“It is a popular idea that a man is a hero just because he was killed in action. Rather, I think, a man is frequently a fool when he gets killed.”

— George S. Patton

Speech at the Hatch Memorial Shell, Boston, Massachusetts (7 June 1945), quoted in The Last Days of Patton (1981), p. 85, by Ladislas Farago and The Patton Papers: 1940-1945 (1974), p. 721, edited by Martin Blumenson.

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George S. Patton 77

United States Army general 1885–1945

David Gemmell book The King Beyond the Gate

Source: Drenai series, The King Beyond the Gate, Ch. 20
Context: "We irritated him, he told me. Why did he get himself killed for us?" "Because he was a hero. And that is what heroes do. You understand?"

“Thought: Why does man kill? He kills for food. And not only food: frequently there must be a beverage.”

Woody Allen Without Feathers

"Selections from the Allen Notebooks".
Source: Without Feathers (1975)

“A man can be a hero if he is a scientist, or a soldier, or a drug addict, or a disc jockey, or a crummy mediocre politician. A man can be a hero because he suffers and despairs; or because he thinks logically and analytically; or because he is "sensitive"; or because he is cruel. Wealth establishes a man as a hero, and so does poverty. Virtually any circumstance in a man's life will make him a hero to some group of people and has a mythic rendering in the culture — in literature, art, theater, or the daily newspapers.”

Andrea Dworkin (1946–2005) Feminist writer

Speech at Queen's College, City University of New York (March 12, 1975). "The Sexual Politics of Fear and Courage", ch. 5, published in Our Blood (1976).

“I'm not their slave," the man mutters.
"I am," I say. "That’s why I killed Cato … and he killed Thresh … and he killed Clove … and she tried to kill me. It just goes around and around, and who wins? Not us. Not the districts. Always the Capitol. But I'm tired of being a piece in their Games.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

A District 2 soldier and Katniss (p. 215)
The Hunger Games trilogy, Mockingjay (2010)

“You bloody fool, you've killed the wrong man.”

W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965) British playwright, novelist, short story writer

The Hairless Mexican (1927)
Short Stories

“General, man is very useful.
He can fly and he can kill.
But he has one defect:
He can think.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

"General, Your Tank Is a Powerful Vehicle", in "From a German War Primer", part of the Svendborg Poems (1939); as translated by Lee Baxandall in Poems, 1913-1956, p. 289
Poems, 1913-1956 (1976)