“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.”

The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

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Robert A. Heinlein 557
American science fiction author 1907–1988

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“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."”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

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. The door they opened leads to the hope that H. sapiens will survive indefinitely long, even longer than this solid planet on which we stand tonight. As a direct result of what they did, it is now possible that the human race will never die.
Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."
The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)

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“There is no level of moral achievement upon which man can have or actually has an easy conscience.”

Reinhold Niebuhr (1892–1971) American protestant theologian

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The Nature and Destiny of Man: A Christian Interpretation (1941)

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“Decentralized systems are the quintessential patrons of simplicity. They allow complexity to rise to a level at which it is sustainable, and no higher.”

L. K. Samuels (1951) American writer

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