Colonels Quotes - Page 3

• At 2:26 AM on 3 June 1980, Colonel William Odom of the Strategic Air Command alerted National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski that the US nuclear warning system had detected an imminent 220-missile nuclear attack on the US. Shortly thereafter, the automated system revised its projection from 220 missiles to an all-out attack of 2200 missiles. Just before Brzezinski was about to wake up President Carter to authorize a counterattack, he was told that the 'attack' was an illusion caused by 'a computer error in the system'.

  Stansfield Turner

  Air, Errors, June

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• You folks been following the big British Petroleum oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico? I'm telling you, British Petroleum has put more birds in oil than Colonel Sanders.

  David Letterman

  Oil, Bird, Mexico

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• BP has put more birds in oil than Colonel Sanders.

  David Letterman

  Oil, Bird, Oil Spill

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• I have a great-great-great-grandfather who was a Confederate cavalry colonel, and I still have his military composite photo on my wall. The chemicals in the photo tint have changed over the years to the point that he looks green. One of my family members apparently still has the piece of paper that listed every thing in his pocket when he got shot.

  Anson Mount

  Wall, Military, Years

  "Q&A – Anson Mount (Cullen Bohannon)". AMCtv.com Interview, www.amc.com. November 2011.

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• We lived, until I was 12 or so, in communal apartment with five different families and the same kitchen, in two little - my brother and me and my parents. It was hell, but it was a common thing. My father was not general or admiral, but he was colonel. He was teaching in military academy military topography.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Brother, Father, Military

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• Hillary Clinton really transformed herself into a national security expert. She decided to join the Senate Armed Services Committee, and she became a real military wonk. She was famous for going to every subcommittee hearing and methodically questioning every lieutenant colonel from the Pentagon about defense procurement or selective service benefits. So that's where she really began to carve out and hone this reputation as a hawk that I think has followed her through the secretary of state years and then into the presidential campaign.

  Michael Tomasky

  Real, Military, Thinking

  Source: www.pbs.org

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• My father was a Party member and he was a pretty high rank military officer under the colonel, junior colonel, I don't know the term. He was a total Stalinist. A bit with a streak of anti-Semitism and very shrewd man, a very kind of nervous man.

  Mikhail Baryshnikov

  Father, Military, Party

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• Hey, is that you Elvis? I wanna speak to the Colonel. Jump to it, you mother.

  Ray Davies

  Mother, Hey, Speak

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• As a 29 year veteran of the US Army/Army Reserves, retiring as a Colonel and having served as a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and resigning in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war, I firmly believe war does not resolve political issues.  We must work diligently to force the governments of our nations to use diplomacy, not weapons.

  Ann Wright

  War, Believe, Army

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• As the colonel and I sat swapping stories in the plane, a jet aircraft buzzed past our window. I asked the colonel what type of aircraft it was, and he said, "Don't worry about it, Bob. . . if you can see it, it's obsolete."

  Bob Hope

  Funny, Humorous, Food

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• Admittedly, I do have several bones... whole war fields full of bones, in fact... to pick with organised religion of whatever stripe. This should be seen as a critique of purely temporal agencies who have, to my mind, erected more obstacles between whatever notion of spirituality and Godhead one subscribes to than they have opened doors. To me, the difference between Godhead and the Church is the difference between Elvis and Colonel Parker... although that conjures images of God dying on the toilet, which is not what I meant at all.

  Alan Moore

  War, Doors, Differences

  "Correspondence: From Hell". Alan Moore and Dave Sim, "Cerebus" #220 (comic book series by Dave Sim), July 1, 1997.

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• I went to graduate school as a lieutenant colonel after I had been in the army for 12 or 13 years. I learned so much from all the great management theorists. It gave me a greater understanding of my army experience and showed me the gaps in my knowledge.

  Colin Powell

  School, Army, Years

  Source: www.egonzehnder.com

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• It has cost me years of thought to arrive at certain results, by many believed to be unattainable, for which there are now numerous claimants, and the number of these is rapidly increasing, like that of the colonels in the South after the war.

  Nikola Tesla

  War, Numbers, Years

  Nikola Tesla (2013). “A New System of Alternating Current Motors and Transformers and Other Essays”, p.20, Simon and Schuster

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• Many organizations are now trying to walk under the banner of The Learning Organization, realizing that knowledge is our most important product ... But the only place that I've seen it is in the Army. As one colonel said, "We realized a while ago that it's better to learn than be dead."

  Walter Wriston

  Army, Organization, Important

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• A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers, colonel, captain, corporal, privates, powder-monkeys, and all, marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.

  Henry David Thoreau

  War, Heart, Order

  Henry David Thoreau (2002). “The Essays of Henry D. Thoreau: Selected and Edited by Lewis Hyde”, p.202, North Point Press

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• When [Vladimir] Putin, a former lieutenant-colonel in the KGB, became Russia's president on December 31, 1999 - eight years after the failed coup attempt against (then Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev, and eight years after the people had torn down the statue of Felix Dzerzhinsky, the hated founder of the KGB, in Moscow - it was admittedly a shock. Nevertheless, I decided to give Putin a chance. He seemed dynamic and capable of learning. But I had to bury my hopes after just a few months. He proved to be an autocrat - and, because the West let him do as he pleased, he became a dictator.

  Garry Kasparov

  Kgb, Russia, Eight

  "Putin Needs Wars To Legitimize His Position". Interview with Erich Follath, www.spiegel.de. November 10, 2015.

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• Call yourself "Colonel" and declare that your fortune was left to you by Dutch burghers from the seventeenth century. Now you're a solid citizen, the embodiment of hard work and rugged individualism. You're no criminal. The criminal is the guy who comes up short, who gets caught, who fails to adopt a respectable cover.

  Luc Sante

  Hard Work, Guy, Criminals

  Source: www.believermag.com

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• The US Army has announced that although it is true they performed mind-destroying drug tests on hundreds of soldiers in the 1960s, none of the victims have been promoted beyond the rank of lieutenant colonel.

  George Carlin

  Army, Drug, Soldier

  George Carlin (2002). “Napalm & Silly Putty”, Hyperion

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• Almost all Americans would recognize Anchorage, because Anchorage is that part of any city where the city has burst its seams and extruded Colonel Sanders.

  John McPhee

  Cities

  John McPhee (1996). “The Second John McPhee Reader”, p.19, Macmillan

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• Asking an incumbent member of Congress to vote for term limits is a bit like asking a chicken to vote for Colonel Sanders.

  Bob Inglis

  Funny, Humor, Term Limits

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• We should be I hope finally realizing what Vladimir Putin is. He's an old colonel, KGB, apparatchik, and he dreams of the restoration of the Russian empire.

  John McCain

  Dream, Kgb, Restoration

  Source: www.foxnews.com

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• I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. "A good colonel makes a good regiment," is an axiom.

  Rutherford B. Hayes

  War, Feelings, Promotion

  Rutherford B. Hayes (2016). “Conspicuous Gallantry: Civil War Diary and Letters of Rutherford B. Hayes (Abridged)”, p.404, BIG BYTE BOOKS

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• My question right now would be to Colonel Gaddafi, which is: 'What on earth do you think you are doing? Stop it.'

  David Cameron

  Thinking, Would Be, Earth

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• Do we, mad as we all are after riches, hear often enough from the pulpit the spirit of those words in which Dean Swift, in his epitaph on the affluent and profligate Colonel Chartres, announces the small esteem of wealth in the eyes of God, from the fact of His thus lavishing it upon the meanest and basest of His creatures?

  Edwin Percy Whipple

  Eye, Mad, Facts

  Edwin Percy Whipple (1866). “Character and characteristic men”, p.150

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• A drawing, brought by Colonel Coombs, from a sculptured column in a cave-temple in the South of India, represents the first pair at the foot of the ambrosial tree, and a serpent entwined among the heavily-laden boughs, presenting to them some of the fruit from his mouth.

  Godfrey Higgins

  Drawing, Feet, Tree

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