Army Quotes - Page 29

• As you know, you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time. Since the Iraq conflict began, the Army has been pressing ahead to produce the armor necessary at a rate that they believe - it's a greatly expanded rate from what existed previously, but a rate that they believe is the rate that is all that can be accomplished at this moment.

  Donald Rumsfeld

  War, Believe, Iraq

  "Troops put Rumsfeld in the hot seat". Donald Rumsfeld's speech at the town hall meeting with U.S. troops at Camp Buehring in Kuwait, edition.cnn.com. December 8, 2004.

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• The wisdom of God exceeds that of the wisest man, more than his wisdom exceeds that of a child. If a child were to conjecture how an army is to be formed in the day of battle--how a city is to be fortified, or a state governed--what chance has he to guess right? As little chance has the wisest man when he pretends to conjecture how the planets move in their courses, how the sea ebbs and flows, and how our minds act upon our bodies.

  Thomas Reid

  Children, Moving, Men

  Thomas Reid, William Hamilton, Harry M. Bracken, Thomas Reid, Sir William Hamilton (1967). “Philosophical Works”, p.235, Georg Olms Verlag

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• If this is the degree of inflation planned for in advance, the real outcome is indeed likely to be such that most of those who will retire at the end of the century will be dependent on the charity of the younger generation. And ultimately not morals but the fact that the young supply the police and the army will decide the issue: concentration camps for the aged unable to maintain themselves are likely to be the fate of an old generation whose income is entirely dependent on coercing the young.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  Real, Fate, Issues

  "The Constitution of Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek, Part III. Freedom in the Welfare State, Chap. 19 : Social Security, 1960.

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• The worst aspect of dating from the perspective of many men is how dating can feel to a man like robbery by social custom - the social custom of him taking money out of his pocket, giving it to her, and calling it a date. To a young man, the worst dates feel like being robbed and rejected. Boys risk death to avoid rejection (e.g., by joining the Army

  Warren Farrell

  Men, Boys, Perspective

  Warren Farrell (1993). “The Myth of Male Power: Why Men Are the Disposable Sex”

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• There is an utter ignorance of, and indifference to, our sufferings and privations....What care they for us, provided we be submissive, pay the taxes, furnish recruits for the Army and Navy and bless the masters who either despise or oppress or combine both? The apathy that exists respecting Ireland is worse than the national antipathy they bear us.

  Daniel O'Connell

  Ignorance, Suffering, Navy

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• I have grown up with guns all my life, but people who like assault weapons they should join the United States Army, we have them.

  Wesley Clark

  Gun, Assault Weapons, People

  "CNN Crossfire", transcripts.cnn.com. June 25, 2003.

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• Just in time for the renewal of the war debate in Congress, the University of Chicago Press has released The U.S. Army / Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Field Manual. . . . It's a nifty volume, not only because it gives you a sense of what our most highly regarded military theorists are thinking but because sometimes what they're thinking is the last thing you'd expect. Especially interesting is a section called 'Paradoxes of Counterinsurgency Operations,' which tells us: 'Sometimes doing nothing is the best reaction' and 'Sometimes, the more force is used, the less effective it is.'

  David L. Ulin

  Military, War, Marine

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• Adolf Hitler may have been wrong all down the line, but one thing is beyond dispute: the man was able to work his way up from lance corporal in the German Army to Führer of a people of almost 80 million. His success alone proved that I should subordinate myself to this man.

  Adolf Eichmann

  Men, People, Lines

  "The Eichmann Memoir" by James Noxon, The Personalist, Cover image Volume 42, Issue 3, onlinelibrary.wiley.com. July 1961.

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• I do have things I would like to see adopted on behalf of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender people: they include the right to marry the individual of our choice; the right to serve in the military to defend our country; and the right to a job based solely on our own qualifications. I acknowledge that this is an agenda, but I do not think that any self-respecting radical in history would have considered advocating people's rights to get married, join the army, and earn a living as a terribly inspiring revolutionary platform.

  Barney Frank

  Country, Jobs, Military

  Barney Frank's Statement on the Inclusion of people who are Transgender in Antidiscrimination Protection Legislation, March 2008.

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• So here's a question from one who believed, only a week ago, that Baghdad might just collapse and that we might wake up one morning to find the Baathist militia and the Iraqi army gone and the Americans walking down Saadun Street with their rifles over their shoulders. If the Iraqis can still hold out against such overwhelming force in Umm Qasr for four days, if they can keep fighting in Basra and Nasiriyah – the latter a city that briefly rose in revolt against Saddam's regime in 1991 – why should Saddam's forces not keep fighting in Baghdad?

  Robert Fisk

  Morning, Successful, Fighting

  "Robert Fisk: The shocking truth about 'shock and awe'" by Robert Fisk, www.independent.co.uk. March 25, 2003.

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• I was a Teletype operator in the army, so that's where I learned to type. One day, I went downstairs to see if I could still type - I hadn't done it for four or five years after the war. So I typed out a page and I showed it to my wife and she said, "Where did you get this?" I said I wrote it. "You wrote this?" It was something very funny. I went and wrote another page, another couple of pages, and by the time I was finished I had 13 little short stories, humorous short stories.

  Carl Reiner

  Couple, War, Humorous

  "Carl Reiner on writing a children's book, tweeting, and joking around with Mel Brooks". Interview with Katherine Brodsky, tv.avclub.com. June 23, 2015.

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• Our military is overextended. Nine out of 10 active-duty Army divisions are either in Iraq, going to Iraq or have come back from Iraq. One way or the other, they're wrapped up in it.

  John F. Kerry

  Military, Iraq, Nine

  "Text Of Bush-Kerry Debate III (3)". www.cbsnews.com. October 13, 2004.

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• The right response when, in the army, you are given an unlawful order, is to refuse that order. The right response of a chief executive in this state and in this nation, when faced with an order by a court that he conscientiously believes violates the constitution he is sworn to respect, is to refuse their order!

  Alan Keyes

  Believe, Order, Constitution

  Alan Keyes's Speech at Rally in Defense of Marriage in Boston, Massachusetts, www.keyesarchives.com. May 14, 2004.

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• The army influences everything I do. Certainly it teaches you discipline, which is a necessary element of development. I think there's more of a collaborative understanding in the band because of that.

  Maynard James Keenan

  Thinking, Discipline, Understanding

  "Tool a Bigger `Threat' Than Any Rapper". The Australian, July 20, 2001.

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• This time we'll hate, alright - but we'll hate the enemy - the vicious gang of colored scum attackers and Jewish-Communist traitors - rather than one part of our own people hating another part for the benefit of the Jews and their army of scum!

  George Lincoln Rockwell

  Hate, People, Enemy

  "White Self-Hate: Master-Stroke Of The Enemy". Book by George Lincoln Rockwell, archive.org. 1967.

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• In Tunisia the Americans had to pay a stiff price for their experience, but it brought rich dividends. Even at that time, the American generals showed themselves to be very advanced in the tactical handling of their forces, although we had to wait until the Patton Army in France to see the most astonishing achievements in mobile warfare.

  Erwin Rommel

  Achievement, Waiting, Warfare

  "The Rommel Papers". Book edited by Basil Henry Liddell Hart. Chapter 23: "The Sky Has Grown Dark," p. 523, 1953.

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• In 302, the Roman emperor Diocletian commanded "there should be cheapness," declaring, "Unprincipled greed appears wherever our armies ... march. ... Our law shall fix a measure and a limit to this greed." The predictable result of Diocletian's food price controls were black markets, hunger and food confiscation by his soldiers. Despite the disastrous history of price controls, politicians never manage to resist tampering with prices -- that's not a flattering observation of their learning abilities.

  Walter E. Williams

  Law, Greed, Soldier

  "Economics for the Citizen (Part 9)". capitalismmagazine.com. January 20, 2005.

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• A people who mean to be free must be prepared to meet danger in person, and not rely upon the fallacious protection of armies

  Edmund Randolph

  Freedom, Military, Responsibility

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• The days are over when technology can be advanced in laboratories by individual scientists alone. Now you need an army of lawyers to negotiate the hazardous terrain of interlocking patents. Unless we find a solution to the problem of interlocking patents, the patent system may actually impede the very innovation it was designed to encourage.

  Ha-Joon Chang

  Technology, Innovation, Patents

  Ha-Joon Chang (2007). “Bad Samaritans: rich nations, poor policies, and the threat to the developing world”, Century

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• Incorporating in their colorful, slashing, superbly readable pages, the major themes of the "left" opposition under Walpole, these libertarian tracts, emerging first in the form of denunciations of standing armies in the reign of William III, left an indelible imprint on the "country" mind everywhere in the English-speaking world.

  Bernard Bailyn

  Country, Mind, Libertarian

  Bernard Bailyn (2017). “The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution: Fiftieth Anniversary Edition”, p.36, Harvard University Press

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• The most dangerous states in the international system are continental powers with large armies.

  John Mearsheimer

  States, Dangerous, Continental

  John J. Mearsheimer (2002). “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”, p.172, W. W. Norton & Company

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• Offensive realism predicts that the United States will send its army across the Atlantic when there is a potential hegemon in Europe that the local great powers cannot contain by themselves.

  John Mearsheimer

  Europe, United States, Offensive

  "The Tragedy of Great Power Politics". Book by John Mearsheimer, 2001.

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• When World War II started on September 1, 1939, the German army contained 3.74 million soldiers and 103 divisions.

  John Mearsheimer

  War, Soldier, Division

  John J. Mearsheimer (2002). “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics”, p.371, W. W. Norton & Company

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• We need to encourage an attitude of constant questioning, which is a genuine part of our potential as students. If students were required to drop their questions, that would create armies of zombies- rows of jellyfish...The questioning mind is absolutely necessary.

  Chogyam Trungpa

  Attitude, Knowledge, Mind

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• It seemed to me singularly ill-contrived for the British government to be going to war with Hitler when Hitler might have been about to attack the Russians, and even more ill-contrived that, when Hitler did attack the Russians, he had already defeated the French army. What I'm saying is that the war shouldn't have been started in September 1939...from the point of view of Britain, the war was really not a good thing and I would regard it as, in effect, a defeat.

  Maurice Cowling

  War, Government, Views

  "Singular Encounters" by Naim Attallah, Quartet Books, (p. 144), 1990.

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