The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one.

had a bad day
as bad as they come
time to get a real job
you gotta stop having fun
so I so I gotta real job
I'm workin nine to nine
I'm makin five bucks an hour
'til the day I die

got a strong side of me
and it's feeling just fine
got a strong side of me
with the strongest line

and I'm one third passion
and I'm two thirds pride
I said I used to have a life once
I said I used to like your smile once
but you silenced to the world
but the stars kept marching
you said "silence to everyone"
I said I'M STILL TALKING
and you got some more deep inside of you
deep inside of you, deep inside of you

I'll always have more for me, yea
I'll always have more for me, yea
I take a little more for me
more for me
more for me, baby

got a picture of the way
the world is all wrapped up
if I could have one wish
I sure wish that i had never grown up
got a picture of the way i looked when I was three
I came out laughing, screaming, dancing
I came out laughing, screaming, dancing

I used to be free spirited
now I'm just free of sleep
I got a burnin passion in my throat
I got a burnin passion inside me
I'd rather waste my time and give
I got a life that needs a serious lift
and all the things I want go
yes all the things I want go
on and on and on and on and ah ah
yes they on and on and on
said have you got some more
deep inside of you

I'll always have more for me, yea
I take a little more for me
more for me
more for me

- Tegan and Sara Quinn

I went back to my seat to chew this over. Kristin Ortega's attitude was beginning to make some sense at last. If Bancroft thought he was outside the normal requirements of good citizenship, he wasn't likely to make many friends in uniform. There would have been little point trying to explain to him that for Ortega there was another tree called the Law and that in her eyes he was banging a few profane nails into it himself. I'd seen this kind of thing from both sides, and there just isn't any solution except to do what my own ancestors had done. When you don't like the laws, you go where they can't touch you.

--apologies to Richard Morgan

[...]
"My answer is the same."

"Oh, really? You're a highly educated Starfleet officer. Suppose the other person was completely illiterate, had no family, spent most of the time getting thrown in jail, and never held any job a low-level robot couldn't do. Then what?"

"I would neither request nor attempt to order or persuade a civilian to sacrifice their life for mine."

"But a lot of resources are invested in your training. Don't you think you owe it to society to preserve yourself so you can carry out your responsibilities?"

Her high-arched eyebrows drew close together. "Is this what you believe, Admiral?"

"I'm not being rated, Lieutenant. You are. I've asked you a serious question, and you've replied with what could be considered appaling false modesty."

Saavik stood up angrily. "You ask me if I should not preserve myself so I can carry out my responsibilities. Then I ask you, what are my responsibilities? By the criteria you have named, my responsibilities are to preserve myself so I can carry out my responsibilities! This is a circular and self-justifying argument. It is immoral in the extreme! A just society -- and if I am not mistaken, the Federation considers itself to be just -- employs a military for one reason alone: to protect its civilians. If we decide to judge that some civilians are 'worth' protecting, and some are not, then we destroy our own purpose. We cease to be the servants of our society. We become its tyrants!"

She was leaning forward with her fingers clenched around the back of a chair in the next row.

"You feel strongly about this, don't you, Lieutenant?"

She straightened up, and her fair skin colored to a nearly Vulcan hue.

"That is my opinion on the subject, sir."

Kirk smiled for the first time during the meeting: this was the first time he had felt thoroughly pleased in far too long.


--apologies to Vonda McIntyre, Jack Sowards, and Harve Bennett.

As for Men-of-War, when they chance to meet at sea, they first go through such a string of silly bowings and scrapings, such a ducking of ensigns, that there does not seem to be much right-down hearty good-will and brotherly love about it at all.

--apologies to Herman Melville