Army Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

The Sixth Army, true to their oath and conscious of the lofty importance of their mission, have held their position to the last man and the last round for Führer and Fatherland unto the end.

Friedrich Paulus

PLEONASM, n. An army of words escorting a corporal of thought.

Is it the realization that people recently psychoanalyzed tend to be dreadful bores which makes the U.S.A. army reject them for the draft?

Sylvia Townsend Warner

Unfortunately, my army consists of one unreliable criminal, one girl with a disability, and one incredibly foolish young vampire with a tanning issue. I am not confident.

There are no good wars or bad wars. The only thing bad about a war is
to lose it. All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both
sides. But only the victor's Cause becomes history's Noble Cause. It's not a
matter of who is right or who is wrong, it's a matter of who has the best
generals and the better army!

Charles Bukowski

The police function as neutral third parties for the purpose of restraining criminals and bringing them before a judicial body for trial and judgement. In war, force is used by the belligerents themselves, no effort being made to bring evildoers before a judicial body, each army acting as judge, jury and executioner.

Tis not seasonable to call a man traitor, that has an army at his heels.

Through all history, from the beginning, a noble army of martyrs have fought fiercely and fallen bravely for that unseen mistress, their country. So, through all history, to the end, as long as men believe in God that army must still march and fall, recruited only from the flower of mankind, cheered only by their own hope of humanity, strong only in the confidence of their cause.

George William Curtis

You give attention to army, police and things like that. Who pays attention to science? When I got the Dan David prize, which is similar to Nobel and given once in a few years by Israel, nobody talked about it. Nobody asked me anything about it. Nobody even knows and nobody understands it. It is so prestigious in the world of science but why didn't anyone write about it?

All power rests on hierarchy: An army is nothing but a well-organized lynch mob.

I deny any government, elected or not, the right to kidnap my children and ship them off to a battlefield to kill or be killed. I accept to pay taxes and that's the sum total of my debt to my government. In every other respect, my government owes me, not the other way around. Conscription is the most fundamental denial of liberty, on a par with slavery. I am not a pacifist and I support a professional army. But I oppose the draft even in times of war. If your country cannot find enough volunteers to defend itself when attacked, then it's not worth defending.

Bernard Chazelle

One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.... Our mission has failed because Iraqi animosities have proved uncontainable by an invading army of 130,000 Americans. The great human reserves that call for civil life haven't proved strong enough. No doubt they are latently there, but they have not been able to contend against the ice men who move about in the shadows with bombs and grenades and pistols.
The Iraqis we hear about are first indignant, and then infuriated, that Americans aren't on the scene to protect them and to punish the aggressors. And so they join the clothing merchant who says that everything is the fault of the Americans.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

The prosperity of a nation requires the protection of a senate. Hereafter a national senate may require the protection of a national army.

Thomas Francis Meagher

Sharpe had no thought of deserting now, for now he was about to fight. If there was any one good reason to join the army, it was to fight. Not to hurry up and do nothing, but to fight the King's enemies, and this enemy had been shocked by the awful violence of the close-range volley and now they stared in horror as the redcoats screamed and ran toward them.

Bernard Cornwell

Recently I was discharged from the German army while in this prison and was informed that I am on the so-called war criminal list number seven. I haven't the faintest idea of what war crime I could have committed. The main thing is that I have a clear conscience.

Paul Ludwig Ewald von Kleist

After this Alexander left Dareius's mother, his daughters, and his son in Susa, providing them with persons to teach them the Greek language, and marching on with his army on the fourth day reached the Tigris River.

Diodorus Siculus

"There was a pretty prince of Troy named Paris. He and a Greek queen ran off together. Her husband called the other kings of Greece together, and they went to Troy, a great army in a thousand beaked ships, to get the woman back. Helen was her name."
"What did they want her back for?"
"Her husband's honor demanded it."
"I should think his honor demanded that he divorce her and find himself a decent wife."
"Lavinia, these people were Greeks."

Ursula K. Le Guin

If, in the middle of World War II, a general could be writing a poem, then maybe I was not so irrelevant after all. Maybe the general was doing more for victory by writing a poem than he would be by commanding an army. At least, he might be doing less harm. By applying the same logic to my own condition, I decided that I might be relevant in what I called a negative way. I have clung to this concept ever since — negative relevance. In moments of vain-glory I even entertain the possibility that if my concept were more widely accepted, the world might be a better place to live in. There are a lot of people who would make better citizens if they were content to be just negatively relevant.

Robert Penn Warren

We have been constantly besought to engage in competitive armaments. Frequent reports will reach us of the magnitude of the military equipment of other, nations. We shall do well to be little impressed by such reports or such actions. Any nation undertaking to maintain a military establishment with aggressive and imperialistic designs will find itself severely handicapped in the economic development of the world. I believe thoroughly in the Army and Navy, in adequate defense and preparation. But I am opposed to any policy of competition in building and maintaining land or sea armaments.

Calvin Coolidge

I believe it has been a received opinion, that I was so very fond of the emoluments of the Quarter master's office, that nothing but absolute necessity would induce me to quit it, I will not deny but that the profits are flattering to my fortune, but not less humbling to my military pride; and he who has entertained such sentiments is a stranger to my feelings. While I had a prospect of pleasing your Excellency, the army, and the Congress, the service was agreeable; but if a combination of circumstances changes these prospects, nothing shall induce me to continue in the business, even if the profits were made five times as large as they are.

Nathanael Greene

Sectional football games have the glory and the despair of war, and when a Texas team takes the field against a foreign state, it is an army with banners.

A few days ago in a Berlin theatre the audience burst into spontaneous applause merely because the orchestra began to play an old military march—not a German march, either, but an Austrian one, the Radetzky march. Do not think that this meant a demonstration in favour of a war of revenge—not a bit of it. But the army and all that goes with it has been in the tradition of the German people for a hundred years and it would betray a very poor knowledge of men to believe that such a tradition could be uprooted when people is bidden by the terms of a treaty to give up compulsory military service.

Gustav Stresemann

It is an American tradition that a standing army is a standing menace to liberty; in Jefferson's presidency the army was reduced to 3,000 men. It is American tradition that we keep out of the affairs of other nations. It is American practice that we meddle with the affairs of everybody else from the West to the East Indies, from Russia to Japan; and to do it we have a standing army of 83,251 men.

Voltairine de Cleyre

Due to the efficient supervision of the Secretary of War the Army of the United States has been organized with a small body of Regulars and a moderate National Guard and Reserve. The defense test of September 12 demonstrated the efficiency of the operating plans. These methods and operations are well worthy of congressional support.

Calvin Coolidge

"They're not going, sir. Not going South."
"And who made that decision, Sergeant?"
"We all did, sir."
"Since when, Sergeant, has this army been a... a democracy?"
"A what, sir?"
"Since when did Sergeants outrank Lieutenants?"

Bernard Cornwell