Army Quotes

Army and Navy
There is something about going to sea. A little bit of discipline, self-discipline and humility are required.
Army and Navy
Andrew, Prince
British Prince

We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.
Army and Navy
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
1769-1852 British Statesman Military Leader

I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.
Army and Navy
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington
1769-1852 British Statesman Military Leader

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.
Army and Navy
Bhagavad Gita
c BC 400 Sanskrit Poem Incorporated Into the Mahabharata

How happy is the sailor’s life, from coast to coast to roam; in every port he finds a wife, in every land a home.
Army and Navy
Bickerstaffe, Isaac

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
Army and Navy
Bierce, Ambrose
1842-1914 American Author Editor Journalist The Devil’s Dictionary

The Royal Navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island.
Army and Navy
Blackstone, Sir William
1723-1780 British Jurist

The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.
Army and Navy
Bonaparte, Napoleon
1769-1821 French General Emperor

If I should die, think only this of me: that there’s some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.
Army and Navy
Brooke, Rupert
1887-1915 British Poet

In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.
Army and Navy
Burke, Edmund
1729-1797 British Political Writer Statesman

What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements.
Army and Navy
Byron, Lord
1788-1824 British Poet

The General Order is always to maneuver in a body and on the attack; to maintain strict but not pettifogging discipline; to keep the troops constantly at the ready; to employ the utmost vigilance on sentry go; to use the bayonet on every possible occasion; and to follow up the enemy remorselessly until he is utterly destroyed.
Army and Navy
Carnot, Lazare

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.
Army and Navy
Chesterton, Gilbert K.
1874-1936 British Author

Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.
Army and Navy
Churchill, Winston
1874-1965 British Statesman Prime Minister

War is too important a matter to be left to the military.
Army and Navy
Clemenceau, Georges
1841-1929 French Statesman

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.
Army and Navy
Conrad, Joseph
1857-1924 Polish-born British Novelist

The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.
Army and Navy
Coolidge, Calvin
1872-1933 Thirtieth President of the USA

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 Gentle-man and is nothing else.
Army and Navy
Cromwell, Oliver
1599-1658 Parliamentarian General Lord Protector of England

Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?
Army and Navy
Daly, Daniel

I must have the gentleman to haul and draw with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentleman. I would know him, that would refuse to set his hand to a rope, but I know there is not any such here.
Army and Navy
Drake, Sir Francis
c1540-1596 Elizabethan Seaman Born in Crowndale Devon

Drinking is the soldier’s pleasure.
Army and Navy
Dryden, John
1631-1700 British Poet Dramatist Critic

The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.
Army and Navy
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist

The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
Army and Navy
Emerson, Ralph Waldo
1803-1882 American Poet Essayist

Rogues, would you live forever?
Army and Navy
Frederick The Great, (Frederick II)
1712-1786 Born in Berlin King of Prussia (1740-1786)

The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
Army and Navy
Gibbon, Edward
1737-1794 British Historian

We are as near to heaven by sea as by land.
Army and Navy
Gilbert, Sir Humphrey
1539-1583 British Navigator

Conscription may have been good for the country, but it damn near killed the army.
Army and Navy
Hull, Sir Richard

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
Army and Navy
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author

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.
Army and Navy
Johnson, Samuel
1709-1784 British Author

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.
Army and Navy
Kersh, Gerald

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.
Army and Navy
Kipling, Rudyard
1865-1936 British Author of Prose Verse

Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?
Army and Navy
Kraus, Karl
1874-1936 Austrian Satirist

There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.
Army and Navy
Macaulay, Thomas B.
1800-1859 American Essayist and Historian

Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He’s the chap who makes it possible for civilized folk to despise war.
Army and Navy
Massie, Allan

No profession or occupation is more pleasing than the military; a profession or exercise both noble in execution (for the strongest, most generous and proudest of all virtues is true valor) and noble in its cause. No utility either more just or universal than the protection of the repose or defense of the greatness of one’s country. The company and daily conversation of so many noble, young and active men cannot but be well-pleasing to you.
Army and Navy
Montaigne, Michel Eyquem De
1533-1592 French Philosopher Essayist

The army is the true nobility of our country.
Army and Navy
Napoleon III
1808-1873 Third son of Louis Bonaparte the President of the Second French Rep

The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.
Army and Navy
O’Casey, Sean
1884-1964 Irish Dramatist

‘Tis the soldier’s life to have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.
Army and Navy
Shakespeare, William
1564-1616 British Poet Playwright Actor

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be never so vile. This day shall gentle his condition. And gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin’s day.
Army and Navy
Shakespeare, William
1564-1616 British Poet Playwright Actor

History shows that there are no invincible armies.
Army and Navy
Stalin, Joseph
1879-1953 Georgian-born Soviet Leader

There are few men more superstitious than soldiers. They are, after all, the men who live closest to death.
Army and Navy
Stewart, Mary

If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined to longevity.
Army and Navy
Sun Tzu
c 400-430 bc Chinese Military Strategist Author of Art of War

Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts — a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.
Army and Navy
Thoreau, Henry David
1817-1862 American Essayist Poet Naturalist

That’s what an army is — a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.
Army and Navy
Twain, Mark
1835-1910 American Humorist Writer

In this country it’s a good thing to kill an admiral now and then to encourage the others.
Army and Navy
Voltaire
1694-1778 French Historian Writer

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.
Army and Navy
Vonnegut Jr., Kurt
1922 American Novelist

When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen.
Army and Navy
Washington, George
1732-1799 First President of the USA

O the joy of the strong-brawn’d fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.
Army and Navy
Whitman, Walt
1819-1892 American Poet

Making the world safe for hypocrisy.
Army and Navy
Wolfe, Thomas
1931 American Author Journalist

Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties.
Army and Navy
Wollstonecraft, Mary
1759-1797 British Feminist Writer

Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
Army and Navy
Yeats, William Butler
1865-1939 Irish Poet Playwright

An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.
Army and Navy
Zedong, Mao
1893-1976 Founder of Chinese Communist State