Starship Troopers Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“He sighed. ‘Another year, another class — and for me another failure. One can lead a child to knowledge but one cannot make him think.‘”

″‘You! I’ve just awarded you the prize for the hundred-meter dash. Does it make you happy? […] No dodging, please. You have the prize — here, I’ll write it out: ‘Grand prize for the championship, one hundred-meter sprint.‘” He had actually come back to my seat and pinned it on my chest. ‘There! Are you happy? You value it — or don’t you?’ Mr. Dubois had looked surprised. ‘It doesn’t make you happy?’ ‘You know darn well I placed fourth!’ ‘Exactly! The prize for first place is worthless to you . . . because you haven’t earned it. But you enjoy a modest satisfaction in placing fourth; you earned 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 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.”

“The most noble fate a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war’s desolation.”

“The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion . . . and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself — ultimate cost for perfect value.”

″‘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.”

“To permit irresponsible authority is to sow disaster.”

“I always get the shakes before a drop. I’ve had the injections, of course, and hypnotic preparation, and it stands to reason that I can’t really be afraid. The ship’s psychiatrist has checked my brain waves and asked me silly questions while I was asleep and he tells me that it isn’t fear, it isn’t anything important — it’s just like the trembling of an eager race horse in the starting gate. I couldn’t say about that; I’ve never been a race horse. But the fact is: I’m scared silly, every time.”

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

“That old saw about ‘to understand all is to forgive all’ is a lot of tripe. Some things, the more you understand the more you loathe them.”

“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.”

″‘You. What is the moral difference, if any, between the soldier and the civilian?’ ‘The difference, I said carefully, ‘lies in the field of civic virtue. A soldier 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.‘”

″‘Peace’ is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence-unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. But, if there ever was a time in history when ‘peace’ meant that there was no fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it.”

“War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose.”

“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.”

“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 him 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.”

“There are no dangerous weapons; there are only dangerous men.”

“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.”