"Let's skip [Mobile Infantry] tradition for a moment. Can you think of anything sillier than being fired out of a spaceship with nothing but mayhem a… - Robert A. Heinlein

"Let's skip [Mobile Infantry] tradition for a moment. Can you think of anything sillier than being fired out of a spaceship with nothing but mayhem and sudden death at the other end? However, if someone must do this idiotic stunt, do you know a surer way to keep a man keyed up to the point where he is willing than by keeping him constantly reminded that the only good reason why men fight is a living, breathing reality?
"In a mixed ship [men and women] the last thing a trooper hears before a drop (maybe the last word he ever hears) is a woman's voice, wishing him luck. If you don't think this is important you've probably resigned from the human race.

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About Robert A. Heinlein

Robert Anson Heinlein (7 July 1907 – 8 May 1988) was one of the most popular, influential, and controversial authors of science fiction of the 20th Century.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Robert Anson Heinlein
Alternative Names: Anson MacDonald Lyle Monroe John Riverside Caleb Saunders Simon York Robert Heinlein
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Additional quotes by Robert A. Heinlein

I don’t understand time line three (code Neil Armstrong) so I had better quote Jubal Harshaw. who lived through it. “Mama Maureen,” he said to me, “the America of my time line is a laboratory example of what can happen to democracies, what has eventually happened to all perfect democracies throughout all histories. Perfect democracy, a ‘warm body’ democracy in which every adult may vote and all votes count equally, has no internal feedback for self-correction. It depends solely on the wisdom and self-restraint of other citizens…which is opposed by the folly and lack of self-restraint of other citizens. What is supposed to happen in a democracy is that each sovereign citizen will always vote in the public interest for the safety and welfare of all. But what does happen is that he votes his own self-interest as he sees it…which for the majority translates as ‘Bread and Circuses.’
“‘Bread and Circuses’ is the cancer of democracy, the fatal disease for which there is no cure. Democracy often works beautifully at first. But once a state extends the franchise to every warm body, be he producer or parasite, that day marks the beginning of the end of the state. For when the plebs discover that they can vote themselves bread and circuses without limit and that the productive members of the body politic cannot stop them, they will do so, until the state bleeds to death, or in its weakened condition the state succumbs to an invader—the barbarians enter Rome.
Jubal shrugged and looked sad. “Mine was a lovely world—until the parasites took over.”

Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.

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It's up to the artist to use language that can be understood, not hide it in some private code. Most of these jokers don't even want to use language you and I know or can learn . . . they would rather sneer at us and be smug, because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If indeed they are driving at anything — obscurity is usually the refuge of incompetence.

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