Starship Troopers, Abridged

For those of you without time, let me present Heinlein's masterpiece, in one post.

My mother said violence never solves anything." "So?" Mr. Dubois looked at her bleakly. "I'm sure the city fathers of Carthage would be glad to know that."

• Source: Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.), Page 25
• Exchange between him and a student

But if you want to serve and I can't talk you out of it, then we have to take you, because that's 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 aren't just glorified KP. You can't all be real military men; we don't need that many and most of the volunteers aren't number-one soldier material anyhow...[W]e've 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 they've 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."

• Source: Fleet Sergeant Ho, Pages 29-30
• Attempting to dissuade Juan Rico and Carl from enlisting.

I made a very important discovery at Camp Currie. Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you've ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don't need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it, and he's as happy as a worm in an apple—asleep.

• Source: Juan Rico, Page 52
• Internal monologue on basic training.

• "There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men."
  • Source: Sergeant Charles Zim, Page 61
  • Responding to Ted Hendrick's question on the purpose of knife-throwing.
    
    

• "If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off? Of course not. You'd paddle it. There can be circumstances when it's just as foolish to hit an enemy city with an H-bomb as it would be to spank a baby with an axe. War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government's decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him...but to make him do what you want to do. Not killing...but controlled and purposeful violence. But it's not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It's never a soldier's business to decide when or where or how—or why—he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence; other people—'older and wiser heads,' as they say—supply the control. Which is as it should be."
• Source: Sergeant Charles Zim, Page 63
• Responding to Ted Hendrick's question on the purpose of infantrymen in the nuclear age.

• The most noble fate a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war's desolation.
• Source: Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.), Page 91

• "Value" has no meaning other than in relationship to living beings. The value of a thing is always relative to a particular person, is completely personal and different in quantity for each living human—"market value" is a fiction, merely a rough guess at the average of personal values, all of which must be quantitatively different or trade would be impossible. [...] This very personal relationship, "value", has two factors for a human being: first, what he can do with a thing, its use to him… and second, what he must do to get it, its cost to him. There is an old song which asserts that "the best things in life are free". Not true! Utterly false! This was the tragic fallacy which brought on the decadence and collapse of the democracies of the twentieth century; those noble experiments failed because the people had been led to believe that they could simply vote for whatever they wanted… and get it, without toil, without sweat, without tears."
• Source: Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.), Page 93

• "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 man's 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."
• Source: Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.), Page 119
• Expanding on his statement that "a human being has no natural rights of any nature."

• "I told you that 'juvenile delinquent' is a contradiction in terms. 'Delinquent' means 'failing in duty.' But duty is an adult virtue—indeed a juvenile becomes an adult when, and only when, he acquires a knowledge of duty and embraces it as dearer than the self-love he was born with. There never was, there cannot be a 'juvenile delinquent.' But for every juvenile criminal there are always one or more adult delinquents—people of mature years who either do not know their duty, or who, knowing it, fail."
• Source: Lt. Col. Jean V. Dubois (Ret.), Page 120

Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you wanta live forever?

Dan Daly, 1918