Quotes about battle
page 9

Ricardo Sanchez photo

“Praise be to the Lord, my rock, who trains my fingers for battle and my hands for war.”

Ricardo Sanchez (1953) United States Army Lieutenant General

Reporters and editors luncheon address (2007)

Howard Zinn photo
Douglas Bader photo

“If you had the height, you controlled the battle.”

Douglas Bader (1910–1982) British World War II flying ace

Mackenzie 2008 p. 39.
Lucas 1981, p. 95.

Wilhelm II, German Emperor photo
Ambrose Bierce photo

“This is a simple story of a battle; such a tale as may be told by a soldier who is no writer to a reader who is no soldier.”

Ambrose Bierce (1842–1914) American editorialist, journalist, short story writer, fabulist, and satirist

Source: What I Saw At Shiloh (1881), I

James A. Garfield photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“Wut's words to them whose faith an' truth
On war's red techstone rang true metal;
Who ventered life an' love an' youth
For the gret prize o' death in battle?”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

No. 10.
The Biglow Papers (1848–1866), Series II (1866)

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus photo

“Pompey lives after his battles, but his fortune has perished.”
Vivit post proelia Magnus sed fortuna perit.

Book VIII, line 84.
Pharsalia

Anthony Weiner photo
Arjuna Ranatunga photo

“You get him out and half the battle is won.”

Arjuna Ranatunga (1963) Sri Lankan cricketer

Arjuna Ranatunga on Indian cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, Sachin Tendulkar: Quotable quotes on the batting legend http://www.khaleejtimes.com/article/20131112/ARTICLE/311129977/1051.

Ken Ham photo

“Secularism, with its moral relativism, is in direct opposition to Christianity and its absolute morality. The battle is between these two worldviews—one that stands on God's Word and one that accepts man's opinions.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Carol Derby & Ken Ham, "The 'Evolutionizing' of a Culture", War of the World Views: Powerful Answers For An "Evolutionized" Culture (2006), p. 11 http://books.google.com/books?id=RTc_lsnp0r0C&pg=PA11

Joseph Strutt photo
Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell photo
William Morris photo
David Dixon Porter photo

“Why, Mister President, the general impression is that Grant won the battle of Shiloh; as he commanded the army, he would seem entitled to the credit.”

David Dixon Porter (1813–1891) United States Navy admiral

Source: 1880s, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War (1885), pp. 122–123

Qasim ibn Hasan photo
Rāmabhadrācārya photo
Joseph Campbell photo
Percy Bysshe Shelley photo
Maxwell D. Taylor photo

“For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

I Corinthians 14:8, displayed on the page following the table of contents.
The Uncertain Trumpet (1960)

Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Pat Conroy photo
George Carlin photo

“Irony deals with opposites; it has nothing to do with coincidence. If two baseball players from the same hometown, on different teams, receive the same uniform number, it is not ironic. It is a coincidence. If Barry Bonds attains lifetime statistics identical to his father's, it will not be ironic. It will be a coincidence. Irony is "a state of affairs that is the reverse of what was to be expected; a result opposite to and in mockery of the appropriate result." For instance: a diabetic, on his way to buy insulin, is killed by a runaway truck. He is the victim of an accident. If the truck was delivering sugar, he is the victim of an oddly poetic coincidence. But if the truck was delivering insulin, ah! Then he is the victim of an irony. If a Kurd, after surviving bloody battle with Saddam Hussein's army and a long, difficult escape through the mountains, is crushed and killed by a parachute drop of humanitarian aid, that, my friend, is irony writ large. Darryl Stingley, the pro football player, was paralyzed after a brutal hit by Jack Tatum. Now Darryl Stingley's son plays football, and if the son should become paralyzed while playing, it will not be ironic. It will be coincidental. If Darryl Stingley's son paralyzes someone else, that will be closer to ironic. If he paralyzes Jack Tatum's son, that will be precisely ironic.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Books, Brain Droppings (1997)

Nâzım Hikmet photo
George W. Bush photo
Krishna Raja Wadiyar IV photo
Seth MacFarlane photo
Ken Ham photo

“Evolutionary Darwinists need to understand we are taking the dinosaurs back. This is a battle cry to recognize the science in the revealed truth of God.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

Michael Powell, "In Evolution Debate, Creationists Are Breaking New Ground; Museum Dedicated to Biblical Interpretation Of the World Is Being Built Near Cincinnati", The Washington Post (September 25, 2005), p. A.03

Robert W. Service photo
Miyamoto Musashi photo
Mark Knopfler photo
James Macpherson photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington photo
John F. Kennedy photo

“And as Americans know from our history on our own old frontier, gun battles are caused by outlaws, and not by officers of the peace.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Berlin Crisis speech

James Longstreet photo

“General, I have been a soldier all my life. I have been with soldiers engaged in fights by couples, by squads, companies, regiments, divisions, and armies, and should know, as well as any one, what soldiers can do. It is my opinion that no fifteen thousand men ever arranged for battle can take that position.”

James Longstreet (1821–1904) Confederate Army general

As quoted in General James Longstreet: The Confederacy's Most Controversial Soldier: A Biography https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0671709216 (1993), by Jeffry D. Wert, New York: Simon & Schuster, p. 283

“Secularism per se is a doctrine which arose in the modem West as a revolt against the closed creed of Christianity. Its battle-cry was that the State should be freed from the stranglehold of the Church, and the citizen should be left to his own individual choice in matters of belief. And it met with great success in every Western democracy. Had India borrowed this doctrine from the modem West, it would have meant a rejection of the closed creeds of Islam and Christianity, and a promotion of the Sanatana Dharma family of faiths which have been naturally secularist in the modern Western sense. But what happened actually was that Secularism in India became the greatest protector of closed creeds which had come here in the company of foreign invaders, and kept tormenting the national society for several centuries.
We should not, therefore, confuse India's Secularism with its namesake in the modern West. The Secularism which Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru propounded and which has prospered in post-independence India, is a new concoction and should be recognized as such. We need not bother about its various definitions as put forward by its pandits. We shall do better if we have a close look at its concrete achievements.
Going by those achievements, one can conclude quite safely that Nehruvian Secularism is a magic formula for transmitting base metals into twenty-four carat gold. How else do we explain the fact of Islam becoming a religion, and that too a religion of tolerance, social equality, and human brotherhood; or the fact of Muslim rule in medieval India becoming an indigenous dispensation; or the fact of Muhammad bin Qasim becoming a liberator of the toiling masses in Sindh; or the fact of Mahmud Ghaznavi becoming the defreezer of productive wealth hoarded in Hindu temples; or the fact of Muhammad Ghuri becoming the harbinger of an urban revolution; or the fact of Muinuddin Chishti becoming the great Indian saint; or the fact of Amir Khusru becoming the pioneer of communal amity; or the fact of Alauddin Khilji becoming the first socialist in the annals of this country; or the fact of Akbar becoming the father of Indian nationalism; or the fact of Aurangzeb becoming the benefactor of Hindu temples; or the fact of Sirajuddaula, Mir Qasim, Hyder Ali, Tipu Sultan, and Bahadur Shah Zafar becoming the heroes of India's freedom struggle against British imperialism or the fact of the Faraizis, the Wahabis, and the Moplahs becoming peasant revolutionaries and foremost freedom fighters?
One has only to go to the original sources in order to understand the true character of Islam and its above-mentioned luminaries. And one can see immediately that their true character has nothing to do with that with which they have been invested in our school and college text-books. No deeper probe is needed for unraveling the mysteries of Nehruvian Secularism.”

Sita Ram Goel (1921–2003) Indian activist

Tipu Sultan - Villain or Hero (1993)

Howard Zinn photo
George Gordon Byron photo
Voltairine de Cleyre photo
William O. Douglas photo
Joseph McCarthy photo

“Today we are engaged in a final, all-out battle between communistic atheism and Christianity. The modern champions of communism have selected this as the time, and ladies and gentlemen, the chips are down — they are truly down.”

Joseph McCarthy (1908–1957) Wisconsin politician

Speech in Wheeling, West Virginia (9 February 1950), as quoted at History Matters http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6456

E. M. S. Namboodiripad photo

“…the Buddha whose near-materialist philosophy gripped the mass of suppressed humanity…those belonging to the materialist school had to fight an unequal fight and were therefore defeated…the defeat of the materialists in this unequal battle was the beginning of a millennium-long age of intellectual and socio-political backwardness which culminated in the establishment of British rule in our land.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

Above two quotes written in his book “History, Society and Land Relations” after paying a tribute to Shankara he points to the non-idealist streams of ancient Indian philosophy, above two quotes are in A Socialist who became a Communist, 20 April 2010, 13 December 2013, The Hindu http://www.thehindu.com/books/a-socialist-who-became-a-communist/article406031.ece,

Daniel Suarez photo
Michael Swanwick photo
Mitsumasa Yonai photo
Francis Escudero photo
David Boaz photo
Joseph Strutt photo
Robert Anton Wilson photo
Carly Fiorina photo
Abdullah II of Jordan photo
Homér photo

“The proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate.”

XVI. 630 (tr. Robert Fagles).
Iliad (c. 750 BC)

John Dryden photo

“Sooth'd with the sound, the king grew vain;
Fought all his battles o'er again;
And thrice he routed all his foes, and thrice he slew the slain.”

John Dryden (1631–1700) English poet and playwright of the XVIIth century

Source: Alexander’s Feast http://www.bartleby.com/40/265.html (1697), l. 66–70.

Andrew Johnson photo

“I have had a son killed, a son-in-law die during the last battle of Nashville, another son has thrown himself away, a second son-in-law is in no better condition, I think I have had sorrow enough without having my bank account examined by a Committee of Congress.”

Andrew Johnson (1808–1875) American politician, 17th president of the United States (in office from 1865 to 1869)

Letter to his friend Colonel William G. Moore, complaining of Congressional investigations.... (1 May 1867).
Quote

William L. Shirer photo
Jack Vance photo
Henry Adams photo

“Around this time Siward, the mighty earl of Northumbria, almost a giant in stature, very strong mentally and physically, sent his son to conquer Scotland. When they came back and reported to his father that he had been killed in battle, he asked, "Did he receive his fatal wound in the front or the back of his body?" The messengers said, "In the front." Then he said, "That makes me very happy, for I consider no other death worthy for me or my son."”
Circa hoc tempus Siwardus consul fortissimus Nordhymbre, pene gigas statura, manu uero et mente predura, misit filium suum in Scotiam conquirendam. Quem cum bello cesum patri renuntiassent, ait, "Recepitne uulnus letale in anteriori uel posteriori corporis parte?" Dixerunt nuntii, "In anteriori." At ille, "Gaudeo plane, non enim alio me uel filium meum digner funere."

Circa hoc tempus Siwardus consul fortissimus Nordhymbre, pene gigas statura, manu uero et mente predura, misit filium suum in Scotiam conquirendam. Quem cum bello cesum patri renuntiassent, ait, "Recepitne uulnus letale in anteriori uel posteriori corporis parte?" Dixerunt nuntii, "In anteriori."
At ille, "Gaudeo plane, non enim alio me uel filium meum digner funere."
Book VI, §22, pp. 376-7.
Historia Anglorum (The History of the English People)

Mel Brooks photo
Gautama Buddha photo

“I spit on my life.
Death in battle would be better for me
than that I, defeated, survive.”

Gautama Buddha (-563–-483 BC) philosopher, reformer and the founder of Buddhism

This statement is made in reference to his battle against the personification of temptation to evil, Mara.
Source: Pali Canon, Sutta Pitaka, Khuddaka Nikaya (Minor Collection), (Suttas falling down), Sutta 3.2. Padhana Sutta

Allen West (politician) photo

“The first thing you’ve got to do is study and understand what we’re up against. You must realize that this is not a religion that you’re fighting against. You’re fighting against a theo-political belief system and construct. You’re fighting against something that’s been doing this thing since 622 AD - 7th century - 1,388 years. You want to dig up Charles Martel and ask him why he was fighting the Muslim army at the Battle of Tours in 732? You want to ask the Venetian fleet at LePonto why they were fighting a Muslim fleet in 1571? You want to ask the Christian – I mean the Germanic and Austrian – knights why they were fighting at the gates of Vienna in 1683? You want to ask people what happened at Constantinople and why today it’s called Istanbul? Because they lost that fight in 1453. You need to get into the Qur'an, you need to understand their precepts, you need to read the Sunnah, you need to read the Hadith and then you can really understand this is not a perversion: They are doing exactly what this book says. I want to close by saying this, and I think we’ve said this all through this morning so far: Until we get principled leadership in the United States that is willing to say that, we will continue to chase our tail, because we will never clearly define who this enemy is and then understand their goals and objectives - which is on any jihadist website - and then come up with the right and proper goals and objectives to not only secure our republic, but to secure western civilization.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

Response to question: Why would [Islamist terrorists] warp a religion to justify attacking the United States. [Hudson Institute, Reclaim American Liberty Conference, January 13, 2010, http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=hudson_upcoming_events&id=741, March 22, 2011]
2010s

Mahmoud Abbas photo

“The little jihad is over, and now we have the bigger jihad - the bigger battle is achieving security and economic growth.”

Mahmoud Abbas (1935) Palestinian statesman

Campaign speech in Gaza City (20 August 2005), quoted in New York Times (21 August) Hamas Pushing for Lead Role in a New Gaza by James Bennet

David Bowie photo

“Who'll love Aladdin Sane?
Battle cries and champagne just in time for sunrise.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Aladdin Sane
Song lyrics, Aladdin Sane (1973)

“If the story of my early years with Russ sound like they were years of battle, then the sound is correct.”

C. West Churchman (1913–2004) American philosopher and systems scientist

C. West Churchman (1990, p. 130) cited in: Magnus Ramage, Karen Shipp (2009) Systems Thinkers. p. 140
1980s and later

Bernard Cornwell photo
Donald J. Trump photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

William Cowper Prime in The Old House by the River (1853); first misattributed to Hawthorne in Notable Thoughts about Women: A Literary Mosaic (1882) by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 239
Misattributed

John Muir photo
Julia Ward Howe photo
Victor Davis Hanson photo

“But whether on the scaffold high
Or in the battle's van,
The fittest place where man can die
Is where he dies for man!”

Michael Joseph Barry (1817–1889) Irish poet and political figure

The Dublin Nation, Sept. 28, 1844, Vol. ii. p. 809, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

John Ralston Saul photo
Orson Scott Card photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Halldór Laxness photo
Al Sharpton photo

“Jim Crow is old. That's not who I'm mindful of today. The problem is that Jim Crow has sons. The one we've got to battle is James Crow Jr., Esq. He's a little more educated. He's a little slicker. He's a little more polished, but the results are the same.”

Al Sharpton (1954) American Baptist minister, civil rights activist, and television/radio talk show host

Remarks at the funeral of Rosa Parks (3 November 2005).[citation needed]

Pamela Geller photo

“I believe most Muslims are secular. I don't believe that most Muslims subscribe to devout fundamentalist Islam by any stretch of the imagination. And we need the secular Muslims to win the battle for the reformation of Islam.”

Pamela Geller (1958) blogger, author, political activist, and commentator

Pamela Geller: "This Is a Clash of Civilizations" http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/religion/man-behind-mosque/pamela-geller-this-is-a-clash-of-civilizations/, PBS (27 September 2011)

Naomi Klein photo

“The chroniclers of the early Turkish rulers of India take pride in affirming that Qutbuddin Aibak was a killer of lakhs of infidels. Leave aside enthusiastic killers like Alauddin Khalji and Muhammad bin Tughlaq, even the "kind-hearted" Firoz Tughlaq killed more than a lakh Bengalis when he invaded their country. Timur Lang or Tamerlane says he killed a hundred thousand infidel prisoners of war in Delhi. He built victory pillars from severed heads at many places. These were acts of sultans. The nobles were not lagging behind. One Shaikh Daud Kambu is said to have killed 20,000 with his dagger. The Bahmani sultans of Gulbarga and Bidar considered it meritorious to kill a hundred thousand Hindu men, women and children every year….. The rite of Jauhar killed the women, the tradition of not deserting the field of battle made Rajputs and others die fighting in large numbers. When Malwa was attacked (1305), its Raja is said to have possessed 40,000 horse and 100,000 foot.43 After the battle, "so far as human eye could see, the ground was muddy with blood"…. Under Muhammad Tughlaq, wars and rebellions knew no end. His expeditions to Bengal, Sindh and the Deccan, as well as ruthless suppression of twenty-two rebellions, meant only depopulation in the thirteenth and first half of the fourteenth century. For one thing, in spite of constant efforts no addition of territory could be made by Turkish rulers from 1210 to 1296; for another the Turkish rulers were more ruthless in war and less merciful in peace. Hence the extirpating massacres of Balban, and the repeated attacks by others on regions already devastated but not completely subdued….. Mulla Daud of Bidar vividly describes the war between Muhammad Shah Bahmani and the Vijayanagar King in 1366 in which "Farishtah computes the victims on the Hindu side alone as numbering no less than half a million." Muhammad also devastated the Karnatak region with vengeance….. Under Akbar and Jahangir "five or six hundred thousand human beings were killed," says emperor Jahangir. The figures given by these killers and their chroniclers may be a few thousand less or a few thousand more, but what bred this ambition of cutting down human beings without compunction was the Muslim theory, practice and spirit of Jihad, as spelled out in Muslim scriptures and rules of administration.”

Ch 3
Theory and Practice of Muslim State in India (1999)

Margaret Cho photo
Jeffrey Montgomery photo
Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington photo

“The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (1769–1852) British soldier and statesman

As quoted in The New York Times (26 December 1886), and in Words on Wellington (1889) by Sir William Fraser, this is almost certainly apocryphal. The first attributions of such a remark to Wellington were in De l'Avenir politique de l'Angleterre (1856) by Charles de Montalembert, Ch. 10, where it is stated that on returning to Eton in old age he had said: "C'est ici qu'a été gagnée la bataille de Waterloo." This was afterwards quoted in Self-Help (1859) by Samuel Smiles as "It was there that the Battle of Waterloo was won!" Later in Memoirs of Eminent Etonians (2nd Edition, 1876) by Sir Edward Creasy, he is quoted as saying as he passed groups playing cricket on the playing-fields: "There grows the stuff that won Waterloo."
Elizabeth Longford in Wellington — The Years of the Sword (1969) states he "probably never said or thought anything of the kind" and Gerald Wellesley, 7th Duke of Wellington in a letter published in The Times in 1972 is quoted as stating: "During his old age Wellington is recorded to have visited Eton on two occasions only and it is unlikely that he came more often. … Wellington's career at Eton was short and inglorious and, unlike his elder brother, he had no particular affection for the place. … Quite apart from the fact that the authority for attributing the words to Wellington is of the flimsiest description, to anyone who knows his turn of phrase they ring entirely false."
Misattributed

Joyce Kilmer photo
Sri Aurobindo photo