“The Race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to ...
These are quotes I find either humorous or meaningful. Or just damn cool. They are not arranged by author or topic, or anything else for that matter.
More really cool quotes can be found on the demotivational posters at . No cynic should be without a half-dozen posters from these guys.
This page is inspired by and partially plagiarized from Brian Bell’s quote page. Or is plagiary the right term for swiping a load of quotes originally mostly said by dead people and otherwise collected from books and movies? Especially considering I kicked him over a copy of my list to pick and choose those that fitted in with his page. Anyway, if you’ve got something cool send it to me at johnmatkinson@. If I agree, it’ll get shoved onto my master quote list on my hard drive and will get posted someday when I have the time. Hopefully before the heat death of the universe, but I make no promises. In case you’re curious, this incarnation of the quote list is only 14 pages long when configured as a Microsoft Word file, minus all this introductory bullshit I’m adding. I had it up to 17 before I had a hard drive go tits-up, but I haven’t replaced the Kipling quotes or gone through David Drake’s General series, which also provides some really damn cool stuff. I also need to dig up my copy of Time Enough For Love, which has a bunch more Heinlein stuff conveniently packaged into aphorisms.
Note on attributions: Yes, I know half these are attributed to fictional characters. Yes, I am aware that they should be attributed to the actual authors of the text. Deal with it.
Note on highly offended whiney people: If you’re Arab, or French, or environmentalist, or pacifist, or Neo-Luddite, or anyone else these quotes offend, tough shit. You can of course send long whiney e-mails telling me I’m racist, or anti-whatever-your-pet-cause is. I probably am. Deal with it. If your response is sufficiently humorous or interesting I might respond. If it’s just calling down the wrath of your respective deities, you’re better off sending it to your trashcan. It’s just as cathartic to write hate mail and then delete it, as it is to hit the send button. And your trashcan will care more than I will.
I don’t know why I bothered with that last paragraph, since my page is sufficiently esoterical and topic-specific that only people who know me in the first place are likely to visit it. And if you know me you know I’m a little bit opinionated on a few topics.
“The Race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.”
--Damon Runyon
“All Ithklur—facilitators, guardians, explorers and seekers—are warriors. Life is a struggle against the dark, against meaninglessness, injustice, and deceit, and we are all involved in this struggle. We are all warriors, shooting at the walls of despair, disillusionment and nihilism. Bang, bang.”
--Ithklur footwear salesperson, Aliens of the Rim, Dave Nielsen
“Perfect valor consists of doing without witnesses what one would be capable of doing before the world at large.”
--Francois, duc de la Rochefoucauld
“Yes, I know, your highness. Err, right. I mean, your divineness. What? Your divine holiness? I… Right, I . . . Right, look . . . I . . . Look, Hoss, I don’t care who died and made you immortal, but I’m only going to explain this one more time.”
--Lt. Cdr Pat “Who, Me?” Ritter, DLN, Striker II, Frank Chadwick
“Please don’t ask stupid questions. Sunnis are fighting Shiites—Lebanon is devastated—the oil-rich states are hated by the oil-poor states—Syria and Iraq hate each other—Iraq and Egypt hate each other—we all hate the Iranians, except for the Shiites—and we all hate Israel of course, and the Palestinians too—and even though I am from Egypt I am actually Bedouin, and we despise the Nile Egyptians, and in fact we don’t get along well with the Bedouin from Jordan. And everyone hates the Saudis, who are corrupt as you can get. So when you ask me what is the Arab view, what can I say to you?”
--Zeyk, Blue Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
“You visit real Christians . . . and you don’t find them talking profits at breakfast, and lording it over you with that horrible unctuous righteousness they have. Righteousness, good Lord—it is a most unpleasant quality in a person. You know it has to be a house built on sand, eh?”
--Desmond, Green Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
“Beauty is power and elegance, right action, form fitting function, intelligence, and reasonability. And very often expressed in curves.”
--Arkady Bogdanovich, Red Mars, Kim Stanley Robinson
“The problem is not what makes a government legitimate. There have been many ways in history, royal or noble birth; priestliness, popular vote, a sociological theory, et cetera, et cetera. The problem is, how does a government keep legitimacy? How does it lose it? I say the breakdown comes when it begins doing more to people than for them.”
--Edmund Beynac, The Stars are Also Fire, Poul Anderson
“You refer to what came out of Europe, Western Christendom, don’t you? Well, at its worst it was never more evil than the rest, it simply had more power. And it got that power from the science it originated, which was also the power to end sickness and hunger, to understand the natural world, and learn how to save it. Everybody else had been destroying nature too, more gradually but without any way of ever reversing the harm. This was the civilization that abolished chattel slavery and made women the equals of men. It was the civilization—the spirit, you’d say—that gave birth to the inalienable rights of the individual, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It will give us the planets and can give us the stars.”
--Ian Kenmuir, The Stars are Also Fire, Poul Anderson
“Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches. Let’s go inland and be killed.”
--Brigadier General Norman Cota, USA, Omaha Beach, June 6 1944
“My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent, I am attacking.”
--Marshal Ferdinand Foch, September 1914, Battle of the Marne
“Soldiers generally win battles; generals generally get credit for them.”
--Napoleon Bonaparte
“For centuries there has been a running conflict between those who believe that ideas are inherently dangerous, or toxic, and those on the other hand who propose that we can raise bold children into mature adults, able to evaluate any notion skeptically, on its merits. Even today, there are those in all political wings who feel that some elite (of the left or the right) should protect the masses from dangerous images or impressions. The same people often preach that ‘to think a thing is the same as doing it.’”
--David Brin
“Everything isn’t subjective. Reality also matters. Truth matters. It is still a word with meaning.”
--David Brin
Both the hazy mists of dreaming,
And the stark-clear shine of daylight
Offer treasures to the seeker,
And a trove of valued insights.
One gives open, honest knowledge,
And the skill to achieve wonders.
But the other (just as needed!)
Fills the soul and sets hearts a ‘stir.
What need then for ersatz magic?
Or for contrived Disney marvels?
God and Ifni made a cosmos,
Filled with wonders . . . let’s go live it.
--Chissis, Temptation, David Brin
“Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms.”
--Lt Col Jean V. Dubois, MI, Ret, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war’s desolation. The words are not mine, of course, as you will recognize. Basic truths cannot change and once a man of insight expresses one of them it is never necessary, no matter how much the world changes, to reformulate them.”
--Lt Col Jean V. Dubois, MI, Ret, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“The best things in life are beyond money; their price is agony and sweat and devotion . . .and the price demanded for the most precious of all things in life is life itself—ultimate cost for perfect value.”
--Lt Col Jean V. Dubois, MI, Ret, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“A soldier accepts personal responsibility for the safety of the body politic of which he is a member, defending it, if need be, with his life. The civilian does not.”
--History and Moral Philosophy textbook, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“Most people think that all it takes is two hands and two feet and a stupid mind. Maybe so, for cannon fodder. Possibly that was all that Julius Caesar required. But a private soldier today is a specialist so highly skilled that he would rate ‘master’ in any other trade; we can’t afford stupid ones.”
--Fleet Sergeant Ho, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“Happiness consists in getting enough sleep. Just that, nothing more. All the wealthy, unhappy people you’ve ever met take sleeping pills; Mobile Infantrymen don’t need them. Give a cap trooper a bunk and time to sack out in it and he’s as happy as a worm in an apple—asleep.”
--Recruit Private Juan Rico, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“When the government sends me, I go. In between I catch a lot of sack time.”
--Recruit Private Juan Rico, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“If you load a mudfoot down with a lot of gadgets that he has to watch, somebody a lot more simply equipped—say with a stone ax—will sneak up and bash his head in while he is trying to read a vernier.”
--Recruit Private Juan Rico, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“Peace is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence—unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. But, if there ever was a time in history when “peace” meant that there was no fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it.”
--Trained Private Juan Rico, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“Recruits are like puppies; they stick their noses into things.”
--Third Lieutenant Juan Rico, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“Combat engineers are almost as good an outfit as the infantry; it’s a pleasure to work with them. In a pinch they fight, maybe not expertly but bravely. Or they go ahead with their work, not even lifting their heads while a battle rages around them. They have an unofficial, very cynical, and very ancient motto: ‘First we dig ‘em, then we die in ‘em,’ to supplement their official motto: ‘Can do!’ Both mottoes are literal truth.”
--Third Lieutenant Juan Rico, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“War is not violence and killing, pure and simple; war is controlled violence, for a purpose. The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force. The purpose is never to kill the enemy just to be killing him . . . but to make him do what you want him to do. Not killing . . . but controlled and purposeful violence. But it’s not your business or mine to decide the purpose of the control. It’s never a soldier’s business to decide when or where or how—or why—he fights; that belongs to the statesmen and the generals. The statesmen decide why and how much; the generals take it from there and tell us where and when and how. We supply the violence.”
--Ship’s Sergeant Zim, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“To vote is to wield authority; it is the supreme authority from which all other authority derives. Force, if you will! —The franchise is force, naked and raw, the Power of the Rods and the Ax. Whether it is exerted by ten men or by ten billion, political authority is force.”
--Major Reid, Starship Troopers, Robert A. Heinlein
“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly . . . It would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
--Thomas Paine
“Large armies are always disorderly.”
--Euripides, Hecuba, c425BC
“Whose game was empires and whose stakes were thrones. Whose table, earth – whose dice were human bones.”
--Byron, of Napoleon
“Man with a crossbow in the proper position at the proper time’s worth a corps of heavy artillery half an hour late and ten miles down the road from where it should be.”
--Colonel Eachen Khan, Tactics of Mistake, Gordon Dickson
“By and large, philosophers are ruthless people . . . The immediate teaching of philosophers may be gentle, but the theory behind their teaching is without compunction – and that’s why so much bloodshed and misery has always attended the paths of their followers, who claim to live by those teachings.”
--Lt. Col. Cletus Grahame, Tactics of Mistake, Gordon Dickson
“Empires build by force of arms are built on sand, Cletus.” – Mondar
“In that case, the sand under the Roman Empire must have been most solidly packed.”
--Cletus Grahame, Tactics of Mistake, Gordon Dickson
“Tell your master that this is the only territory that I will give him. There lies the land which he may have for his own—provided only that he fills it with the bodies of his Janissaries.”
--Jean Parisot de la Valette, Grand Master of the Sovereign and Military Order of the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta, referring to the ditch in front of the fortifications of Birgu. 30 June 1565
“There is the enemy! And there in the distance are the smoking ruins where our brethren died!”
--Knights of St. John, before an unauthorized charge, which scattered the Turkish forces around Mdina, 1565
“Nearly thirty years ago, Oscar Levy . . . pointed out that in spite of its atheism, Bolshevism is a Christian heresy. It is an international and a cosmopolitan faith; it looks back upon a Garden of Eden in which strife was non-existent, because property was shared in common and therefore there was nothing to fight about, and it looks forward to a heaven in which, once the devil of capitalism has been exorcised, man will return to his pristine state of innocence.”
--Major-General J. F. C. Fuller
”Concerning the ‘splinter conflict’ battlefields of the post-Cold War world, we may expect two factors to inevitably be present: speed and chaos. Enough to challenge even the enhanced C3I of the digital military. Junior line officers will find themselves mandated to confront problems once reserved for statesmen and heads of state. Per force, ensigns and lieutenants will chart the course of history.”
--Lt. Commander Amanda Lee Garrett
“They don’t have t’ like us, snake. They just have t’ make the payment schedule.”
--Lt. Cooter, Rolling Hot, David Drake
“Maybe in some universe there’s got to be a difference before people kill each other. That’s never been a requirement in the universe humans live in.”
--Panchin, Night March, David Drake
“A soldier in a combat unit may see the world, but he or she isn’t likely to ‘meet exotic people’ in the sense implied by the recruiting posters. (Mind you, one’s fellow soldiers may turn out to be exotic people, and one may turn into a regrettably exotic person oneself.)”
--David Drake
“Sensible civilians need strong economic motives to get close to groups of heavily-armed foreigners, and the needs of troops in a war zone tend to be more basic than a desire to imbibe foreign culture.”
--David Drake
“So far as I could tell, nobody in the group would have described himself as happy, but we were certainly a few. Personally, I felt like a chunk of raw meat in shark waters.”
--David Drake
“In every battle there comes a time when both sides consider themselves beaten; then he who continues the attack wins.”
--LTG Ulysses S. Grant, USA
“I was too weak to defend, so I attacked.”
--General Robert E. Lee, CSA
“The Red Army could not have conceived and certainly could not have executed the advance made by the Third Army across France.”
--Josef Stalin, General Secretary, CPSU
“In forty hours I shall be in battle, with little information, and on the spur of the moment will have to make most momentous decisions, but I believe that one’s spirit enlarges with responsibility and that, with God’s help, I shall make them and make them right.”
--LTG George S. Patton, USA, Nov 6 1942
“It took me a long time to realize how much a student of medieval history can gain from observing the Arabs.”
--LTG George S. Patton, USA, 9 June 1943
“Another similarity between the Arab and the Mexican is the utter callousness with which both treat animals . . . Because a horse is dead lame is no reason for not working him. All the animals are head-shy and many are blind as a result of the cheerful custom of beating them on the head with a stick.”
--LTG George S. Patton USA, 9 June 1943
“To me it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Mohammed and the utter degradation of women are the outstanding causes for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have kept on developing.”
--LTG George S. Patton USA, 9 June 1943
“The enemy has been booby-trapping his dead, firing on us from the rear after we have passed through him, and using dum-dum bullets. This has caused us some casualties, but has caused him a great deal more.”
--LTG George S. Patton USA
“If ‘The greatest study of mankind is war,’ surely the greatest study of war is the road net.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“I repeated the Japanese proverb: ‘One look is worth one hundred reports,’ and asked them why in hell they had not gone down to the river personally.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“We never had to regroup, which seemed to be the chief form of amusement in the British armies.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“I asked him why the French Army had done so badly in 1940. He replied at once that for ten years prior to that time the French Army had thought, taught, and practiced defense—never attack.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“There was a rumor, which, officially, I hoped was not true, that some of our Ordnance people passed themselves off as members of the First Army and secured quite a bit of gasoline from one of the dumps of that unit. To reverse the statement made about the Light Brigade, this is not war but is magnificent.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“Actually, a general should command one echelon down, and know the location of units two echelons down.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“I believe in fighting until lack of supplies forces you to stop—then digging in.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“Pacifists would do well to study the Siegfried and Maginot Lines, remembering that these defenses were forced; that Troy fell; that the walls of Hadrian succumbed; that the Great Wall of China was futile; and that, by the same token, the mighty seas which are alleged to defend us can also be circumvented by a resolute and ingenious opponent. In war, the only sure defense is offense, and the efficiency of offense depends on the warlike souls of those conducting it.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“[Colonel Frank] Hulen, it seemed, was much depressed because he had built the bridge in nine days, twenty hours, and fifteen minutes, which, according to him, was some twelve hours longer than Caesar had taken to build a similar bridge. We pointed out to him that Caesar did not build a railway bridge.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“There can never be too many projectiles in a battle. Whether they are thrown by cannon, rockets, or recoilless devices is immaterial.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“In planning any operation, it is vital to remember, and constantly repeat to oneself, two things: “In war nothing is impossible, provided you use audacity,” and “Do not take counsel of your fears.” If these two principles are adhered to, with American troops victory is certain.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“The Americans, as a race, are the foremost mechanics in the world. America, as a nation, has the greatest ability for mass production of machines. It therefore behooves us to devise methods of war which exploit our inherent superiority. We must fight the war by machines on the ground, and in the air, to the maximum of our ability, particularly in view of the fact that the two races left which we may have to fight are both poor mechanics but have ample manpower. While we have ample manpower, it is too valuable to be thrown away.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“There is a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and much less prevalent.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is: “To so use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum time.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“Few man are killed by the bayonet; many are scared by it.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“I’ll put our goddamn, bitching, belching, bellyaching G.I.s up against any troops in the world. The Americans are sons of bitches of soldiers—thanks to their grandmothers! All you’ve got to do is to show them the value of discipline . . . give them the habit of obeying in a tight place. Yes, the American is a hell of a fine soldier.”
--General George S. Patton, USA
“Only the dead have seen the end of War.”
--Plato
“To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving the peace.”
--General George Washington, 1790
“The real object of having an Army is to provide for war.”
--Elihu Root, 1899
“War, like most other things is a science to be acquired and perfected by diligence, by perseverance, by time, and by practice.”
--Alexander Hamilton, Federalist #25
“As long as I hold a commission in the Army I have no views of my own to carry out. Whatever may be the orders of my superiors and the law, I will execute. No man can be efficient as a commander who sets his own notions above the law.”
--General Ulysses S. Grant, 1862
“That government is a murderer of its citizens which sends them to the field uninformed and untaught.”
--Colonel “Light Horse” Harry Lee, 1814
“The object of war is a better state of peace . . . hence it is essential to conduct war with constant regard to the peace you desire.”
--Captain Basil H. Liddell Hart, 1954
“The political object, as the original motive of the war, should be the standard for determining both the aim of the military force and also the amount of effort to be made.”
--Generalmajor Freiherr Carl von Clausewitz, On War
“I have sworn eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.”
--Thomas Jefferson
“Peacekeeping is not a soldier’s job, but only a soldier can do it.”
--Anonymous UN Peacekeeper
“Men are not ciphers, and human hearts are not potatoes, and if a nation is going to send men out to die in limited wars it had better condition them for it.”
--T. R. Fehrenbach
Major General S. G. French, Confederate States etc.
Your Communication demanding surrender of my command I acknowledge receipt of, and respectfully reply that we are prepared for the ‘needless effusion of blood’ whenever it is agreeable to you.
I am, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
John M. Corse,
Brigadier General
Commanding
United States
“So much the better, we shall fight in the shade.”
--Dienekes, Spartan Hoplite, upon being told the Persian army would blot out the sun with its arrows.
“A fig for their saints – the English have two saints, St. Powder and St. Ball, and when they want to enter a place they use very little ceremony.”
--Irish monk living in Corunna upon being told that the Spanish attributed the defeat of the French at Saragossa to the intervention of saints.
“The Bulgars bow down and sit, and look hither and thither, like men possessed; and there is no joy among them, but only sorrow and a dreadful stench. Their religion is not good.”
--Russian Primary Chronicle, 986
"Nous sommes dans un pot de chambre, et nous y serons emmerdes."
--French staff officer’s comment prior to the Battle of Sedan, 1870
“If you do, I will shoot them open with my cannon.”
--General Bazaine, to Monsignor Labastide, who threatened to have the doors of the Cathedral shut in his face
“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities . . . because it is the quality which guarantees all others.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“There is only one answer to defeat and that is victory.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“Democracy is the worst form of government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“Of course I am an egoist. Where do you get if you aren’t?”
--Winston S. Churchill
“France though armed to the teeth is pacifist to the core.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“In harsh and melancholy epochs free men may always take comfort from the ground lesson of history that tyrannies cannot last except among servile races.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“The soul of freedom is deathless; it cannot, and will not, perish.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“Study history, study history—in history lie all the secrets of statecraft.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity; in peace, good will.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“Do not disband your army until you have got your terms.”
--Winston S. Churchill
“Peace will not be preserved by pious sentiments. It will not be preserved by casting aside in dangerous times the panoply of warlike strength.”
--Winston S. Churchill
The Lord is a man of War.
--Exodus 15:3
"This will remain the land of the free only so long as it is the home of the brave."
--Elmer Davis
Que desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum.
--Vegetius
"If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity-seeking. If they want peace, they and their relatives must stop the war."
--General William Tecumseh Sherman, USA
“Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.”
--General William Tecumseh Sherman, USA
"It is enough for the world to know that I am a soldier."
--General William Tecumseh Sherman, USA
“The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace.”
--General William Tecumseh Sherman, USA
“The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility.”
--Sea Lord John Arbuthnot Fisher
Happy is that city which in time of peace thinks of war.
--Inscription in the armory of Venice
If man is not ready to risk his life, where is his dignity?
--Andre Malraux
An important difference between the military operation and a surgical operation is that patient is not tied down. But it is a common fault of generalship to assume that he is.
--B. H. Liddell Hart
"Stand your ground. Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here!"
--John Parker, commander, Lexington Militia
"Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes."
--Colonel William Prescott, Continental Army
"Putting aside all the fancy words and academic doubletalk, the basic reason for having a military is to do two jobs--to kill people and to destroy the works of man."
--General Thomas S. Power
“We didn’t build those bombers to carry crushed rose petals.”
--General Thomas S. Power
They wish to hell they were someplace else, and they wish to hell they would get relief. They wish to hell the mud was dry and they wish to hell their coffee was hot. They want to go home. But they stay in their wet holes and fight, and then they climb out and crawl through minefields and fight some more.
--Bill Mauldin
"To choose one's victim, to prepare one's plan minutely, to slake an implacable vengeance, and then go to bed . . . There is nothing sweeter in the world."
--Iosef Stalin, GSCPSU
"The greatest pleasure is to vanquish your enemies and chase them before you, to rob them of their wealth and see those dear to them bathed in tears, to ride their horses and clasp to your bosom their wives and daughters."
--Temujin Genghis Khan
“My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.”
--Inigo Montoya, Princess Bride
Though life is lost, one thing will outlive us:
Memory sinks not beneath the mould.
Till the Weird of the World stands unforgotten,
High under heaven, the hero’s name.
--Bjarkamaal
Who Dares, Wins
--SAS Motto
There is no fortress so strong it cannot be taken by money.
--Marcus Tulius Cicero
“Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory, even more are false, and most are uncertain.”
--Generalmajor Freiherr Carl von Clausewitz, On War
“A small, bitched up army talking Navy lingo.”
--BG Frank Armstrong, USA, on the USMC
“Untrained and undisciplined troops take heavy casualties; trained and disciplined troops inflict them.”
--BG Jack Rogers, USA
“They have yet to make a jet fighter with a bayonet stud.”
--COL Walter B. Clark, USA
“The humans I think knew they were doomed. But where another race would surrender to despair, the humans fought back with even greater strength. They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life I have never seen anything like it. They would weep, they would pray, they would say goodbye to their loved ones. And then throw themselves, without fear or hesitation, at the very face of death itself. Never surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help but be moved to tears by their courage. Their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships they used guns, when they ran out of guns they used knives, and sticks, and bare hands. They were magnificent. I only hope that when it is my time, I may die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes at the end. They did this, for two years. They never ran out of courage. But in the end, they ran out of time.”
--Londo Moulari, Emperor of the Centauri Republic
“I say we nuke the side from orbit. It’s the only way to be sure.”
--Ripley, Aliens
“Alright, gear up. Two minutes people. Get hot! Somebody wake up Hicks.”
--Apone, Aliens
"Is this to be a stand up fight sir, or another bug hunt?" - Hudson
"All we know is that a Xenomorph may be involved." - Gorman
"Excuse me sir, a what?" - Frost
"It's a bug hunt." - Hicks, Aliens
“Ultimately most problems can be solved by applying a large brick to the correct skull. Difficulties arise when you don’t have a brick or can’t find the right skull.”
--Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"I've always found that you can get more with a kind word and a two by four than with just a kind word alone." Marcus Cole, Babylon 5
"We've got the best mechanics in the sector... no cost.... And, if you have an accident, we'll repair your ships. And, sooner or later, your ships *will* have accidents."
"My pilots don't have accidents."
"They will. I'll see to it."
"You wouldn't."
"I've got a 200 megawatt pulse cannon in the forward cargo bay that says otherwise."
--Commander Susan Ivanova, to a smuggler
"Who am I? I am Susan Ivanova. Commander. Daughter of Andre and Sophie Ivanov. I am the Right Hand of Vengeance...and the boot that is going to kick your sorry ass all the way back to Earth, sweetheart. I am Death incarnate. And the last living thing you are ever...going to see. God sent me."
-- Commander Susan Ivanova, "Between the Darkness and the Light", Babylon 5
“You don’t hit a man with your hand unless you’re naked and they’ve nailed your feet to the ground.”
--David Drake, Cross the Stars
“They set a slamhound on Turner’s trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on the street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogen and flaked TNT.”
--William Gibson, Count Zero
“The Deliverator’s car has enough potential energy packed into its batteries to fire a pound of bacon into the Asteroid Belt.”
--Neal Stephenson, Snow Crash
“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched c-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser Gate. All those . . . moments will be lost . . . in time. Like . . . tears . . . in rain. Time. . to die.”
--Roy Batty, Blade Runner
“Once again, the half time score. Alien Overlords: 142,000. Scotland: zip.”
--This Hour Has 22 Minutes
“Good, Bad, I’m the one with the gun.”
--Ash, Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness
“Listen up, you primitive screwheads! This is my boom-stick!”
--Ash, Evil Dead III: Army of Darkness
“The choice is yours, soldier,
When the grey day draws nigh:
Bright day to live,
Grey day to die.”
--Alien Legion
“To delight in war is a merit in a soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in a statesman.”
--George Santayanna, The Life of Reason
“Only the incompetent wait until the last extremity to use force, and by then it is usually too late to use anything, even prayer.”
--H. Beam Piper, The Fuzzy Papers
“In war one sees his own troubles and not those of the enemy.”
--Napoleon
“No nation should put the burden of war on its military forces alone.”
--General William Westmoreland
“How do you tell the VC?”
“The ones that run are VC. The ones that stand still are well-disciplined VC.”
“How can you shoot innocent women and children?”
“Easy. You just don’t lead ‘em as much.”
--Full Metal Jacket
“The essence of war is destruction. Moderation in war is imbecility.”
--Lord Fisher
“For the law is the bond which secures our privileges in the commonwealth, the foundation of our liberty, the fountainhead of justice. Within the law are reposed the mind and heart, the judgment and the conviction of the state. The state without law would be like the human body without mind – unable to employ the parts that are to it as sinews, blood, and limbs. The magistrates who administer the law, the judges who interpret it – all of us in short – obey the law to the end that we may be free.”
--Marcus Tulius Cicero
“With us there is great justice, because that war is just which is necessary, and arms are hallowed when there is no other hope but in them. Here there is greatest willingness, and where the willingness is great the difficulties cannot be great.”
--Niccolo Machiavelli
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
--George Orwell
“Out of commission, become a pill box. Out of ammo, become a bunker. Out of time, become heroes.”
--Daskal, The Beast
“Beyond this line we face the alien stars. They may not lay their laws or dominions on what is ours. For none but man stands here.”
--Gordon Dickson, None But Man
“O God, assist out side. Or at least avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me.”
--Prince Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau
“His ego nec metas rerum nec tempora pono: imperium sine fine dedi.”
--Virgil, Aeneid, Book I lines 278-279
“Others will hammer out bronzes so gracefully that you would think that their statues breathed, and bring out the living features of a face from stone. They will plead cases better, better trace out the wanderings of the heavens with a compass, and name the rising stars. But you, Roman, remember, these are your skills: to govern the peoples with power and to establish the habit of peace; to be sparing of the vanquished and to crush the arrogant in war.”
--Virgil, Aeneid, Book VI lines 847-853
“It is a convention of antiquity to make the founding of cities seem more important by adding divine intervention. Besides, if any people deserve to claim gods in their beginnings, the Roman people have won that right by conquest. So when Rome claims that Mars is its patron and father, everyone accepts this claim without question like they accept Rome’s rule.”
--Livy, History of Rome from the Founding of the City.
“Cartago delenda est.”
--Cato the Elder
“An army of sheep led by a lion is more to be feared than an army of lions led by a sheep.”
--Chabrias
“The best welfare for the troops is good training.”
--Feldmarshall Erwin Rommel
“Put your trust in God – but keep your powder dry.”
--Oliver Cromwell
“Discipline is the soul of the army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak and esteem to all.”
--General George Washington
“To be a soldier is the noblest act of mankind.”
--Mike Malone
“Duty then is the sublimest word in our language. Do your duty in all things. You cannot do more. You should never wish to do less.”
--General Robert E. Lee
“A good plan violently executed right now is better than 100 perfect plans put off until next week.”
--General Douglas MacArthur
“The God of War hates those who hesitate.”
--Euripides
“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
--Thomas Jefferson
“My religious convictions teach me to feel as safe in battle as if I were safe asleep in bed. The time of my death is fixed.”
--General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson
So David prevailed over the Philistine with a sling and stone, and slew him.
--1 Samuel 17
“Death is more abject, more lingering and distressing in bed than in battle.”
--Michel de Montaigne
For me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain.
--Philippians 1:21
“These are the times that try men’s souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot shall shrink from the service of their country.”
--Thomas Paine
“One man with courage makes a majority.”
--Andrew Jackson
“Courage is not the absence, but rather the conquest of fear.”
--Francois, duc de le Rochefoucald
“The Lacademonians ask now ‘How many are the enemy?’ but rather ‘Where are the enemy?’”
--Athenian saying
“I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”
--Patrick Henry
“I will not disgrace the soldier’s arms, nor abandon the comrade who stands at my side; but whether alone or with many, I will fight to defend things sacred and profane. I will hand down my country not lessened, but larger and better than I have received it.”
--Athenian soldier’s oath
“God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it.”
--Senator Daniel Webster
“A man who will not protect his freedom does not deserve to be free.”
--General Douglas MacArthur
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.”
--John Stuart Mill
“We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
--Declaration of Independence of the United States of America
“Praise the Lord, and pass the ammunition.”
--Chaplain Howell M. Forgy, aboard the USS New Orleans during the attack on Pearl Harbor
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