# Quote — Samuel R. Delany, City of a Thousand Suns

> Jon was surprised. “You don’t believe that military discipline can be a good experience?”
>
> “Experience is what you make it,” the officer said. “That’s real profound, huh? Boys into men? Look at the guys who like the army, or even do well there. Guys who hate the random inconsistency of their parents so much they are willing to give up love to get a father who hands out his orders by a book of rules you can run and check in the library, even if the rule is go out and die. You’ll do a lot better if you come to terms with the father you already have than by running off to the state substitute.”
>
> Despite drunkenness, the man was maintaining logic, so Jon went on, “but doesn’t the army give you a fairly rigorous microcosm to work out certain problems of…well, honour and morality, at least for yourself—”
>
> “Sure,” drawled the officer, “a microcosm totally safe, completely unreal, free of women and children, where God is the general and the Devil is death, and you’re playing for keeps—the excuse for conducting everything with high seriousness. It was all set up to make the most destructive and illogical human actions appear as controlled and non-random as possible.

- Author: [Samuel R. Delany](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany.md)
- Book: [City of a Thousand Suns](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/city-of-a-thousand-suns.md)
- Page: 324
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Samuel_R._Delany#City_of_a_Thousand_Suns_(1965)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/city-of-a-thousand-suns/jon-was-surprised

## More from this book

> “The aristocracy,” she repeated. “At its worst, a sargasso of every conceivable neurosis society may have; by naming itself it has agreed to its own death. But at least it has had the dignity to applaud its own order of execution in the past if the document is eloquent.”

p. 365 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/city-of-a-thousand-suns/the-aristocracy-she.md)

> The army is just too easy and too simple: fight to the death for the cause is just.

p. 326 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/city-of-a-thousand-suns/the-army-is-just.md)

> Our parents saw each of us marrying, settling down, but certainly not with one another.

p. 389 — [Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/samuel-r-delany/city-of-a-thousand-suns/our-parents-saw.md)