Robert A. Heinlein’s “Starship Troopers” Quotes (14 Quotes)

We learned not to waste ammo even on warriors except in self-protection

You got the impression that he never needed to sleep - just ten-thousand-mile checkups and dust him off occasionally.

Any group is weaker than a man alone unless they are perfectly trained to work together.

But, do you know, once you get used to it's rather cute. I mean, if a girl looks alright to start with, she still looks alright with her head smooth.

Girls are simply wonderful. Just to stand on a corner and watch them going past is delightful. They don't walk. At least not what we do when we walk. I don't know how to describe it, but it's much more complex and utterly delightful. They don't move just their feet; everything moves and in different directions . . . and all of it graceful.

Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more.

If you wanted to teach a baby a lesson, would you cut its head off?

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.

Social responsibility above the level of family, or at most of tribe, requires imagination-- devotion, loyalty, all the higher virtues -- which a man must develop himself; if he has them forced down him, he will vomit them out.

The bugs are not like us. The Pseudo-Arachnids arenÆt even like spiders. They are arthropods who happen to look like a madmanÆs conception of a giant intelligent spider, but their organization, psychological and economic, is more like that of ants or termites; they are communal entities, the ultimate dictatorship of the hive.

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

To permit irresponsible authority is to sell disaster.

Under our system every voter and officeholder is a man who has demonstrated through voluntary and difficult service that he places the welfare of the group ahead of personal advantage.

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor.