Quotes about soldier
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“My Guardian is the Planet of Silence. Soldier Of Death and Rebirth Sailor Saturn! - Hotaru as Sailor Saturn”

Naoko Takeuchi (1967) Japanese manga artist

“In Alexander's life there was one thread that could not be broken by death, by distance, by time, by war. Could not be broken. As long as I am in the world, she said with her breath and her body, as long as I am, you are permanent, soldier.”

Paullina Simons book Tatiana and Alexander

Source: Tatiana and Alexander

Life, Death, War, World

“Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says “Bad war, good soldier.” Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior.”

Max Cleland (1942) American politician

War, Soul

“A soldier is a "Yahoo" hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own Species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can.”

Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) Anglo-Irish satirist, essayist, and poet

“Bruno: Why do you wear pajamas all day?
Shmuel: The soldiers. They took all our clothes away.
Bruno: My dad's a soldier, but not the sort that takes people's clothes away.”

John Boyne (1971) Irish novelist, author of children's and youth fiction

Source: The Boy in the Striped Pajamas

People, Clothes

“Sometimes he felt like he'd been gone his whole life--in exile, away from the place he was supposed to be, and that, soldier-like, he was pining to be returned. Homesick for a place he'd never been.”

Gillian Flynn book Dark Places

Source: Dark Places

Life

“When Tatiana looked up from her ice cream, she saw a soldier staring at her from across the street.”

Paullina Simons book The Bronze Horseman

Source: The Bronze Horseman

“Woe betide the leaders now perched on their dizzy pinnacles of triumph if they cast away at the conference table what the soldiers had won on a hundred bloodsoaked battlefields.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Source: Memoirs of the Second World War

“I didn't know that, you take your coffee seriously, dont you?'
'Every morning, I run to the coffeemaker like a soldier returning to a lost love after the war.”

Lisa Kleypas book Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor

Source: Christmas Eve at Friday Harbor

Love, War, Coffee

“Fang: "Have you guys been playing in the toxic waste again? Been bitten by a radioactive spider? Struck by lightning? Drink a super-soldier serum?”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Final Warning

Guy, Drink

“A Time For Prayer

"In times of war and not before,
God and the soldier we adore.
But in times of peace and all things righted,
God is forgotten and the soldier slighted."

-Rudyard Kipling”

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936) English short-story writer, poet, and novelist

God, War, Peace, Time

“Somebody want to explain to me why those soldiers were shooting each other?'
(…)'Inbreeding?”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Poison Princess

“ten soldiers wisely led will beat a hundred with out a head”

Euripidés (-480–-406 BC) ancient Athenian playwright

“And nobody has the right to judge a soldier from the warmth and safety of their armchair.”

Karen Traviss British science fiction author

“In Love's service, only wounded soldiers can serve.”

Brennan Manning (1934–2013) writer, American Roman Catholic priest and United States Marine

Source: Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging

Love

“I don't like it, papa," she said. "But then I dare say soldiers - even brave ones - don't reallygoing into battle.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

“Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems?”

Bill Watterson (1958) American comic artist

Source: Calvin and Hobbes: Sunday Pages 1985-1995: An Exhibition Catalogue

World, Problem, Peaceful

“Summer grasses,
All that remains
Of soldiers' dreams”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Dreams, Grass, Summer

“Soldiers don't complain… I am not going to do it; I will pretend this is part of a war.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

War, Parting

“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 (1937) Former U.S. Secretary of State and retired four-star general

Confidence, Failure, Problem, Help

“History – An account mostly false, of events unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.”

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

Fools, History, Falseness

“Soldiers are issued armour for their flesh and bones, but they must fashion their own for their souls. Piece by piece. (Itkovian)”

Steven Erikson (1959) Canadian fantasy author

Soul, Fashion

“After that searing meeting with those female soldiers I was even more determined that I was going to achieve real change in our culture.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Change

“Bless God, he went as soldiers,
His musket on his breast;
Grant, God, he charge the bravest
Of all the martial blest.

Please God, might I behold him
In epauletted white,
I should not fear the foe then,
I should not fear the fight.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Time and Eternity, p. 234
Collected Poems (1993)

God, Fear, Fight

“To estimate the value of Newton's discoveries, or the delight communicated by Shakespeare and Milton, by the price at which their works have sold, would be but a poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted their country; nor would it be less grovelling and incongruous to estimate the benefit which the country has derived from the Revolution of 1688, by the pay of the soldiers, and all other payments concerned in effecting it.”

Thomas Robert Malthus Principles of Political Economy

Book I, Chapter I, Of The Definitions of Wealth and of Productive Labour, Section II, p. 49
Principles of Political Economy (Second Edition 1836)

Communication, Country

“In this assembly, every political school has its teachers — every creed has its adherents — and I may safely say, that this banquet is the tribute of United Ireland to the representative of American benevolence. Being such, I am at once reminded of the dinner which took place after the battle of Saratoga, at which Gates and Burgoyne — the rival soldiers — sat together. Strange scene! Ireland, the beaten and the bankrupt, entertains America, the victorious and the prosperous! Stranger still! The flag of the Victor decorates this hail — decorates our harbour — not, indeed, in triumph, but in sympathy — not to commemorate the defeat, but to predict the resurrection, of a fallen people! One thing is certain — we are sincere upon this occasion. There is truth in this compliment. For the first time in her career, Ireland has reason to be grateful to a foreign power. Foreign power, sir! Why should I designate that country a "foreign power," which has proved itself our sister country? England, they sometimes say, is our sister country. We deny the relationship — we discard it. We claim America as our sister, and claiming her as such, we have assembled here this night. Should a stranger, viewing this brilliant scene inquire of me, why it is that, amid the desolation of this day — whilst famine is in the land — whilst the hearse-plumes darken the summer scenery of the island, whilst death sows his harvest, and the earth teems not with the seeds of life, but with the seeds of corruption — should he inquire of me, why it is, that, amid this desolation, we hold high festival, hang out our banners, and thus carouse — I should reply, "Sir, the citizens of Dublin have met to pay a compliment to a plain citizen of America, which they would not pay — 'no, not for all the gold in Venice'”

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) Irish nationalist & American politician

to the minister of England."
Ireland and America (1846)

Life, Death, People, Truth

“The marriage of David Brooks and the Democratic Leadership Council makes perfect sense. It's repugnant and the kind of thing one should shield young children from knowing about, but it makes perfect sense. Both prefer a policy of being "cautious soldiers," "incrementalists" who shun upheavals and vote the status quo, although they subscribe to this policy for different reasons. Brooks worships the status quo because he has no penis and wants to spend the rest of his life buying periwinkle bath towels without troubling interruptions of conscience. The DLC, a nonprofit created in the mid-1980s to help big business have a say in the Democratic Party platform, supports the status quo because they are paid agents of the commercial interests that define it. Moreover, Brooks and the DLC have this in common: While they both frown on the open flag-waving and ostentatious religiosity of the talk-radio right-wing as being gauche and in bad form, they're only truly offended by people of their own background who happen to be idealistic. Hence the recurring backlash by both against the various angry electoral challenges to the establishment of the Democratic Party.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"David Brooks and the DLC: Best Friends Forever?", AlterNet (3 August 2006) http://web.archive.org/web/20060808224928/http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/39862/

Life, Marriage, Children, People

“We go forward with complete confidence in the eventual triumph of freedom. Not because history runs on the wheels of inevitability; it is human choices that move events. Not because we consider ourselves a chosen nation; God moves and chooses as he wills. We have confidence because freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul. When our Founders declared a new order of the ages, when soldiers died in wave upon wave for a union based on liberty, when citizens marched in peaceful outrage under the banner "Freedom Now"”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

they were acting on an ancient hope that is meant to be fulfilled.
2000s, 2005, Second Inaugural Address (January 2005)

Hunger, God, Age, Peace

“There are elections and elections, there are many Arab presidents who are elected with 99.9, 94.7, 87.4 percent of the vote in elections but nobody believes these elections. They're not real elections and the election that's going to be held in Iraq in January, if it is held at all - and there is a big question mark over that – will not be a real election. How can you have a real election with hundreds of thousands of Crusader soldiers occupying the country, drawing up the electoral law, deciding who is allowed to take part in the elections, and utterly dominating the political life of the country?”

George Galloway (1954) British politician, broadcaster, and writer

Interview on Abu Dhabi TV http://www.memri.org/bin/articles.cgi?Page=archives&Area=sd&ID=SP91805, November 20, 2004.

Life, Law, Question, Parting

“In one experience I remember vividly, there was a rich range of shades. It must have been late 1941 or early 1942. Jews were required to wear the Star of David and to obey a 6 p. m. curfew. I had gone to play with a Christian friend and had stayed too late. I turned my brown sweater inside out to walk the few blocks home. As I was walking down an empty street, I saw a German soldier approaching. He was wearing the black uniform that I had been told to fear more than others - the one worn by specially recruited SS soldiers. As I came closer to him, trying to walk fast, I noticed that he was looking at me intently. Then he beckoned me over, picked me up, and hugged me. I was terrified that he would notice the star inside my sweater. He was speaking to me with great emotion, in German. When he put me down, he opened his wallet, showed me a picture of a boy, and gave me some money. I went home more certain than ever that my mother was right: people were endlessly complicated and interesting.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

Nobel Prize Autobiographical Information http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-bio.html (2002).

Money, People, Fear, Home

“What foreigners like most about Britain is not multiculturalism or tolerance or any of that new Labour nonsense. No, what they like is our history. Shakespeare. Blenheim Palace. Soldiers in preposterous hats who don't move. Yes, they may go and see some dead dogs in a modern art gallery but that's only because they've spent the morning on top of a sightseeing bus and they're freezing.”

Jeremy Clarkson (1960) English broadcaster, journalist and writer

Source: For Crying Out Loud! The World According to Clarkson Volume Three (2008), p. 17

Dogs, Art, History, Dead

“Oh, no! It is impossible. War is a kind of game, and has its fixed rules, whereby, when we are well acquainted with them, we can pretty correctly tell how the trial will go. Tomorrow it seems, the die is to be cast, and, in my judgement, without the least chance on our side. The militia will, I suppose as usual, play the back game. That is, get out of battle as fast as their legs will carry them. But that, you know, won't do for me. I am an old soldier, and cannot run, and I believe I have some brave fellows that will stand by me to the last. So, when you hear of our battle, you will probably hear that your old friend, De Kalb, is at rest.”

Johann de Kalb (1721–1780) American general

In August 1780, as quoted in "Death of Baron De Kalb" https://books.google.com/books?id=k2QAAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA234&lpg=PA234&dq=%22I+thank+you+sir+for+your+generous+sympathy,+but+I+die+the+death+I+always+prayed+for:+the+death+of+a+soldier+fighting+for+the+rights+of+man%22&source=bl&ots=-93hJzoCYU&sig=tAag8ObQI-ZjiII56viczov02wM&hl=en&sa=X&ei=VlYVVcuJI4KmNsazgYgL&ved=0CCUQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=%22I%20thank%20you%20sir%20for%20your%20generous%20sympathy%2C%20but%20I%20die%20the%20death%20I%20always%20prayed%20for%3A%20the%20death%20of%20a%20soldier%20fighting%20for%20the%20rights%20of%20man%22&f=false (1849), by Benjamin Franklin Ells, The Western Miscellany, Volume 1, p. 233. 1780s

War, Game, Chance

“By the decree of the Al-mighty an arrow struck Himun in the forehead… (His soldiers) saw how matters stood, and he sustained a complete defeat. When Shah Kuli Beg was told of what had occurred, he came up to the elephant (of Himun) and brought it into the presence of Bairam Khan. Bairam Khan… caused Himun to descend from the elephant and took him before the young and fortunate prince and said, ‘As this is our first success, let your Highness’s own august hand smite this infidel with the sword.’ The Prince, accordingly, struck him and divided his head from his unclean body.”

Hemu (1501–1556) General and Chief Minister of Adil Shah Suri

Ahmad Yadgar. Elliott and Dowson, The History of India, as Told by Its Own Historians, Vol. V, pp. 65-66.

Success

“The army led America in integration… The army recognized early on that, you know, black people are pretty much the same as white people; they just tend to be a little bit darker. They make just as good soldiers.”

Tom Clancy (1947–2013) American author

2000s, In Depth with Tom Clancy (2002)

People

“Some Confederate soldiers switched sides, beginning as early as 1862. When Sherman made his famous march to the sea from Atlanta to Savannah, his army actually grew in number, because thousands of white southerners volunteered along the way. Meanwhile, almost two-thirds of the Confederate army disappeared through desertion. Eighteen thousand slaves joined Sherman, so many that the army had to turn some away. Compare these facts with the portrait common in our textbooks of Sherman's marauders looting their way through a united south. The increasing ideological confusion in the Confederate states, coupled with the increasing strength of the United States, helps explains the Union victory… Many nations and people have continued to fight with far inferior means and weapons… The Confederacy's ideological contradictions were its gravest liabilities, ultimately causing its defeat.”

James W. Loewen book Lies My Teacher Told Me

As quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong https://books.google.com/books?id=5m23RrMeLt4C&pg=PT225&dq=%22Twenty+Nigger+Law%22+loewen&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwitwZHxq7fKAhXFdR4KHVgMDrYQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=%22Twenty%20Nigger%20Law%22%20loewen&f=false (2007), New York: New Press, pp. 225&ndash;226 2000s, 2007, Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong (2007)

People, Way, Victory, Help

“A Soldier should never have to hide their family. The strength of our Soldiers is our families.”

Tammy Smith (1963) United States Army officer

Army Times, September 2, 2012.

Family

“What the state desires of education is soldiers, reliable voters, law-abiding citizens, contented working men, prosperous traders. Hence a spirit of docility and credulity, often of timidity, prevails in the school.”

Everett Dean Martin (1880–1941)

Source: The Meaning of a Liberal Education (1926), p. 74

Men, Education, School, Law

“Had the acute-angled rabble been all, without exception, absolutely destitute of hope and of ambition, they might have found leaders in some of their many seditious outbreaks, so able as to render their superior numbers and strength too much even for the wisdom of the Circles. But a wise ordinance of Nature has decreed that, in proportion as the working-classes increase in intelligence, knowledge, and all virtue, in that same proportion their acute angle (which makes them physically terrible) shall increase also and approximate to the comparatively harmless angle of the Equilateral Triangle. Thus, in the most brutal and formidable of the soldier class — creatures almost on a level with women in their lack of intelligence — it is found that, as they wax in the mental ability necessary to employ their tremendous penetrating power to advantage, so do they wane in the power of penetration itself.

How admirable is this Law of Compensation! And how perfect a proof of the natural fitness and, I may almost say, the divine origin of the aristocratic constitution of the States in Flatland! By a judicious use of this Law of Nature, the Polygons and Circles are almost always able to stifle sedition in its very cradle, taking advantage of the irrepressible and boundless hopefulness of the human mind. Art also comes to the aid of Law and Order. It is generally found possible — by a little artificial compression or expansion on the part of the State physicians — to make some of the more intelligent leaders of a rebellion perfectly Regular, and to admit them at once into the privileged classes; a much larger number, who are still below the standard, allured by the prospect of being ultimately ennobled, are induced to enter the State Hospitals, where they are kept in honourable confinement for life; one or two alone of the more obstinate, foolish, and hopelessly irregular are led to execution.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 3. Concerning the Inhabitants of Flatland

Life, Wisdom, Women, Law

“Before anything else I would like to say good day to all of the Venezuelan people, and this Boliviarian message is directed to the brave soldiers in the Parachutist Regimen of Aragua and the Armed Brigade of Valencia. Friends: For now, lamentably, the objectives we considered were not achieved in the capital. That is to say, we here in Caracas have not managed to take power. You did very well over there, but now is the time to reflect; new situations will come and the country must definitively get on the path to a better destiny. So hear my word; hear Commander Chávez, who sends you this message so that you may please reflect and put down your weapons, because now, really, the objectives that we have brought to the national level are impossible to achieve. Friends: Hear this message of solidarity. I thank you for your loyalty, your valor, your exuberance, and I, before this country and before you all, assume responsibility for this Boliviarian militant movement. Thank you.”

Hugo Chávez (1954–2013) 48th President of Venezuela

Hugo Chávez to Venezuelan television reporters just before being arrested for his participation in an attempted coup d'état, February 1992.
1992

People, Time, Loyalty, Country

“One cannot liberate a people -- much less facilitate the emergence of a democracy -- without empowering the people being liberated. It is much easier for an Iraqi soldier to join other Iraqis in rebellion than it is to surrender his arms in humiliation to a foreigner who is unable even to communicate with him. And the more that Iraqis help, the less that coalition soldiers will have to engage in house-to-house fighting in cities. It is both morally right and politically liberating for Iraqis to participate and share in their own liberation. They are willing to give their lives for this cause. Their participation is indispensable as it will add legitimacy -- and therefore stability -- to an Iraqi interim authority that otherwise, no matter how you look at it, would be chosen by American officials.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"Iraqis Must Share in Their Liberation", Washington Post (March 30, 2003)

People, Democracy, Communication, Help

“We in the ADF occupy a special constitutional role. We train for mastery of military force and are entrusted and sanctioned by the Government to employ extreme violence in support of national interests. Moreover, I am all too aware, that in many conflicts, rape is systematically employed by soldiers against women. Any nexus between an Army such as the one I aspire to lead and sexual assault is absolutely unacceptable. I will take all necessary steps to stamp out any hint of it among my soldiers.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

Women, Support, Training

“For too long our culture has said, "If it feels good, do it." Now America is embracing a new ethic and a new creed: "Let's roll". In the sacrifice of soldiers, the fierce brotherhood of firefighters, and the bravery and generosity of ordinary citizens, we have glimpsed what a new culture of responsibility could look like. We want to be a nation that serves goals larger than self. We've been offered a unique opportunity, and we must not let this moment pass.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Invoking the words of Todd Beamer (passenger on ill-fated Flight 93 on September 11, 2001) to suggest Americans are becoming more altruistic and willing to sacrifice. State of the Union Address (January 29, 2002)
2000s, 2002, State of the Union address (January 2002)

Feeling

“For the Spanish Armada to have conquered England in 1588 would not have been easy. King Philip's fleet would have needed several pieces of good fortune it did not get: a friendlier wind at Calais, perhaps, one that might have kept the English from launching their fireships against the Armada; and a falling-out between the Dutch and English that could have let the Duke of Parma put to sea from Dunkirk and join his army to the Duke of Medina Sidonia's fleet for the invasion of England. Getting Spanish soldiers across the Channel would have been the hard part. Had it been accomplished, the Spanish infantry, the best in the world at the time and commanded by a most able officer, very probably could have beaten Elizabeth's forces on land.”

Harry Turtledove book Ruled Britannia

Historical Note, p. 457
Ruled Britannia (2002)

World, Time, Parting, Sea

“In all my years as a soldier, I have never seen men fight so hard.”

Wilhelm Bittrich (1894–1979) German general

Commenting on the British Paratroopers at Arnhem (September 1944). Quoted in "Hitler's Generals" - Page 327 - by Correlli Barnett - History - 2003

Men, Fight

“Soldiers for equality, uh? Glad you warned me. I’d have thought you were just thieves.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Part 4 “Hiruko: Six Years Later”, Chapter 1 (p. 148)
Against Infinity (1983)

“A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

E 19
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook E (1775 - 1776)

“Women must be trained to fight in houses, prepare explosive belts and blow themselves up alongside enemy soldiers. Anyone with a car must prepare it and know how to install explosives and turn it into a car-bomb. We must train women to place explosives in cars and blow them up in the midst of enemies, and blow up houses so that they can collapse on enemy soldiers. Traps must be prepared. You have seen how the enemy checks baggage: we must fix these suitcases in order for them to explode when they open them. Women must be taught to place mines in cupboards, bags, shoes, children's toys so that they explode on enemy soldiers.”

Muammar Gaddafi (1942–2011) Libyan revolutionary, politician and political theorist

Speech to the women of Sabha, October 4 2003; cited in ilfoglio.it http://www.ilfoglio.it/zakor/82 Speeches Variant: The woman must be trained to fight inside the houses, to prepare an explosive belt and to blow herself up with the enemy soldiers. Anyone with a car has to prepare it and know how to fix the explosive and turn it into a car bomb. We have to train women to dispose of explosives in cars and make them explode in the midst of the enemy, to blow up the houses to make them collapse on enemy soldiers. You have to prepare traps. You have seen how the enemy controls the baggage: you have to manipulate these suitcases to make them explode when they open them. Women must be taught to undermine the cabinets, bags, shoes, children's toys, so that they burst on enemy soldiers.

Women, Children, Cars, Shoe

“The crowd of ragged Confederates on the White House lawn had doubled and more since he went in to confer with Lincoln. The trees were full of men who had climbed up so they could see over their comrades. Off in the distance, cannon occasionally still thundered; rifles popped like firecrackers. Lee quietly said to Lincoln, "Will you send out your sentries under flag of truce to bring word of the armistice to those Federal positions still firing upon my men?" "I'll see to it," Lincoln promised. He pointed to the soldiers in gray, who had quieted expectantly when Lee came out. "Looks like you've given me sentries enough, even if their coats are the wrong color." Few men could have joked so with their cause in ruins around them. Respecting the Federal President for his composure, Lee raised his voice: "Soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia, after three years of arduous service, we have achieved that for which we took up arms-" He got no further. With one voice, the men before him screamed out their joy and relief. The unending waves of noise beat at him like a surf from a stormy sea. Battered forage caps and slouch hats flew through the air. Soldiers jumped up and down, pounded on one another's shoulders, danced in clumsy rings, kissed each other's bearded, filthy faces. Lee felt his own eyes grow moist. At last the magnitude of what he had won began to sink in.”

Harry Turtledove book The Guns of the South

Source: The Guns of the South (1992), p. 180

Men, Color, Kiss, Tree

“My early work in newspaper comics and comic books allowed me to entertain millions of readers weekly, but I always felt there was more to say. I pioneered the use of comics for instructional manuals for American soldiers, covering three major wars, and later used comics to educate grade school children. Both were heady responsibilities that I took very seriously. But I yearned to do still more with the medium. At an age when I could have "retired," I chose instead to create literary comics, than a decidedly oxymoronic term. Acceptance has not always been easy, but I have seen it arrive in my lifetime. It has been most gratifying to see the graphic novel and many of its exceptional creators gradually become an accepted part of the book world. I couldn't find a major publisher to take A Contract With God only a quarter century ago, and now graphic novels represent the book industry's fastest growing genre.”

Will Eisner (1917–2005) American cartoonist

XIX-XX, December 2004
A Contract With God (2004)

God, War, Children, Books

“one of my soldiers can handle three Communist soldiers”

Ma Hongkui (1892–1970) Republic of China general

China on the eve of Communist takeover, A. Doak Barnett, 1968, Praeger, 194, 2010-06-28 http://books.google.com/books?id=kt0gAAAAIAAJ&q=ma+hung-k'uei&dq=ma+hung-k'uei&hl=en&ei=GqCqTJ3FD4GC8gb66-XXBw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CC8Q6AEwAA,

“With Christian faith I pray that those who are today our adversaries may understand their error in time and may deeply reflect before persisting in a stance which is rejected by all the free peoples in the world and by all those who had their territory mutiliated and endured colonialism and exploitation. With Christian faith I pray for our men deployed to the southern seas, for your children, husbands, fathers, soldiers, NCOs and officers, who make up the front lines of an Argentine effort that will not stop until final victory is achieved. Invoking the protection of God and His Holy Mother, let us all commit ourselves to complying with our duty, as did the generations of the past century, who did not mind harsh weather, long distances, disease or poverty when it came to defending freedom.”

Leopoldo Galtieri (1926–2003) Argentine military dictator

President Galtieri’s address to the nation https://teachwar.wordpress.com/resources/war-justifications-archive/falklandsmalvinas-war-1982/#arg1, 2 April 1982

Men, God, Children, People

“[R]adical Islam is heir, above all, to Nazism. The destruction of the World Trade Center was meant not only to wreak terror. Like the smashing of the Bamiyan Buddhas, it was meant to obliterate greatness and beauty, elegance and grace. These artifacts represented civilization embodied in stone or steel. They had to be destroyed. This worship of death and destruction is a nihilism of a ferocity unlike any since the Nazis burned books, then art, then whole peoples. Goebbels would have marvelled at the recruitment tape for al Qaeda, a two-hour orgy of blood and death: image after image of brutalized Muslims shown in various poses of victimization, followed by glorious images of desecration of the infidel-mutilated American soldiers in Somalia, the destruction of the USS Cole, mangled bodies at the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.”

Charles Krauthammer (1950–2018) American journalist

2000s, 2001, The Enemy is not Islam. It is Nihilism (2001)

Death, People, Books, World

“When you are a soldier, either you surrender or you are killed. But you don't flee.”

Mobutu Sésé Seko (1930–1997) President of Zaïre

Mobutu, vowing to resist the Kabila rebellion. Meredith, p. 535

“As an aside, my father commanded a battalion during the Vietnam war and I can happily report that whatever our fellow Australians think about any of the operations upon which we have deployed, they do not vent their objections against our soldiers as they did in my dad’s day. This is a welcome development. Indeed, at no time in my thirty four years of service have we been so highly regarded by our fellow citizens. But this is a call to live to our true ideals not to rest on our laurels.”

David Morrison (1956) Australian army general

Address at the International Women's Day Conference (2013)

War, Thinking, Time

“You see, I understand Mr. Khan, that your son and your family are Muslim and Muslims do indeed serve in our armed forces. But in the military I know, we do not celebrate that which divides, but rather that which unites. And what is it that unites us as Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, and Marines? It is service above self, commitment to something greater than the individual, and sacrifice for our country and comrades in arms.”

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

2010s, Open letter to Khizr M. Khan (31 July 2016)

Family, Understanding, Country

“In Somalia, we know exactly what they had to gain because they told us. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Colin Powell, described this as the best public relations operation of the Pentagon that he could imagine. His picture, which I think is plausible, is that there was a problem about raising the Pentagon budget, and they needed something that would be, look like a kind of a cakewalk, which would give a lot of prestige to the Pentagon. Somalia looked easy. Let's look back at the background. For years, the United States had supported a really brutal dictator, who had just devastated the country, and was finally kicked out. After he's kicked out, it was 1990, the country sank into total chaos and disaster, with starvation and warfare and all kind of horrible misery. The United States refused to, certainly to pay reparations, but even to look. By the middle of 1992, it was beginning to ease. The fighting was dying down, food supplies were beginning to get in, the Red Cross was getting in, roughly 80% of their supplies they said. There was a harvest on the way. It looked like it was finally sort of settling down. At that point, all of a sudden, George Bush announced that he had been watching these heartbreaking pictures on television, on Thanksgiving, and we had to do something, we had to send in humanitarian aid. The Marines landed, in a landing which was so comical, that even the media couldn't keep a straight face. Take a look at the reports of the landing of the Marines, it must've been the first week of December 1992. They had planned a night, there was nothing that was going on, but they planned a night landing, so you could show off all the fancy new night vision equipment and so on. Of course they had called the television stations, because what's the point of a PR operation for the Pentagon if there's no one to look for it. So the television stations were all there, with their bright lights and that sort of thing, and as the Marines were coming ashore they were blinded by the television light. So they had to send people out to get the cameramen to turn off the lights, so they could land with their fancy new equipment. As I say, even the media could not keep a straight face on this one, and they reported it pretty accurately. Also reported the PR aspect. Well the idea was, you could get some nice shots of Marine colonels handing out peanut butter sandwiches to starving refugees, and that'd all look great. And so it looked for a couple of weeks, until things started to get unpleasant. As things started to get unpleasant, the United States responded with what's called the Powell Doctrine. The United States has an unusual military doctrine, it's one of the reasons why the U. S. is generally disqualified from peace keeping operations that involve civilians, again, this has to do with sovereignty. U. S. military doctrine is that U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat. That's not true for other countries. So countries like, say, Canada, the Fiji Islands, Pakistan, Norway, their soldiers are coming under threat all the time. The peace keepers in southern Lebanon for example, are being attacked by Israeli soldiers all the time, and have suffered plenty of casualties, and they don't like it. But U. S. soldiers are not permitted to come under any threat, so when Somali teenagers started shaking fists at them, and more, they came back with massive fire power, and that led to a massacre. According to the U. S., I don't know the actual numbers, but according to U. S. government, about 7 to 10 thousand Somali civilians were killed before this was over. There's a close analysis of all of this by Alex de Waal, who's one of the world's leading specialists on African famine and relief, altogether academic specialist. His estimate is that the number of people saved by the intervention and the number killed by the intervention was approximately in the same ballpark. That's Somalia. That's what's given as a stellar example of the humanitarian intervention.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Responding to the question, "what did the United States have to gain by intervening in Somalia?", regarding Operation Provide Relief/Operation Restore Hope/Battle of Mogadishu.
Quotes 1990s, 1995-1999, Sovereignty and World Order, 1999

People, World, Peace, Food

“Now Stonewall Jackson is a man worth taking an interest in. Few people in history have achieved greater fame in a shorter period with less useful activity in the brainbox than Gen. Thomas J. Jackson. (long list of character deficiencies elided)…
His ineradicable fame rests almost entirely on the fact that he had a couple of small but inspiring victories when elsewhere Southern troops were being slaughtered and routed and by dint of having the best nickname any soldier has ever enjoyed.”

Bill Bryson A Walk in the Woods

Source: A Walk in the Woods (1997), Chapter 13 (p. 171)

People, History, Victory

“You whom the soldiers beat,
You who are all but dead,
How the gods love you
And I, alone in the dark,
I was promised the light.”

Archilochus (-680–-645 BC) Ancient Greek lyric poet

Be bold! That's one way

Love, God, Light, Dead

“The American soldier demonstrated that, properly equipped, trained and led, he has no superior among all the armies of the world.”

Lucian Truscott (1895–1965) Recipient of the Purple Heart medal

Quoted in Command Missions, A Personal Story, New York, 1954,
ISBN 0-89141-364-2

World, Training

“Don't you think the soldiers look like they came straight from high school yearbooks, too young to be over in Iraq, fighting for no reason?”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, WAR

School, Thinking, Fight

“And therefore a prince who does not understand the art of war, over and above the other misfortunes already mentioned, cannot be respected by his soldiers, nor can he rely on them. He ought never, therefore, to have out of his thoughts this subject of war, and in peace he should addict himself more to its exercise than in war; this he can do in two ways, the one by action, the other by study.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 14; translated by W. K. Marriot

War, Peace, Art, Way

“The agitation for the Universal Colour Bill continued for three years; and up to the last moment of that period it seemed as though Anarchy were destined to triumph.

A whole army of Polygons, who turned out to fight as private soldiers, was utterly annihilated by a superior force of Isosceles Triangles — the Squares and Pentagons meanwhile remaining neutral. Worse than all, some of the ablest Circles fell a prey to conjugal fury. Infuriated by political animosity, the wives in many a noble household wearied their lords with prayers to give up their opposition to the Colour Bill; and some, finding their entreaties fruitless, fell on and slaughtered their innocent children and husband, perishing themselves in the act of carnage. It is recorded that during that triennial agitation no less than twenty-three Circles perished in domestic discord.

Great indeed was the peril. It seemed as though the Priests had no choice between submission and extermination; when suddenly the course of events was completely changed by one of those picturesque incidents which Statesmen ought never to neglect, often to anticipate, and sometimes perhaps to originate, because of the absurdly disproportionate power with which they appeal to the sympathies of the populace.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott book Flatland

Source: Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (1884), PART I: THIS WORLD, Chapter 10. Of the Suppression of the Chromatic Sedition

Children, Universe, Change, Fight

“Peons or servants are exceedingly numerous in this country… for every one-be he mounted soldier, merchant or king’s official-keeps as many as his position and circumstances permit. Outside the house, they serve for display, running continually before their master’s horse; inside, they do the work of the house, each knowing his duty…”

Francisco Pelsaert (1591–1630) Dutch merchant, commander of the ship Batavia

Pelsaert, quoted from Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Jahangir’s India

Horse, Housing, Country

“"The Doctrine of Fascism", June 1932. Quoted in Paul O'Brien, Mussolini in the First World War: The Journalist, the Soldier, the Fascist. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2014. Also in Peter N. Stearns, World History in Documents: A Comparative Reader. NYU Press, 2008.”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

War, World, Quotes, History

“Defending slavery deprived the Confederate soldier to the same claim to nobility, but not to tragedy.”

Allen C. Guelzo (1953) American historian

Source: 2010s, Gettysburg: The Last Invasion (2013), p. 14

“I joined the Corps not because I couldn't make it elsewhere or because I needed money to go to school. No signing bonus was going to turn me into a soldier. I became a Marine because I wanted to be among the best, just as I applied to Columbia because I wanted to be among the brightest. I knew both required a high price.”

Matt Sanchez (1970) writer, journalist

[Patterson, Robert, War Crimes, Three Rivers Press, February 26, 2008, 39, 0307338274]

Money, School

“The little girl saw her first troop parade and asked,
"What are those?"
"Soldiers."
"What are soldiers?"
"They are for war. They fight and each tries to kill as many of the other side as he can."
The girl held still and studied.
"Do you know … I know something?"
"Yes, what is it you know?"”

Carl Sandburg (1878–1967) American writer and editor

"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."
"The People, Yes" (1936)

War, Girl, Study, Fight

“The Irishman, finding himself in another environment, outside Ireland, very often knows how to make his worth felt. The economic and intellectual conditions of his homeland do not permit the individual to develop. The spirit of the country has been weakened by centuries of useless struggle and broken treaties. Individual initiative has been paralyzed by the influence and admonitions of the church, while the body has been shackled by peelers, duty officers and soldiers. No self-respecting person wants to stay in Ireland. Instead he will run from it, as if from a country that has been subjected to a visitation by an angry Jove.”

James Joyce (1882–1941) Irish novelist and poet

"Ireland, Island of Saints and Sages," lecture, (27 April 1907), Università Popolare, Trieste, printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-192-83353-7], p. 123

Personality, Country

“In thinking about the costs of this war, and thinking about renewing it, we have to reconsider what it has done to America. It has turned the U. S. military into a force at ease with abuse of captives and civilians, occupying a Muslim nation. Some of this is surely due to the sheer hell of fighting an enemy you cannot see, surrounded by people you do not understand or trust, and being killed randomly in urban or desert insurgency conditions where friend and foe are close to indistinguishable, and where your buddies are killed on a regular basis by faceless cowards. You can certainly understand how soldiers grow completely numb in the face of abuse in those circumstances. Every "hajji" can seem like the enemy after a while. It requires men and women of almost saintly capabilities to keep their moral bearings among terrorists who massacre scores of innocents as a religious duty, among people whose differences are impossible for young troops to figure out in split-seconds. In such conditions, and as a consequences of grotesque under-manning, the breakdown in ethical discipline is no big surprise. But that doesn't make it any the less of a big deal.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Re-Thinking The War II" http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/05/rethinking_the__5.html, The Daily Dish (8 May 2007)

Women, Men, War, People

“I would never have surrendered, because of my pledge as a German officer. But when Hitler died, that pledge ended. By killing himself, Hitler saved thousands of lives. They relieved us of our oaths as soldiers.”

Otto Skorzeny (1908–1975) Austrian SS-Standartenführer (colonel) in the German Waffen-SS

To Jack Bell of the Chicago Daily News, as quoted in Scoop : An Historical Adventure (2006) by James H. Walters, p. 34.

“It is the general authority to undertake the establishment of religion through the revival of religious sciences, the establishment of the pillars of Islam, the organization of jihad and its related functions of maintenance of armies, financing the soldiers, and allocation of their rightful portions from the spoils of war, administration of justice, enforcement of [the limits ordained by Allah, including the punishment for crimes (hudud)], elimination of injustice, and enjoining good and forbidding evil, to be exercised on behalf of the Prophet… It is no mercy to them to stop at intellectually establishing the truth of Religion to them. Rather, true mercy towards them is to compel them so that Faith finds a way to their minds despite themselves. It is like a bitter medicine administered to a sick man. Moreover, there can be no compulsion without eliminating those who are a source of great harm or aggression, or liquidating their force, and capturing their riches, so as to render them incapable of posing any challenge to Religion. Thus their followers and progeny are able to enter the faith with free and conscious submission… Jihad made it possible for the early followers of Islam from the Muhajirun and the Ansar to be instrumental in the entry of the Quraysh and the people around them into the fold of Islam. Subsequently, God destined that Mesopotamia and Syria be conquered at their hands. Later on it was through the Muslims of these areas that God made the empires of the Persians and Romans to be subdued. And again, it was through the Muslims of these newly conquered realms that God actualized the conquests of India, Turkey and Sudan. In this way, the benefits of jihad multiply incessantly, and it becomes, in that respect, similar to creating an endowment, building inns and other kinds of recurring charities.… Jihad is an exercise replete with tremendous benefits for the Muslim community, and it is the instrument of jihad alone that can bring about their victory.… The supremacy of his Religion over all other religions cannot be realized without jihad and the necessary preparation for it, including the procurement of its instruments. Therefore, if the Prophet’s followers abandon jihad and pursue the tails of cows [that is, become farmers] they will soon be overcome by disgrace, and the people of other religions will overpower them.”

Shah Waliullah Dehlawi (1703–1762) Indian muslim scholar

Source: Quoted in Bonney, Jihad from Qur’an to bin Laden, 101-3 Quoted from Spencer, Robert (2018). The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS.
Source: Shah Waliullah Dehlawi: in: Muhammad Al-Ghazali, Socio-political Thought of Shah Wali Allah. (Also quoted in Jihād: From Qur’ān to bin Laden by Richard Bonney. Palgrave Macmillan, 2004. also in Spencer, Robert in The history of Jihad: From Muhammad to ISIS, 2018.)

God, War, People, Truth

“They [the true instructors of the people] will accustom children to the vegetable régime. The peoples living on vegetable foods, are, of all men, the handsomest, the most vigorous, the least exposed to diseases and to passions, and they whose lives last longest. Such, in Europe, are a large proportion of the Swiss. The greater part of the peasantry who, in every country, form the most vigorous portion of the people, eat very little flesh-meat. The Russians have multiplied periods of fasting and days of abstinence, from which even the soldiers are not exempt; and yet they resist all kinds of fatigues. The negroes, who undergo so many hard blows in our colonies, live upon manioc, potatoes, and maize alone. The Brahmins of India, who frequently reach the age of one hundred years, eat only vegetable foods. It was from the Pythagorean sect that issued Epaminondas, so celebrated by for his virtues, Archytas, by his genius for mathematics and mechanics; Milo of Crotona, by his strength of body. Pythagoras himself was the finest man of his time, and, without dispute, the most enlightened, since he was the father of philosophy amongst the Greeks. Inasmuch as the non-flesh diet introduces with many virtues and excludes none, it will be well to bring up the young upon it, since it has so happy an influence upon the beauty of the body and upon the tranquillity of the mind. This regimen prolongs childhood, and, by consequence, human life.”

Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre (1737–1814) writer and botanist from France

Vœux d'un solitaire, pour servir de suite aux "Études de la nature", as quoted in The Ethics of Diet by Howard Williams (University of Illinois Press, 2003, p. 175 https://books.google.it/books?id=o9ugCcZ13BMC&pg=PA175)

Life, Men, Happiness, Children

“I had to shake the spot cause the game got crowded
I'm devoted and quote it, I'm rowdy and bout it
A No Limit Soldier, and happy to shout it.”

Snoop Dogg (1971) American rapper, singer-songwriter, record producer, and actor

"Get Bout It & Rowdy", Da Game Is To Be Sold, Not To Be Told (1998).

Happiness, Quotes, Game

“We left our element, the sea, to make ourselves into a conscript nation fighting on the Continent with four million soldiers out of a population of forty millions.”

John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher (1841–1920) Royal Navy admiral of the fleet

p. 53. https://archive.org/stream/memoriesbyadmira00fishuoft#page/53/mode/1up Memories (1919) https://archive.org/stream/memoriesbyadmira00fishuoft#page/n0/mode/2up

Fight, Sea

“The soldier shook his head, waxing philosophical. “It’s a madness, sir. We’ve all got it. It could go on until the last human being crawls away from the body of the chap he’s just bashed to bits with a stone. That’s what war is, sir—madness. You don’t think about what you’re doing. You forget, don’t you—you just go on killing and killing.””

Michael Moorcock book The Land Leviathan

Book 1, Chapter 2 “The Dream—and the Nightmare—of the Chilean Wizard” (p. 187)
The Land Leviathan (1974)

War, Thinking, Madness, Forgetting

“You're the soldier girl who tells the other troops who haven't fought the battle what it's like so they can fight it better.”

Anastacia (1968) American singer-songwriter

Anastacia: Speaks frankly about her new body, finding love again and using her voice to inspire other http://www.anastacia.com/hello-magazine/, Hello Magazine, April 14, 2014. General Quotes

Girl, Fight

“[Engineering] is a great profession. There is the fascination of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings jobs and homes to men. Then it elevates the standards of living and adds to the comforts of life. That is the engineer’s high privilege.

The great liability of the engineer compared to men of other professions is that his works are out in the open where all can see them. His acts, step by step, are in hard substance. He cannot bury his mistakes in the grave like the doctors. He cannot argue them into thin air or blame the judge like the lawyers. He cannot, like the architects, cover his failures with trees and vines. He cannot, like the politicians, screen his shortcomings by blaming his opponents and hope that the people will forget. The engineer simply cannot deny that he did it. If his works do not work, he is damned. That is the phantasmagoria that haunts his nights and dogs his days. He comes from the job at the end of the day resolved to calculate it again. He wakes in the night in a cold sweat and puts something on paper that looks silly in the morning. All day he shivers at the thought of the bugs which will inevitably appear to jolt its smooth consummation.

On the other hand, unlike the doctor his is not a life among the weak. Unlike the soldier, destruction is not his purpose. Unlike the lawyer, quarrels are not his daily bread. To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope. No doubt as years go by people forget which engineer did it, even if they ever knew. Or some politician puts his name on it. Or they credit it to some promoter who used other people’s money with which to finance it. But the engineer himself looks back at the unending stream of goodness which flows from his successes with satisfactions that few professions may know. And the verdict of his fellow professionals is all the accolades he wants.”

Herbert Hoover (1874–1964) 31st President of the United States of America

Excerpted from Chapter 11 "The Profession of Engineering"
The Memoirs of Herbert Hoover: Years of Adventure, 1874-1929 (1951)

Life, Men, Money, People

“We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats our soldiers are fighting overseas.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

"Trump signs executive order to keep out 'radical Islamic terrorists'" http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/27/politics/trump-plans-to-sign-executive-action-on-refugees-extreme-vetting/, CNN (27 January 2017) 2010s, 2017, January

Fight, Country

“Ibn-ul-Asir says that Qutbuddin Aibak made “war against the provinces of Hind… He killed many, and returned home with prisoners and booty.” In Banaras, according to the same authority, Muhammad Ghauri’s slaughter of the Hindus was immense. “None was spared except women and children." No wonder that slaves began to fill the households of every Turk from the very beginning of Muslim rule in India. Fakhr-i-Mudabbir informs us that as a result of the Muslim achievements under Muhammad Ghauri and Qutbuddin Aibak, “even a poor householder (or soldier) who did not possess a single slave before became the owner of numerous slaves of all description (jauq jauq ghulam har jins)…””

Muhammad of Ghor (1160–1206) Ghurid Sultan

Lal, K. S. (1992). The legacy of Muslim rule in India. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan. Chapter 7 (quoting Kamil-ut-Tawarikh, E and D, II, p. 250-1; Tarikh-i-Fakhruddin Mubarak Shah, p. 20.)

Women, War, Children, Home

“I am a person always full of contradictions… It was hard to choose whether to devote myself to revolution as a soldier or as a writer.”

Ba Jin (1904–2005) Chinese novelist

As quoted in "Living legend : Ba Jin" in News Guangdong (26 November 2003) http://www.newsgd.com/culture/art/200311260025.htm

Personality

“All my work is informed by personal experience. It is the seed to which I apply a transcendent dialogue. The idea for my first bubble machine was rooted in a complex combination of many memories. During the Second World War I was in my sister’s arms when I saw a young Filipino guerrilla shot by a Japanese soldier. The young guerrilla ran into our garden. The sight of him lying there dying, red blood bubbles foaming from his mouth, made a strong impression on me. Flying over the Grand Canyon on my first trip to America, visiting a soap factory at the bottom of Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseilles, a visit to a brewery in Edinburgh in Scotland: these left deep impressions as well. My mother cooking “guinataan”, a Philippine dessert made of coconut milk and tropical fruit, and the movement of clouds over Manila Bay near where I was born, inspired me to create a work of art that would express and embody the motion of clouds.”

David Medalla (1942) Filipino artist

Source: Adam Nankervis, " A Stitch in time http://moussemagazine.it/articolo.mm?id=707," in: Mousse Magazine.it, Issue 29, 2015

War, World, Art, Lying

“We are Communist, you are Capitalist. You have your ideas, we have ours. But I tell you this much: many American generals are very often sorry that they have no ideal to plant in the heart of the American soldier, so he will be willing to die for that ideal. You are jealous of us for this. The Communist soldier, the Red Army soldier, has such an ideal in his heart. He has it because he considers the ideal of the commander his own ideal. Your generals in Korea were sorry that Americans were not fighting willingly. We couldn't tell them why this was so, but I will tell you why. There is a difference between us. We have an advantage over you. We have an ideal for which we are prepared to die. You have not.”

Rodion Malinovsky (1898–1967) Soviet military commander and politician

To William Randolph Hearst. Quoted in "Ask Me Anything: Our Adventures with Khrushchev" - Page 152 - by William Randolph Hearst - 1960

Idea, Heart, Fight

“My grandmother was ill in bed when the Nazis came to her home town of Staszów. A German soldier shot her dead in her bed. Madam Deputy Speaker, my grandmother did not die to provide cover for Israeli soldiers murdering Palestinian grandmothers in Gaza. The present Israeli government ruthlessly and cynically exploit the continuing guilt among Gentiles over the slaughter of Jews in the Holocaust as justification for their murder of Palestinians. The implication is that Jewish lives are precious, but the lives of Palestinians do not count. On Sky News a few days ago, the spokeswoman for the Israeli Army Major Livovich was asked about the Israeli killing of, at that time, eight hundred Palestinians. The total is now a thousand. She replied instantly, "Five hundred of them were militants."”

Gerald Kaufman (1930–2017) British politician

That was the reply of a Nazi. I suppose the Jews fighting for their lives in the Warsaw Ghetto could have been dismissed as militants.
Speech to the House of Commons, Jan 2009

Home, Time, Fight, Dead

“"Would you give my warmest regards to Sir Arthur Wellesley? Or Lord Wellington as we must now call him." "You know him, sir?" "Of course. We were at the Royal Academy of Equiation together, at Angers. It's strange, Major, how your greatest soldier was taught to fight in France."”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Colonel Michel Dubreton (French Army) and Major Richard Sharpe, p. 80
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Enemy (1984)

Fight, Anger

“People often become scholars for the same reason they become soldiers: simply because they are unfit for any other station. Their right hand has to earn them a livelihood; one might say they lie down like bears in winter and seek sustenance from their paws.”

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742–1799) German scientist, satirist

B 41
Aphorisms (1765-1799), Notebook B (1768-1771)

People, Lie, Winter

“The army in the Liberated Areas must support the government and cherish the people, while the democratic governments must lead the people in the work of supporting the army and giving preferential treatment to the families of soldiers fighting Japan. In this way relations between the army and the people will become still better.”

Mao Zedong (1893–1976) Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

On Coalition Government (1945)

People, Family, Way, Support

“One saw I was alive. Loosened
his belt. My bowels opened in a ragged gape of fear.
Between the gap of corpses I could see a child.
The soldiers laughed. Only a matter of days separate
this from acts of torture now. They shot her in the eye.”

Carol Ann Duffy (1955) British writer and professor of contemporary poetry

Shooting Stars.
Standing Female Nude (1985)

Fear

“Sleep, soldiers! still in honored rest
Your truth and valor wearing:
The bravest are the tenderest,—
The loving are the daring.”

Bayard Taylor (1825–1878) United States poet, novelist and travel writer

"The Song of the Camp" (1856), in The Poetical Works of Bayard Taylor (1907), p. 86.

Love, Truth, Sleep

“If the common soldiers of each army could just get together by a river bank and talk things over calmly, no war could possibly last as long as a week.”

William March book Company K

Company K (1933)

War

“The most peaceable tribes of today were often ravagers of yesteryear and will probably again produce soldiers and murderers in the future.”

Edward O. Wilson book On Human Nature

On Human Nature (1978), Ch.5 Aggression

Future

“Myself, I will paint the people in the street and in the houses, the streets and houses they have built, life in general. I will attempt to be 'le peintre du peuple' (the painter of the people), or rather I am that already, because I want to be. I want to paint history, and I will, but history in its' broadest sense. A market, a wharf, a river, a group of soldiers under a burning sun or in the snow..”

George Hendrik Breitner (1857–1923) Dutch painter and photographer

The Hague, 1882
version in original Dutch (citaat van Breitner's brief, in het Nederlands:) Ik zelf, ik zal de menschen schilderen op de straat en in de huizen, de straten en de huizen die ze gebouwd hebben, 't leven vooral. Le peintre du peuple zal ik trachten te worden, of liever ben ik al, omdat ik 't wil. Geschiedenis wil ik schilderen en zal ik ook, maar de geschiedenis in haren uitgebreidsten zin. Een markt, een kaai, een rivier, een bende soldaten onder een gloeiende zon of in de sneeuw.. (Den Haag, 1882)
Quote of Breitner, in his letter to A.P. van Stolk nr. 24, 28 March 1882, (location: The RKD in The Hague); as quoted by Helewise Berger in Van Gogh and Breitner in The Hague, her Master essay in Dutch - Modern Art Faculty of Philosophy University, Utrecht, Febr. 2008]], (translation from the original Dutch, Anne Porcelijn) p. 6.
this quote dates from Breitner's period in The Hague and suggests that Breitner based his ideas for subjects and methods on French Realism in literature, similar to Vincent van Gogh; they read the same novels; lending them to each other. Together they went also through the lower neighborhoods of The Hague, c 1882, sketching and drawing the people
before 1890

Life, People, History, Sense

“There have been periods when the country heard with dismay that "the soldier was abroad." That is not the case now. Let the soldier be abroad; in the present age he can do nothing. Let the soldier be abroad if he will, he can do nothing in this age. There is another personage,—a personage less imposing in the eyes of some, perhaps insignificant. The schoolmaster is abroad, and I trust to him, armed with his primer, against the soldier in full military array, for upholding and extending the liberties of his country.”

Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux (1778–1868) English barrister, politician, and Lord Chancellor of Great Britain

Speech, Opening of Parliament (January 29, 1828), reported in James William Norton-Kyshe, The Dictionary of Legal Quotations (1904), p. 221.

Age, Country

“The sacred obligation to the Union soldiers must not — will not be forgotten nor neglected…. But those who fought against the Nation cannot and do not look to it for relief…. Confederate soldiers and their descendants are to share with us and our descendants the destiny of America. Whatever, therefore, we their fellow citizens can do to remove burdens from their shoulders and to brighten their lives is surely in the pathway of humanity and patriotism.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Letter to Oliver Downing (15 March 1889)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

“You said the war would pay for itself in fruit baskets. You said that our soldiers would march in the streets of Havana and people would shower them with bananas and cigars. That didn’t happen. Would you like to look into the camera and apologize to the American people?”

Stephen Colbert (1964) American political satirist, writer, comedian, television host, and actor

One of his questions to President Theodore Roosevelt in his series Better Know A President on The Colbert Report http://www.nofactzone.net/?p=1788 (17 May 2006)

War, People

“Portugal converted a portion of India to the Catholic religion with the arms of her soldiers, with the blood of her martyrs, with the miracles of her saints, and with the fires of her Inquisition. Those who were vanquished in this struggle became Christians and Portuguese. England might imitate the example, except as regards force.”

Francisco Luís Gomes (1829–1869) Indo-Portuguese physician, writer, historian, economist, political scientist and MP in the Portuguese parli…

Quoted by Nishitha Desai in Lusotopie 2000, p. 474

Religion

“Good plain soldiering wins wars. Doing mundane things well is what counts.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Colonel Sir Barnaby Moon, p. 11
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Fury (2006)

War

“Comrades of the 'Boys in Blue' and fellow-citizens of New York. I cannot look upon this great assemblage and these old veterans that have marched past us, and listen to the words of welcome from our comrade who has just spoken, without remembering how great a thing it is to live in this Union and be a part of it. [Applause. ] This is New York; and yonder, toward the Battery, more than a hundred years ago, a young student of Columbia College was arguing the ideas of the American Revolution and American union against the un-American loyalty to monarchy, of his college president and professors. By and by, he went into the patriot army, was placed on the staff of Washington, [cheers] to fight the battles of his country, [cheers] and while in camp, before he was twenty-one years old, upon a drum-head he wrote a letter which contained every germ of the Constitution of the United States. [Applause. ] That student, soldier, statesman, and great leader of thought, Alexander Hamilton, of New York, made this Republic glorious by his thinking, and left his lasting impress upon this the foremost State of the Union. [Applause. ] And here on this island, the scene of his early triumphs, we gather tonight, soldiers of the new war, representing the same ideas of union, having added strength and glory to the monument reared by the heroes of the Revolution.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1880s, Speech to the 'Boys in Blue' (1880)

War, Boy, Idea, Thinking

“The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

As quoted in The Cynic's Lexicon : A Dictionary of Amoral Advice (1984) by Jonathon Green
Variant translation: The Wedding March always reminds me of the music played when soldiers go into battle.
As quoted in The Routledge Dictionary of Quotations (1987) by Robert Andrews, p. 281

Music, Wedding

“I'm always embarrassed when people say that I'm courageous. Soldiers are courageous. Policemen are courageous. Firemen are courageous. I just have a thick hide and disregard what silly people say.”

Thomas Sowell (1930) American economist, social theorist, political philosopher and author

"Live" with Thomas Sowell https://www.aei.org/publication/live-thomas-sowell/, The American Enterprise, September 2004. 2000s

People, Courage

“I know only that in my belief in Adolf Hitler I put all my strength at the disposal of my people. As a German soldier I could only put myself at the service of the defense against those destructive forces which had once brought Germany close to the abyss, and which today, after the collapse of the Reich, are still threatening the world. If I have made mistakes in my work through a false conception of obedience, if I carried out orders, all of which, insofar as they are alleged to be cardinal orders, were issued before my time of office, then they are part of a fate which is stronger than myself and which is carrying me along with it. I am accused here because substitutes are needed for the missing Himmler and other elements which were completely contrary to me. Whether my point of view and explanation are accepted or rejected, I ask you not to connect the fate and honor of hundreds of thousands of the living and dead of the General SS, of the Waffen-SS, and of the civil servants who, believing in their ideal, bravely defended, their Reich to the last, with your just curse against Himmler. Like myself, they believed that they were acting according to law.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

8/31/46. Quoted in "Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal" - Page 381 - Nuremberg, Germany - 1947

Fate, People, World, Law

Quotes about soldier page 3

Quotes about soldier
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