiness? It is indeed unalienable but it is not a right; it is simply a universal condition which tyrants cannot take away nor patriots restore. Cast me into a dungeon, burn me at the stake, crown me king of kings, I can pursue happiness as long as my brain lives—but neither gods nor saints, wise men nor subtle drugs, can ensure that I will catch it."

"I made a very important discovery at Camp Currie. Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people youve ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen dont need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it, and hes as happy as a worm in an apple—asleep."

"When you come right to it, it is easier to die than it is to use your head."