The-Army
Quotes on The Army
Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer.
Lord Burghleigh (1520-1598) English statesman
The professional military mind is by necessity an inferior and unimaginative mind; no man of high intellectual quality would willingly imprison his gifts in such a calling.
H. G. Wells (1866-1946) British author, social thinker
It has been calculated by the ablest politicians that no State, without being soon exhausted, can maintain above the hundredth part of its members in arms and idleness.
Edward Gibbon (1737-1794) English historian
The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) Russian novelist, philosopher
Now, you mummy’s darlings, get a rift on them boots. Definitely shine ’em, my little curly-headed lambs, for in our mob war or no war, you die with clean boots on.
Gerald Kersh (1911-1968) British author, journalist
National Service did the country a lot of good but it darned near killed the army.
General Sir Richard Hull (b. 1907) Chief of the Imperial
General Staff, 1962 He learned the arts of riding, fencing, gunnery, And how to scale a fortress — or a nunnery.
Lord Byron (1788-1824) English poet
The uncontrolled licentiousness of a brutal and insolent soldiery.
Baron Erskine (1750-1823) English
Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure.
John Dryden (1631-1700) English author
We aren’t no thin red ‘eroes, nor we aren’t no blackguards too. But single men in barracks, most remarkable like you. And if sometimes our conduck isn’t all your fancy paints’ Why, single men in barracks don’t grow into plaster saints’
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) British author
The mere scum of the earth.
Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) English soldier, statesman of his men
I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentleman and is nothing else.
Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) Lord Protector of England
I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.
Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) English soldier, statesman
Horribly stuffed with epithets of war.
Iago, Othello William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist, poet
Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die.
Lord Tennyson (1809-1892) English poet
Soldiers are citizens of death’s grey land.
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) British poet, author
The third part of an army must be destroyed, before a good one can be made out of it.
George Savile, Lord Halifax (1633-1695) English statesman author
Come on you sons of bitches! Do you want to live for ever?
Daniel Daly (1874-1937) Gunnery Sergeant, US Marine Corps
The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn’t really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: “he wasn’t going to compose Beethoven s Fifth.”
Kurt Vonnegut (b. 1922) American novelist
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains, An’ the women come out to cut up what remains, Jest roll to your rifle an’ blow out your brains An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier.
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) British author
