It is not someone's position or place to question or defy a situation, order, or the way things are done. Adapted from a line from Lord Alfred Tennyson's 1854 poem "The Charge of the Light Brigade," describing the British cavalry as they obeyed orders to ride into certain death in the Crimean War. Originally phrased as "theirs not to reason why." As soldiers, we are trained to follow orders, ours not to reason why; after all, a soldier constantly second-guessing orders will not be very effective.