“It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.”

Interview with Barbara Walters (15 March 1991); also quoted in his memoir It Doesn't Take a Hero : General H. Norman Schwarzkopf, the Autobiography (1992), p. xiii

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Norman Schwarzkopf 12
United States Army general 1934–2012

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Context: Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he's not, he's a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

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“I don't know what a hero is. This business of the captain taking all the credit, ordering someone else and so forth -- that's not it. The men who do the actual fighting, man the guns, they're the guys that really win the war.”

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Book I, line 447 (tr. J. D. Duff).
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