Military Quotes

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
― George Orwell

“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual doom.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother; be he ne’er so vile,
This day shall gentle his condition;
And gentlemen in England now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs’d they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.”
― William Shakespeare, Henry V

“Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.”
― Douglas MacArthur

“Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.”
― George S. Patton Jr., The Patton principles

“Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die”
― Lord Tennyson Alfred

“One more dance along the razor's edge finished. Almost dead yesterday, maybe dead tomorrow, but alive, gloriously alive, today.”
― Robert Jordan, Lord of Chaos

“The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country”
― George S. Patton Jr.

“Whether the mask is labeled fascism, democracy, or dictatorship of the proletariat, our great adversary remains the apparatus—the bureaucracy, the police, the military. Not the one facing us across the frontier of the battle lines, which is not so much our enemy as our brothers' enemy, but the one that calls itself our protector and makes us its slaves. No matter what the circumstances, the worst betrayal will always be to subordinate ourselves to this apparatus and to trample underfoot, in its service, all human values in ourselves and in others.”
― Simone Weil

“The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.”
― Colin Powell

“She had been proud of his decision to serve his country, her heart bursting with love and admiration the first time she saw him outfitted in his dress blues. ”
― Nicholas Sparks, The Lucky One

“Soldiers can sometimes make decisions that are smarter than the orders they've been given.”
― Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

“I can’t go into detail, but it’s why I went to the special meeting at the Pentagon.”
― Karl Braungart, Counter Identity

“Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.”
― Winston S. Churchill

“...It is a proud privilege to be a soldier – a good soldier … [with] discipline, self-respect, pride in his unit and his country, a high sense of duty and obligation to comrades and to his superiors, and a self confidence born of demonstrated ability.”
― George S. Patton Jr.

“Gentlemen,’ the professor said gravely. ‘You must stop this madman. If you do not, you are looking at a doomsday scenario of apocalyptic proportions.”
― Michael Parker, The Devil's Trinity

“Whoever he said he was, thought Marsh, he was not from the immigration department, and the web that he was convinced Walsh had been weaving was beginning to unravel with disastrous and dangerous consequences.”
― Michael Parker, The Devil's Trinity

“-You have no respect for excessive authority or obsolete traditions. You're dangerous and depraved, and you ought to be taken outside and shot!”
― Joseph Heller, Catch-22

“The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.”
― Terry Pratchett, Eric

“And in that vast emptiness, two heads bobbed above the surface without a sound, just one hundred feet from them.”
― Michael Parker, The Devil's Trinity

“US General Mathew Ridgeway was speaking about “Operation Vulture”. He said, “When the day comes for me to meet my maker and account for my actions, the thing that I would be most proud of is the fact that I fought against and perhaps totally prevented the carrying out of one of the most hare-brained tactical schemes that would have cost the lives of thousands upon thousands of men!”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)”
― Michael G. Kramer

“Never run after a man or a bus, there's always another one in five minutes.”
― Cherry Adair, Kiss and Tell

“On the 30th of April 1975, American helicopters flew out of Saigon in an ignominious retreat as the tanks of the People’s Liberation Army of Vietnam rumbled into the grounds of the American Embassy in Saigon.”
― Michael G. Kramer, A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume One

“King Norodom of Cambodia replied, “Lt. General Kawamura of the Japanese Imperial Army, It is my understanding that you Japanese are granting my people a partial freedom which is always subject to the approval of any laws we make by the Japanese Government in Tokyo!”

(A Gracious Enemy & After the War Volume Two)”
― Michael G. Kramer

“The boy registered them but didn’t answer, already turned inward. He was counting backward from a thousand in multiples of four while working multiplication tables of seven until they met.”
― William Kely McClung, Black Fire

“I don't want unnecessary violence, sergeant," said Blouse.
"Right you are, sir!" said the sergeant. "Carborundum! First man comes through that door runnin', I want him nailed to the wall!" He caught the lieutenant's eye, and added: "But not too hard!”
― Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment

“The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically.”
― E.B. Sledge, With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa

“His thoughts went to Kismaayo, and lately, particularly of Abdi. If there were a hero in this story, it was Abdi. Jon thought, this young man from Maine had left that war weary husk of a country called Somalia and had come to these United States of America to pursue the dream of happiness, security, and hope.”
― Mike Bennett, Las Vegas on Twelve Dollars a Day