Military Quotes

The army is the true nobility of our country.

Napoleon

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.

Duke of Wellington Arthur Welles

We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.

Duke of Wellington Arthur Welles

Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilized folk to despise war.

Allan Massie

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.

Rudyard Kipling

Tell me what brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals.

Abraham Lincoln

No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. A man in a jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.

Samuel Johnson

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

Samuel Johnson

To a surprising extent the war-lords in shining armor, the apostles of the martial virtues, tend not to die fighting when the time comes. History is full of ignominious getaways by the great and famous.

George Orwell

A good soldier, like a good horse, cannot be of a bad color.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

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.

General Douglas MacArthur

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

General Douglas MacArthur

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.

General Douglas MacArthur

Another source of power in government is a military force. But this, to be efficient, must be superior to any force that exists among the people, or which they can command; for otherwise this force would be annihilated, on the first exercise of acts of oppression. Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that can be, on any pretense, raised in the United States. A military force, at the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power, and jealous will instantly inspire the inclination to resist the execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive...

Noah Webster

Military men are dumb, stupid animals to be used as pawns for foreign policy.

Henry Kissinger

It takes 15,000 casualties to train a major general.

Marshal Ferdinand Foch

Perfect soldier, perfect gentleman never gave offence to anyone not even the enemy.

A. J. P. Taylor

The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.

Virginia Woolf

Valor, glory, firmness, skill, generosity, steadiness in battle and ability to rule -- these constitute the duty of a soldier. They flow from his own nature.

Bhagavad Gita

I could have become a soldier if I had waited; I knew more about retreating than the man who invented retreating.

Mark Twain