Military Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Siegfried Sassoon

Mary McCarthy

Herman Kahn

Kamisese Mara

Walter Bagehot

Mercy Otis Warren

Curtis LeMay

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war.

Barbara W. Tuchman

Here was an action that touched on raw and sensitive nerves in a community that had already undergone the trauma of two military takeovers. There was an undoubted threat to public order, welfare and freedom. I suspect the psychological pressure associated with that crisis caused the first mental blackout I had ever suffered. It contributed to a deterioration in my health that later required the insertion of a heart pacemaker.

Only those who are ideologically opposed to military programs think of the defense budget as the first and best place to get resources for social welfare needs.

Like all the members of the military profession, I never had a thought of my own until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.

The proportion between the velocity with which men or animals move, and the weights they carry, is a matter of considerable importance, particularly in military affairs.

Charles Babbage

I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day, which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away. I now close my military career and just fade away.

Douglas MacArthur

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.
I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.

Siegfried Sassoon

My faith is the grand drama of my life. I'm a believer, so I sing words of God to those who have no faith. I give bird songs to those who dwell in cities and have never heard them, make rhythms for those who know only military marches or jazz, and paint colours for those who see none.

Olivier Messiaen

A military man can scarcely pride himself on having "smitten a sleeping enemy"; it is more a matter of shame, simply, for the one smitten. I would rather you made your appraisal after seeing what the enemy does, since it is certain that, angered and outraged, he will soon launch a determined counterattack.

Isoroku Yamamoto

For when we talk about the spreading power and influence of globalization, arent we really referring to the spreading economic and military might of the US?

Fredric Jameson

Conquest is the missionary of valor, and the hard impact of military virtues beats meanness out of the world.

Money is my military, each dollar a soldier. I never send my money into battle unprepared and undefended. I send it to conquer and take currency prisoner and bring it back to me.

Statistics have shown that mortality increases perceptibly in the military during wartime.

Alphonse Allais

I found it peculiar that those who wanted to take military action could — with 100 per cent certainty — know that the weapons existed and turn out to have zero knowledge of where they were.

The British were indeed very far superior to the Americans in every respect necessary to military operations, except the revivified courage and resolution, the result of sudden success after despair.

Mercy Otis Warren

The military is a very cool world to write about. I went down to Fort Benning, Georgia, for military training, and I learned a lot about soldiers and officers and why they joined up and what their life has been like. I also got my butt kicked.

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.

The world has nothing to fear from military ambition in our Government.

I am closing my 52 years of military service. When I joined the Army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all of my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that "old soldiers never die; they just fade away."
And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty.

Douglas MacArthur

Sometimes people mistake the way I talk for what I am thinking. I never had any formal education—not even a nursery school certificate. But sometimes I know more than Ph. D. s because as a military man I know how to act. I am a man of action.

China has The Bomb. [...] Sometime in the future—25, 50, 75 years hence—what will the situation be like then? By that time the Chinese will have the capability of delivery too. That's the reason some schools of thinking don't rule out a destruction of the Chinese military potential before the situation grows worse than it is today. It's bad enough now.

In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons.

There are many examples of women that have excelled in learning, and even in war, but this is no reason we should bring em all up to Latin and Greek or else military discipline, instead of needle-work and housewifery.

Bernard Mandeville

Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.

Douglas MacArthur

Man is a military animal,
Glories in gunpowder, and loves parade;
Prefers them to all things.

Philip James Bailey