Glory Road by Robert A. Heinlein

Glory Road @ Amazon.com I was twenty-one but couldn’t figure out which party to vote against.

I object to conscription the way a lobster objects to boiling water.

One of my neighbors had a terrible asthma that lasted till his twenty-sixth birthday.  No fake--he was allergic to draft boards.

I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be--instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.

“Ever play water polo, Rufo?”
“I invented it.”

A hundred feet below the reception committee had gathered.  
It looked like an asparagus patch.  Of bayonets.

“Darling, there is black-widow blood in every woman.”

“Rufo, were you really at Omaha Beach?”
“Hell, yes, Boss.  I did all of Eisenhower’s thinking.”

For the one thing that stood out as this empirical way of running an empire grew up was that the answer to most problems was: Don’t do anything.

“It is the incidence of heroes that counts, not the pattern of zeros.”

“You know I would never draw against you.”
“I know no such thing,” he said querulously. “There’s always that first time. Scoundrels are predictable, but you’re a man of honor and that frightens me.”