Soldier Quotes

The General hopes and trusts that every officer and man will endeavor to live and act as becomes a Christian soldier defending the dearest rights and liberties of his country.

Should any American soldier be so base and infamous as to injure any [prisoner] ... I do most earnestly enjoin you to bring him to such severe and exemplary punishment as the enormity of the crime may require. Should it extend to death itself, it will not be disproportional to its guilt at such a time and in such a cause... for by such conduct they bring shame, disgrace and ruin to themselves and their country.

I am become a private citizen on the banks of the Potomac, and under the shadow of my own Vine and my own Fig-tree, free from the bustle of a camp and the busy scenes of public life, I am solacing myself with those tranquil enjoyments, of which the Soldier who is ever in pursuit of fame, the Statesman whose watchful days and sleepless nights are spent in devising schemes to promote the welfare of his own, perhaps the ruin of other countries, as if this globe was insufficient for us all, and the Courtier who is always watching the countenance of his Prince, in hopes of catching a gracious smile, can have very little conception.

When we assumed the soldier, we did not lay aside the citizen.

Forces of good and evil are massed and armed and opposed as rarely before in history. Freedom is pitted against slavery; lightness against the dark... In the final choice, a soldier's pack is not so heavy a burden as a prisoner's chains.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon.

In time of revolution, with perseverance and courage, a soldier should think nothing impossible.

The most desirable quality in a soldier is constancy in the support of fatigue; valor is only secondary.

Mahomet was a great man, an intrepid soldier; with a handful of men he triumphed at the battle of Bender [sic]; a great captain, eloquent, a great man of state, he revived his fatherland and created a new people and a new power in the middle of Arabia.

The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only the second; hardship, poverty, and want are the best school of the soldier.

A general's principal talent consists in knowing the mentality of the soldier and in gaining his confidence.

You must be a soldier, and then a soldier, and again a soldier; bivouac with your advance guard, be in the saddle night and day, march with your advance guard to have the latest information, or else stay in your harem. You make war like a satrap. Good God, is it from me that you have learned that? From me who, with an army of 200,000 men, am at the head of my skirmishers?

If courage is the first characteristic of the soldier, perseverance is the second.

This soldier, I realized, must have had friends at home and in his regiment; yet he lay there deserted by all except his dog. I looked on, unmoved, at battles which decided the future of nations. Tearless, I had given orders which brought death to thousands. Yet here I was stirred, profoundly stirred, stirred to tears. And by what? By the grief of one dog.

And you may not know it, my friends, but it is estimated that we spend $500,000 to kill each enemy soldier, while we spend only fifty-three dollars for each person classified as poor, and much of that fifty-three dollars goes for salaries to people that are not poor. So I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor, and attack it as such.

Put together a seaman, soldier and airman and what do you get? The sum of all fears.

You may take the most gallant sailor, the most intrepid airman, or the most audacious soldier, put them at a table together- what do you get? The sum of their fears.

As wars come and go, my soldier stays eternal.

I am the first soldier of the German Reich... I will not take it off again until victory is secured or I will not survive the outcome.