Soldiers Quotes

If we want to benefit most from our suffering, by prayer and meditation, we will approach our suffering as a good soldier approaches war. What do I mean by that? A good soldier who has trained and trained is not surprised when he fins himself in war! He has been trained for it. Likewise, consider it your Job to be be prepared to suffer. That puts a whole different cast on Sunday morning, doesn't it? You are gathering with God's people Lord's Day after Lord's Day to train as good soldiers of Jesus Christ so that when your time of trial and testing sand suffering comes, you will be ready.

~ J. Ligon Duncan Iii

I could have become a doctor, an engineer, a mechanic or even a car salesman but instead, I chose to be a soldier. Who was to blame? The way they glorified war back home could make anyone quit their job and join the army. The romanticized notions of being a soldier lasted till the time you had to take a life or two. After that, it all came crashing down and most of the men who signed up pulled their hair wondering why they bought into all this bullshit. We had no one to blame but ourselves. We wanted to serve this country and what better way to do it than to shoot, bomb and incinerate the enemy as our comrades fall next to us and a wife and mother somewhere hold on to a flag tightly and shed tears of loss. There was no glory in war, there was only death. These designations and medals were like magnets on a refrigerator. They didn’t mean a thing to the children who were orphaned or wives who were widowed. They didn’t mean a thing to soldiers who walked home after years on a battlefield to find their wives in bed with someone else. Yet we kept going forward, obeying every order pushed down our throats… fighting, killing.

~ Shayne Colaco

The soldiers had been entrenched in their positions for several weeks but there was little, if any fighting, except for the dozen rounds they ritually exchanged every day. The weather was extremely pleasant. The air was heavy with the scent of wildflowers and nature seem to be following its course, quite unmindful of the soldiers hiding behind rocks and camouflaged by mountain shrubbery. The birds sang as they always had and the flowers were in bloom. Bees buzzed about lazily. Only when a shot rang out, the birds got startled and took flight, as if a musician had struck a jarring note on his instrument. It was almost the end of September, neither hot nor cold. It seemed as if summer and winter had made their peace. In the blue skies, cotton clouds floated all day like barges on a lake.The soldiers seemed to be getting tired of this indecisive war where nothing much ever happened. Their positions were quite impregnable. The two hills on which they were placed faced each other and were about the same height, so no one side had an advantage. Down below in the valley, a stream zigzagged furiously on its stony bed like a snake.The air force was not involved in the combat and neither of the adversaries had heavy guns or mortars. At night, they would light huge fires and hear each other's voices echoing through the hills.From The Dog of Titwal, a short story.

~ Sadat Hasan Manto

There were thousands of Kantoreks, all of whom were convinced that they were acting for the best—in a way that cost them nothing. And that is why they let us down so badly. …in our hearts we trusted them. The idea of authority, which they represented, was associated in our minds with a greater insight and a more humane wisdom. But the first death we saw shattered this belief. We had to recognize that our generation was more to be trusted than theirs. They surpassed us only in phrases and in cleverness the first bombardment showed us our mistake, and under it the world as they had taught it to us broke in pieces. While they continued to write and talk, we saw the dying. While they taught that duty to one’s country is the greatest thing, we already knew that death-throes are stronger. But for all that we were no mutineers, no deserters, no cowards—they were very free with all these expressions. We loved our country as much as they; we went courageously into every action; but also we distinguished the false from true, we had suddenly learned to see. And we saw that there was nothing of their world left. We were all at once terribly alone; and alone we must see it through.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

And this I know: all these things that now, while we are still in the war, sink down in us like a stone, after the war shall waken again, and then shall begin the disentanglement of life and death.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

A man dreams of a miracle and wakes up to loaves of bread.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

He wants me to tell him about the front; he is curious in a way that I find stupid and distressing; I no longer have any real contact with him. There is nothing he likes more than just hearing about it. I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us?

~ Erich Maria Remarque

And be very careful at the front, Paul.”Ah, Mother, Mother! Why do I not take you in my arms and die with you. What poor wretches we are!

~ Erich Maria Remarque

Every war has its martyrs — the unsung heroes who sometimes don’t even know the rationale behind the war they are fighting. They fight because they are trained to, kill because they are told to and die because they are destined to.

~ Anurag Shourie

A thug. In peacetime Fitch would be hanging around a pool table giving the cops trouble. He was perfect for war. Tibbets had chosen his men well - most of them, anyway. Moving back past Haddock January stopped to stare at the group of men in the navigation cabin. They joked, drank coffee. They were all a bit like Fitch: young toughs, capable and thoughtless. They're having a good time, an adventure. That was January's dominant impression of his companions in the 509th; despite all the bitching and the occasional moments of overmastering fear, they were having a good time. His mind spun forward and he saw what these young men would grow up to be like as clearly as if they stood before him in businessmen's suits, prosperous and balding. They would be tough and capable and thoughtless, and as the years passed and the great war receded in time they would look back on it with ever-increasing nostalgia, for they would be the survivors and not the dead. Every year of this war would feel like ten in their memories, so that the war would always remain the central experience of their lives - a time when history lay palpable in their hands, when each of their daily acts affected it, when moral issues were simple, and others told them what to do - so that as more years passed and the survivors aged, bodies falling apart, lives in one rut or another, they would unconsciously push harder and harder to thrust the world into war again, thinking somewhere inside themselves that if they could only return to world war then they would magically be again as they were in the last one - young, and free, and happy. And by that time they would hold the positions of power, they would be capable of doing it.

~ Kim Stanley Robinson

I crawled in a spirit-haunted placeMade wild by souls that moan and mourn;And Death leered by with mangled face -Ah God! I prayed, I prayed for dawn.

~ Arthur Newberry 1893- Choyce

… as General Berringer would readily admit, “If you’re in a fair fight, I’ve done something wrong.

~ T. Mountebank

Soldiers of capitalism are the fathers of dissent.

~ Kevin Mcpherson Eckhoff

They can march for days without eating. They impregnate every schoolgirl they meet.

~ Anthony Doerr

Yet I now ask of you—are you marauders or are you servants? Do you give power to others, or do you hoard it? Do you fight not to have something, but rather fight so that others might one day have something? Is your blade a part of your soul, or is it a burden, a tool, to be used with care? Are you soldiers, my children, or are you savages?

~ Robert Jackson Bennett

WILL WORK FOR FOOD © 2013 Lyrics & Music by Michele JennaeThere he was with a cardboard sign, Will Work For Food Saw him on the roadside, As I took my kids to schoolI really didn’t have time to stop, Already running late Found myself pulling over, Into the hands of fate The look in his eyes was empty, But he held out his hand I knew my kids were watching, As I gave him all I had My heart in my throat I had to ask, “What brought you here?” He looked up and straight into my eyes, I wanted to disappear. CHORUS He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DOv. 2 He put the money in his pocket, Then he took me by the hand Thank you dear for stopping by, I am sure that you have plans He nodded toward my children, Watching from afar It’s time they were off to school, You should get in the car My eyes welled up and tears fell down, I couldn’t say a word Here this man with nothing to his name, Showing me his concern I knew then that the lesson, That today must be taught Wouldn’t come from textbooks, And it could not be bought CHORUS He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DOv. 3 I told him then that I had a job, That I could give him work And in return he’d have a meal, And something to quench his thirst He looked at me and shrugged a bit, And followed me to the car We went right over to a little café, Just up the road not too far After I ordered our food he looked at me, And asked about the kids “Shouldn’t these tykes be in school, And about that job you said.” “Your job,” I said, “is to school my girls, In the ways of the world Explain to them your service, And how your life unfurled.”He said… Do you think I really saw myself, Standing in this light Forgotten by society, After fighting for your rights WILL WORK FOR FOOD, WILL DIE FOR YOU I AM JUST A FORGOTTEN SOLDIER, I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DOv. 4He wasn’t sure quite what to do, As he ate his food And began to tell us all about his life… the bad… the good. He wiped his own tears from his eyes, His story all but done My girls and I all choked up, Hugged him one by one Understanding his sacrifice, But not his current plight We resolved then and there that day, That for him, we would fight. We offered him our friendship, And anything else we had He wasn’t sure how to accept it, But we made him understandLAST CHORUS That we had not really seen before, Him standing in the light No longer forgotten by us, We are now fighting for his rights He had… WORKED FOR FOOD HE HAD ALL BUT DIED FOR ME AND YOU NOT FORGOTTEN ANYMORE BUT STILL A SOLDIER IN TRUST

~ Michele Jennae

It's worse for you. You want the guilt to absolve you. Just like you want your wife and child to absolve you. Once absolved, you can kill or take soup.

~ Audrey Magee

Impending war was evidenced by the faraway expression in the older villagers' eyes, the shadows on their faces, not of fear but of sorrow. Because they knew; they had lived through the last war and they remembered the generation of young men who had marched off so willingly and never come back. Those too, like Daddy, who had made it home, but left in France a part of themselves that they could never recover. Who surrendered to moments, periodically, in which their eyes filmed and their lips whitened, and their minds gave over to sights and sounds they wouldn't share but couldn't shake.

~ Kate Morton

You always hear all these statements like Freedom isn't free. You hear the President talking about all these people making sacrifices. But you never really know until you carry one of them in a casket. When you feel their bodyweight. When you feel them. That's when you know. That's when you understand.

~ Jim Sheeler

You are wrong,” says the man. His voice is low and resonant. The metal walls of the dome, all the knives and swords and spears, all seem to vibrate with each of his words. “Your rulers and their propaganda have sold you this watered-down conceit of war, of a warrior yoked to the whims of civilization. Yet for all their self-professed civility, your rulers will gladly spend a soldier’s life to better aid their posturing, to keep the cost of a crude good low. They will send the children of others off to die and only think upon it later to grandly and loudly memorialize them, lauding their great sacrifice. Civilization is but the adoption of this cowardly method of murder.

~ Robert Jackson Bennett

The photos I took in Afghanistan are lying in front of me. I peer into the faces of those who were with me there and who are so far away from me now, into the faces of those who were dying right next to me and those who were hiding behind my back. I can make these photos larger or smaller, darker or lighter. But what I can't do is bring back those who are gone forever.

~ Vladislav Tamarov

We stayed here for only a few hours. We rested and went on. But the camera snatched this fraction of a second from the eternal flow of time and froze it forever. At this moment we didn’t know that in a few hours we would fall into an ambush. At this moment, while we were filling our canteens from the stream, we didn’t yet know that we would stay in the mountains for three days without a drop of water. We didn’t yet know anything …

~ Vladislav Tamarov

There's nothing I can do to erase the shadow of misery and despair from the eyes looking back at me from the photos [that I took in Afghanistan].

~ Vladislav Tamarov

[On one of his comrades depicted in the book:]Sasha was my friend … Like me, he was 19. But he didn't come home. He was killed 12 hours after this photo was taken.

~ Vladislav Tamarov

The Great Stone at the center of the Somme memorial has this inscription: “Their name liveth for evermore.” The memorial contains 73,077 names, the names of young men who were robbed of life. Note that we often say that they gave their lives, but of course, this is not true; their lives were taken from them. It is not outrageous to consider the carving of their names and the false promise of “evermore” another act of violence.

~ Nel Noddings

There was less of him now. There was less of them all. Officers and men dragged themselves around in uniforms three sizes too big, new holes punched into every belt, every collar hanging loose. They were a garrison of skinny boys performing a play about soldiers.

~ Chris Cleave

Alistair smiled. 'How long this war has been.''I'll say. One hardly remembers how we lived before. Lightly - not worrying much.''Do you suppose we shall ever live that way again?''Oh, who knows? Given sufficient champagne and ether.''Maybe if we stay drunk to the end of our days we shan't remember.

~ Chris Cleave

This last best luck of all: that earth should gape for me when my great deeds were ended.

~ E.r. Eddison

we developed a firm, practical feeling of solidarity, which grew, on the battlefield, into the best thing that the war produced - comradeship in arms.

~ Erich Maria Remarque

If I have become so pathetically dulled that I hold freedom as my right and the privileges of liberty as my due, I can stand beside the stilled graves of a thousand soldiers fallen in defense of freedom and not feel a thing. And my most solemn prayer is that I will never be this.

~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

One soldier picked up a dead Argentine, supported the corpse's weight underneath his arm, put a cigarette in the dead man's mouth, then one in his own. He then held a lighter under the corpse's cigarette and his friend took a photograph. They both laughed. I also laughed.This was foolish ― smoking can kill.

~ Ken Lukowiak

The men worked hard and faithfully. As a rule, in spite of the number of rough characters among them, they behaved very well. One night a few of them went on a spree, and proceeded to paint San Antonio red. One was captured by the city authorities, and we had to leave him behind us in jail. The others we dealt with ourselves, in a way that prevented a repetition of the occurrence.

~ Theodore Roosevelt

A soldier: I know where heaven is and it's Lithuania ... The women are beautiful, pagan, with a practical view towards sex. Who says communism was bad? You're working three levels of advantages: you're a foreign male, you're a rich, exotic American, and their men are a bunch of drunken, criminal slobs.

~ Robert D. Kaplan

[The Church] has lived through its early travails and has now come to accept an easier way of life. It is content to carry on its painless program with enough money to pay its bills and a membership large enough to assure its future. Its members now look to it for security rather than for guidance in the battle between good and evil. It has become a school instead of a barracks. Its members are students, not soldiers. They study the experiences of others instead of seeking new experiences of their own.

~ A.w. Tozer

Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.

~ Maureen Dowd

(From Danielle Raver's short story THE ENCHANTRESS)Thick chains attached to the wall hold a metal collar and belt, restraining most of the tiger's movements. Open, bloody slashes cover his face and back, but he shows no loss of strength as he pulls on the chains and tries to rip the flesh of the surrounding humans with his deadly claws. Out of his reach, I kneel down before him, and his lightning-blue eyes cross my space for a moment. “Get her out of there!” I hear from behind me.“Numnerai,” I speak urgently to the tiger. “They will kill you!” He growls and gnashes his teeth, but I sense he is responding to me. “Great white tiger, your duty is to protect the prince. But how can you do that if they sink the end of a spear into your heart?” He looks at me for a longer moment. The fighters respond to this by growing still. In their desperation, they are overlooking my foolishness for a chance to save their fellows' lives. I crouch on my feet and begin to nudge closer to him. The tiger growls a warning, but does not slash out at me. “Think of the prince, protector of the palace. Right now he prays for you to live.

~ D.m. Raver

Nation needs soldiers, politics needs civilians.

~ Amit Kalantri

There is no way to imagine what it feels like to be shot at. I will never be with him when he is the most scared.

~ Melissa Seligman

When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, of a family line, connection. All around him, men were walking silently with their thoughts, reforming their lives, making resolutions. If I ever get out of this lot... They could never be counted, the dreamed-up children, mentally conceived on the walk into Dunkirk, and later made flesh.

~ Ian Mcewan

Maybe it's time to stop being a soldier and go home to be a father. And a husband for Deanna. I'm not sure how.

~ David Bellavia