<p>“Every morning in Africa, a Gazelle wakes up, it knows it must run faster than the fastest Lion or it will be killed and eaten. Every morning, a Lion wakes up, it knows it must run faster than the slowest Gazelle or it will starve. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a Lion or a Gazelle, when the sun comes up, you’d better be running.”</p>
<p>“Courage is not defined by those who fought and did not fall, but by those who fought, fell, and rose again.” -Ralph Waldo Emerson </p>
<p>“I wish people would quit telling me I can do anything I want. I never thought I couldn’t…”</p>
<p>Um, the starred letters above are pea eye ess ess</p>
<p>It’s not foul language, it’s French!</p>
<p>I got the line from my former maintenance officer, a 30-year vet mustang captain. I think of it some times when I choose not to respond to the occasional inflammatory post. Hehe.</p>
<p>I remember two or three articles in a book of his called “Expanded Universe”, which was a collection of essays and short stories.</p>
<p>One essay in there was a speech he gave at USNA in the 1960’s titled “The Pragmatics of Patriotism”. An incredible read. </p>
<p>(Note to those who are currently trying to redefine “patriotism”: His stance is NOT that patriotism is not love of country, but rather working with the enemy because you happen to hate the guy in the White House. You’ve been warned.)</p>
<p>ETA:</p>
<p>I found some quotes. Please note that I got the date incorrect:</p>
<p>The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)</p>
<p>Quotations from Heinlein’s address at the U.S. Naval Academy April 5, 1973</p>
<pre><code>* I now define “moral behavior” as “behavior that tends toward survival.” I won’t argue with philosophers or theologians who choose to use the word “moral” to mean something else, but I do not think anyone can define “behavior that tends toward extinction” as being “moral” without stretching the word “moral” all out of shape.
Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. 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.
The next higher level is to work, fight, and sometimes die for your own immediate family. This is the level at which six pounds of mother cat can be so fierce that she’ll drive off a police dog. It is the level at which a father takes a moonlighting job to keep his kids in college and the level at which a mother or father dives into a flood to save a drowning child and it is still moral behavior even when it fails.
Evolution is a process that never stops. Baboons who fail to exhibit moral behavior do not survive; they wind up as meat for leopards.
The next level in moral behavior higher than that exhibited by the baboon is that in which duty and loyalty are shown toward a group of your own kind too large for an individual to know all of them. We have a name for that. It is called “patriotism.”
Behaving on a still higher moral level were the astronauts who went to the Moon, for their actions tend toward the survival of the entire race of mankind.
Men are expendable; women and children are not. A tribe or a nation can lose a high percentage of its men and still pick up the pieces and go on as long as the women and children are saved. But if you fail to save the women and children, you’ve had it, you’re done, you’re through! You join Tyrannosaurus Rex, one more breed that bilged its final test.
“Patriotism” is a way of saying “Women and children first.” And that no one can force a man to feel this way. Instead he must embrace it freely.
</code></pre>
<p>i wonder if his service is what prompted the psychological side of Starship Troopers…i know it has a very valuable viewpoint on war and service to ones country in general.</p>