Rick Atkinson Quotes

• There is something within our biological structure that screams out and says it is morally wrong for the old to outlive the young. This is one of the times when God doesn’t seem to make sense. This is the worst that life gets.

  Rick Atkinson

  Scream, Structure, Young

  Rick Atkinson (1993). “Crusade: The Untold Story of the Persian Gulf War”, p.214, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  44 Copy quote

• Hitler had a police state of the first order. And those who showed any sign of being weak-kneed faced prison or often summary execution. That prevented a lot of people who knew that the war was not going to turn out well for Germany from giving up.

  Rick Atkinson

  Giving Up, War, Order

  12 Copy quote

• There are a number of World War II historians I admire: Cornelius Ryan, Mark Stoler, Antony Beevor, to name a few. As for generals, there are those I admire as combat leaders and others I admire because they're great fun to write about.

  Rick Atkinson

  Fun, War, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• The U.S. Army records alone for World War II weigh 17,000 tons, and even the best historians have not done more than just scratch the surface. The story is such that 500 years from now people will be writing and reading about it.

  Rick Atkinson

  War, Reading, Writing

  6 Copy quote

• Almost everything about American society is affected by World War II: our feelings about race; our feelings about gender and the empowerment of women, moving women into the workplace; our feelings about our role in the world. All of that comes in a very direct way out of World War II.

  Rick Atkinson

  War, Moving, Race

  6 Copy quote

• Global war is a clash of systems, not just battalions biffing one another in some godforsaken forest.

  Rick Atkinson

  War, Forests, Clash

  6 Copy quote

• In battle, topography is fate.

  Rick Atkinson

  Fate, Battle, Topography

  Rick Atkinson (2007). “An Army at Dawn: The War in North Africa, 1942-1943, Volume One of the Liberation Trilogy”, p.2, Macmillan

  8 Copy quote

• The spring of 1942 was given over to a very impassioned, strategic debate about where we should first attack in counterpunching against the Germans and Italians. The British argued very persuasively on the part of Winston Churchill, prime minister, that this was a very green American Army, green soldiers, green commanders.

  Rick Atkinson

  Spring, Army, Soldier

  "Military Historian Writes Of Wars Past And Present". Interview with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. July 1, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• I'm going to leave WWII. I considered and rejected doing something on the Pacific. Fourteen years is enough. I'd like to take on a different challenge and probably a different era. But it will be another war. It's what I do.

  Rick Atkinson

  War, Years, Challenges

  "Rick Atkinson talks 'The Guns at Last Light'". Interview with John Barron, www.chicagotribune.com. May 10, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• If Ive vividly laid out the narrative, the reader will come to his own conclusions.

  Rick Atkinson

  Narrative, Conclusion, Reader

  4 Copy quote

• The people who write official histories for the Army believe that a generation needs to pass before you can tackle the official history. It's useful to have some distance. Sources become available. Passions cool. It allows an opportunity to make some real assessments and judgments about personalities and characters.

  Rick Atkinson

  Real, Distance, Believe

  "Rick Atkinson talks 'The Guns at Last Light'". Interview with John Barron, www.chicagotribune.com. May 10, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• There were almost 11,000 American soldiers killed in Germany in April of 1945, the last full month of the war. Thats almost as many as died in June, 1944. Right to the very end, it was absolutely brutal.

  Rick Atkinson

  War, June, Soldier

  "Rick Atkinson talks 'The Guns at Last Light'". Interview with John Barron, www.chicagotribune.com. May 10, 2013.

  4 Copy quote

• The American army between world wars after World War I had virtually disintegrated. It was a very small force, given largely to practicing cavalry charges on western outposts.

  Rick Atkinson

  War, Army, World

  5 Copy quote

• I was with the 101st Airborne Division in Iraq, really in the middle of nowhere, about 80 miles south of Baghdad. And it was almost midnight, and I got a computer message from the home office of the Washington Post asking me to call them. I did call them and was told that I'd won the Pulitzer Prize.

  Rick Atkinson

  Home, Iraq, Office

  8 Copy quote

• I was born in Munich, and my father was stationed in Salzburg. For the first three years of my life, I lived in Austria back when the American Army was still in Austria. I grew up subsequently in posts around the country around veterans.

  Rick Atkinson

  Thank You, Country, Memorial Day

  "Rick Atkinson talks "The Guns at Last Light"". Interview with John Barron, www.chicagotribune.com. May 10, 2013.

  8 Copy quote

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