“"No man is an island — " Much as we may feel and act as Individuals, our race is —a single organism, always growing and branching —which must be pruned regularly to be healthy.
This necessity need not be argued; anyone with eyes can see that any organism which grows without limit always dies in its own poisons. The only rational question is whether pruning is best done before or after birth.
Being an incurable sentimentalist I favor the former of these methods —killing makes me queasy, even when it's a case of "He's dead and I'm alive and that's the way I wanted it to be."
But this may be a matter of taste. Some shamans think that it is better to be killed in a war, or to die in childbirth, or to starve in misery, than never to have lived at all. They may be right.
But I don't have to like it —and I don't.”
Time Enough for Love (1973)
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Robert A. Heinlein 557
American science fiction author 1907–1988Related quotes

Quote in his letter to brother Theo from Auvers, July 1890; as quoted in Vincent van Gogh, edited by Alfred H. Barr; Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1935 https://www.moma.org/documents/moma_catalogue_1996_300061887.pdf, (letter 648), p. 26
1890s

Source: Social Organization: a Study of the Larger Mind, 1909, p. vii, Preface , lead sentece

Source: https://theosophy.world/sites/default/files/ebooks/Annie%20Besant-In-The-Outer-Court.pdf In the Outer Court (1895)

Quoted when donating 15,000 COVID-19 Vaccine doses to the government of Uganda.
2020s
Source: [2021-03-10, Tycoon Kiggundu donates sh530m to procure Covid-19 vaccine, https://www.newvision.co.ug/articledetails/107712, 2021-10-03, New Vision, en-US]

Source: All The Pretty Horses: All The Pretty Horses

Source: The Conflict of the Individual and the Mass in the Modern World (1932), p. 9