Robert A. Heinlein Fighting Quotations

Civilians are like beans; you buy 'em as needed for any job which merely requires skill and savvy. But you can't buy fighting spirit.

Peace is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve a page one lead story 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.

An armed man need not fight.

The police of a state should never be stronger or better armed than the citizenry. An armed citizenry, willing to fight, is the foundation of civil freedom. That's a personal evaluation, of course.

The intelligent fights only when he must and never for sport.

Of all the strange 'crimes' that human beings have legislated out of nothing, 'blasphemy' is the most amazing -- with 'obscenity' and 'indecent exposure' fighting it out for second and third place.

Unarmed hand-to-hand fighting does not change through the ages; only the name changes, and it has only one rule: do it first, do it fast, do it dirtiest.

As it says in Bible, God fights on side of heaviest artillery.

Heroism' often consists in keeping your head in an emergency and doing the best you can with what you have instead of panicking and being shot in the tail. People who fight this way win more battles than do intentional heroes; a glory hound often throws away the lives of his mates as well as his own.

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.

If a grasshopper tries to fight a lawnmower, one may admire his courage but not his judgement.

An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.

In ascending order the qualities of Patriotism are: 1. To work, fight, or die for your own survival. 2. To work, fight, or die for your immediate family. 3. To work, fight, or die for a group, extended family, tribe, or clan. 4. To work, fight, or die for a group too large for all the individuals to know each other. 5. To work, fight, or die for a way of life.

Of all the strange "crimes" that human beings have legislated of nothing, "blasphemy" is the most amazing - with "obscenity" and "indecent exposure" fighting it out for the second and third place.