" … I was not making fun of you personally; I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I… — Robert A. Heinlein
" … 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?"
p. 26Source: Wikiquote · CC BY-SA 4.0
More from this book
Basic truths cannot change and once a man of insight expresses one of them it is never necessary, no matter how much the world changes, to reformulate them. This is immutable, true everywhere, throughout all time, for all men and all nations.
If it has to be done, a man — a real man — shoots his own dog himself; he doesn't hire a proxy who may bungle it.
I do not understand objections to 'cruel and unusual' punishment. While a judge should be benevolent in purpose; his awards should cause the criminal to suffer, else there is no punishment - and pain is the basic mechanism built into us by millions of years of evolution which safeguards us by warning when something threatens our survival. Why should society refuse to use such a highly perfected survival mechanism?"
p. 115
