Best 251 quotes in «soldiers quotes» category

A common and natural result of an undue respect of law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.

All bombing is terrorism.

All right, he thought, okay; if thats the way it is; a savagery of anger in him now at the picture. They call them "pin-up girls" and think its cute how "our boys," now that they're drafted, love to hang them in their wall lockers. And then close up all the whorehouses, every place they can, so our young men will not be contaminated.

And as he recalls the old soldier's wisdom regarding bullets and fate, how pointless evasion is when each shot has a man's name on it, he lurches upright, to the waist, a roaring sound in his ears.

And be very careful at the front, Paul.” Ah, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with you. What poor wretches we are!

And this I know: all these things that now, while we are still in the war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death.

Are you pair mad? You pitch up as if you own the place, and then you offer to relieve me of two centuries’ worth of equipment?’ He glared across the wooden expanse at Marcus and Qadir. ‘An officer fresh out of his napkin, and a chosen man in fancy dress with a bad suntan. Well, the pair of you can fuck right off.

A riverless silence made the air heavy.

… as General Berringer would readily admit, “If you’re in a fair fight, I’ve done something wrong.

As Lynn writes: "What angers me is the loss of control. At any moment someone could come to me, be dressed the right way and use the right code, and I no longer have free will. I will do anything that person requests. I hate them for that. Nothing else is as bad as known that I am always out of control; knowing that I am still a laboratory experiment, a puppet whose strings are hidden from ever but my handlers, and I don't yet know how to break free. p216

A soldier: "I know where heaven is and it's Lithuania ... The women are beautiful, pagan, with a practical view towards sex. Who says communism was bad? You're working three levels of advantages: you're a foreign male, you're a rich, exotic American, and their men are a bunch of drunken, criminal slobs.

A day came when I should have died, and after than nothing seemed very important, so I stayed as I am, without regret separated from the normal human condition.

All I can think is that it must be a kind of rebellion, To arm your fears like soldiers and slay them.

All through the crowd were men in uniform, sailors from the great fleet anchored in the Hudson, soldiers with divisional insignia from Massachusetts to California, wanting fearfully to be noticed, and finding the great city thoroughly fed up with soldiers unless they were nicely massed into pretty formations and uncomfortable under the weight of a pack and rifle. Through this medley Dean and Gordon wandered; the former interested, made alert by the display of humanity at its frothiest and gaudiest; the latter reminded of how often he had been one of the crown, tired, casually fed, overworked, and dissipated. To Dean the struggle was significant, young, cheerful; to Gordon it was dismal, meaningless, endless.

A man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.

Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, the processes of coordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the coordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved.

A quick check on the platoon showed everyone more or less enjoying the flight. "Whatever it is you're eating, Ressk, swallow it before we land," [said Staff Sergeant Kerr]. "No problem, Staff." "More like whoever he's eating," Binti muttered beside him. "You ought to count your fingers," he suggested. "You're too serley stupid to notice one missing." "Maybe you ought to gren sa talamec to." "That's enough, people." When the Confederation first started integrating the di'Taykan and the Krai into what was predominantly a human military system, xenopsychologists among the elder races expected a number of problems. For the most part, those expectations fell short. After having dealt with the Mictok and the H'san, none of the younger races - all bipedal mammals - had any difficulty with each other's appearance. Cultural differences were absorbed into the prevailing military culture and the remaining problems were dealt with in the age-old military tradition of learning to say "up yours" in the other races' languages. The "us against them" mentality of war made for strange bedfellows.

Are you okay, man?" "Yeah, I'm good." It's a lie. I wonder if I will ever be good again.

Being a soldier isn't easy, but being a soldier's wife is more difficult still. It's a team effort if you are to succeed; both must believe in the profession and believe that it will always take care of you. You overlook the bad--the loneliness, the cramped quarters, the mediocre hospitals, and the lousy pay--because you believe in the greater good of what you are doing.

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!

But I was still determined to protect her. It might be the one good thing I would ever do in my life. I wondered if God would even notice.

[…] Bravo can laugh and feel somewhat superior because they know they’re being used. Of course they do, manipulation is their air and element, for what is a soldier’s job but to be the pawn of higher?

Battles waged in daylight are fought by soldiers. Battles waged at night are fought by savages.

‘Can’t you see what they are?’ I said. ‘They’re all dead.’

But, new soldier that I was, I understood at last what Cadus had been trying to tell me all along: that life and love and rank were not enough. To be whole in myself, I needed honour, and I had lost it, and could see no way to get it back.

Centurion! Would you like to be a cavalryman one last time? There are Venicones who escaped when your line was broken to be hunted down, and Tribune Licinius has ordered me to take the best men available in their pursuit. Leave this hairy gentleman to watch the fun, and join us in the hunt!

Civilians enjoy their time because soldiers sacrifice their time.

By Warrior I do not mean one who loves war or draws sadistic pleasure from fighting or bloodshed. There is a difference between a warrior and a brute. A warrior is a protector... Men stand tallest when they are protecting and defending.

Children love to fight and rarely think about death. They are the perfect soldiers.

Corbulo: a name to conjure with, a name to follow into battle, wherever he led; a name to have a man marching to the gates of Rome, crying Imperator! until the crowds and the idiot senate and the corrupt wax-brains of the Praetorian Guard and every other man with voting powers in the city came to understand what we already knew: that this man should be our emperor, that Rome would thrive under his rule, in place of the fool who presently held the throne. Corbulo, who stood before us that bright, brisk spring afternoon and watched as our centurions bawled us through our paces, and then as Cadus took charge and marched us through the display that we had been practising, if we were honest, for the last four years, just for this moment.

Did you ever think it won’t be the undead who kill us, but ordinary people?

--Do you think he'll be careful, Michael? --Being that it's a war, ma'am, that would sort of defeat the purpose. --Yes. I suppose it would.

Drive. He’s already dead.

Dude, don’t die out here.

Dust. You forget about the dust. It hangs over the landscape like a ragged curtain. It scratches your throat. The air tastes of sulphur, saltpetre, cordite, burning rubber and burning oil from the pipelines and wells sabotaged by ISIS to disrupt aerial surveillance.

‘Eighth one this week,’ he said.

En 1915 je suis parti sans croire à la patrie. J'ai eu tort. Non pas de ne pas croire : de partir.

Do you have still the dye with which to turn your tunic red?’ ‘The madder? Yes, I do.’ ‘Enough of it for a century?’ ‘Enough for the entire cohort, if you want it.’ He twitched a smile then; I was coming to know it, and to revel in the sight of it. I was his then, part of the XIIth, and he knew it. ‘Not the entire cohort yet, Demalion. The century will do. Henceforth we are the Bloody First. And I fancy we might have a mule’s tail on our standard. See to it on our return.

Escapers were the cream of the crop.

Dear Beloved woman, Time… so much time has passed since my love wrote his last words for me. And yet I remember it as if it were yesterday. I remember writing back and for the first time since I had left home I told my love what kind of darkness surrounded me here. I forgot all the sweet things my father had said to my mother when he was away. I forgot how they got her through all those long and lonely nights.

Even now, I am anxious about the naked thoughts that I have shared. The observations are blisteringly honest and of course they have to be.

Evan no longer tells people I fight bad guys for a living. When asked, he tells his friends that his dad talks on the phone a lot and vacuums on occasion.

Even now I can’t describe the fear that contaminated my blood like black ink.

Evan stares at me. I try to hug him. He takes a step back. I pause, my heart in my throat. I’ve got to reach out to him, let myself be vulnerable. I find the courage, but he backs up again. “You can’t go to Iraq anymore.” “I know.” He looks up at Deanna, then back to me. “Did you fight bad guys? You told me you weren’t.” His voice is suspicious, full of accusation. He doesn’t trust me, and I don’t blame him for that. “No, Evan. I didn’t fight bad guys.” I can’t bring myself to tell him the complete truth. I want so desperately to go back into this fight. I miss it every day. I always felt I could change the world with a rifle in my hands and our flag on my shoulder. “Did you get shot?” he looks me over, apparently searching for bullet wounds. I grin a little. “No, Bud, I didn’t get shot.” “People get shot in Iraq.” “Yes, they do.” It strikes me then that Evan for the first time has a grasp on the dangers that are faced over there. He’s six now, and the world is coming into focus for him. “People get shot, Daddy. They die. Bad guys kill them.” I think of Edward Iwan and Sean Sims. “Yeah, I know they do, Evan.

Every war has its martyrs — the unsung heroes who sometimes don’t even know the rationale behind the war they are fighting. They fight because they are trained to, kill because they are told to and die because they are destined to.

Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome. The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you risk your life?

Fear the soldier who stammers, for he is very fast at pulling the triger.

Falaki maana yake ni kundi la nyota na sayari ikiwemo dunia. Falaki yetu inaitwa Njiamaziwa, ‘the Milky Way galaxy’, yenye mabilioni ya mifumo ya jua ukiwemo wa kwetu. Mungu alisimamisha jua katika falaki ya Njiamaziwa kwa ajili ya Yoshua, ili apate muda wa kutosha kuwashinda maadui zake – wanajeshi wa mataifa matano. Kila mtu alishangaa sana kipindi hicho. Kila mtu anashangaa sana kipindi hiki. Mungu akikubariki watu watasema wewe ni mchawi. Hawatajua nini kilitokea. Kwani kwa Mungu hakuna kinachoshindikana. Mungu aliweza kutenda miujiza kwa ajili ya Yoshua, na kwa ajili ya wana wa Israeli huko Gibeoni na huko Aiyaloni, anaweza kutenda miujiza kwa ajili yako popote pale ulipo. Mungu anachotaka kutoka kwako ni imani ya kweli juu yake, kwa mwili na kwa roho yako yote.

For an instant I saw before me the young girl this used to be.

Everyone acted like they knew so much about the war. But none of them really knew anything besides what they had learned through Internet searches or shady half-truths political pundits spouted from the comfort of their news desks. Nothing could ever be flushed out because nobody bothered to ask the troops or look at both sides of the story.