Battlefield Quotes
More Battlefield Quotes
A man came to Allah's Apostle and said, "Instruct me as to such a deed as equals Jihad (in reward)." He replied, "I do not find such a deed." Then he added, "Can you, while the Muslim fighter is in the battle-field, enter your mosque to perform prayers without cease and fast and never break your fast?" The man said, "But who can do that?" Abu- Huraira added, "The Mujahid (i.e. Muslim fighter) is rewarded even for the footsteps of his horse while it wanders about (for grazing) tied in a long rope."
— Narrated Abu Huraira, in Bukhari, Volume 4, Book 52, Number 44
Fighting is like champagne. It goes to the heads of cowards as quickly as of heroes. Any fool can be brave on a battlefield when it's be brave or else be killed.
Margaret Mitchell— 1936 Ashley Wilkes. Gone with the Wind, ch.31.
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
— 1867 Speech, Berlin, Aug.
"Let us give them a portion of the Evil Forest. They boast about victory over death. Let us give them a real battlefield in which to show their victory." [...] They offered them as much of the Evil Forest as they cared to take. And to their great amazement the missionaries thanked them and burst into song.
chinua achebe— Chapter 17 (p. 139)
For evil in the open is but evil from within that has been let out. The main battlefield for good is not the open ground of the public arena but the small clearing of each heart.
yann martel— Chapter 25, p. 78
Always imagine yourself on the battlefield under the fiercest attack; never forget this crucial element of training.
morihei ueshiba— p. 36 (Budo (1938))
No conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield had come adorned with nobler laurels.
— Opening words of Leader column referring to Neville Chamberlain's negotiation of the Munich agreement, 1 October 1938.
No conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield has come home adorned with nobler laurels than M R CHAMBERLAIN from Munich yesterday, and K ING and people alike have shown by the manner of their reception their sense of his achievement.
neville chamberlain— "A New Dawn", The Times, 1 October 1938; opening words of the leader on the Munich Agreement.
You cannot choose your battlefield, God does that for you; But you can plant a standard Where a standard never flew. QOTD 2007·11·01 Sound file
nathalia crane— "The Colors" (These lines have sometimes been misattributed to the author Stephen Crane).
The truth is, no study is possible on the battle-field; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows . Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well.
Ferdinand Foch— p. 175 (Precepts and Judgments (1919))
Our civilization, bequeathed to us by fierce adventurers, eaters of meat and hunters, is so full of hurry and combat, so busy about many things which perhaps are of no importance, that it cannot but see something feeble in a civilization which smiles as it refuses to make the battlefield the test of excellence.
james joyce— "A Suave Philosophy," in Daily Express, Dublin (6 February 1903), printed in James Joyce: Occasional, Critical and Political Writing (2002) edited by Kevin Barry [Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-192-83353-7], p. 67
Last two soldiers on the battlefield survivors of the war they aim at one another while their mothers beg the lord "if you're listening, I'm missing him so somehow bring him home" how did it come to this? so the soldiers lift their rifles and they're aiming at the head they think of their first love before they take a final breath and somewhere in the distance they hear something someone said how did it come to this?
tomas kalnoky— "The Big Sleep," from "Everything Goes Numb" (2003)
It’s the jihadists who decided to make the world a battlefield and to wage war in perpetuity. Until they abandon the field, what choice do we have but to carry the fight to them?
charles krauthammer— Column, February 15, 2013, "In defense of Obama’s drone war" at jewishworldreview.com.
There was something in the wild strength of this landscape, once a battlefield, that seemed to be shouting at him, a presence born of that strength whose cry his whole being recognized as familiar, caught and threw back into the wind, some youthful passage of courage and pride the passionate, yet so nearly always hypocritical, affirmation of one’s soul perhaps, he thought, of the desire to be, to do, good, what was right.
malcolm lowry— Ch. IV (p. 124)
In this age, I don’t care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are, if you cannot create harmony even vicious harmony on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete. We have got to have officers who can create harmony across all those lines.
james mattis— At the May 2010 JFCOM Conference Ares blog, Aviation Week (June 2010)
The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
george orwell— "In Front of Your Nose", Tribune (22 March 1946)
See that unfortunate soldier who is falling hurt to death ("tombe blessé à...", Fr.) on the battlefield; he learns that his folks have vanquished and dies happy. He detached himself from himself (s'est détacher de lui-même", Fr.), has identified himself with something greater and more lasting than himself; his homeland ("patrie", Fr.); thus, while dying as an individual, he has the certainty to survive in a larger existence.
african spir— p. 53 (Words of a Sage : Selected thoughts of African Spir (1937))
No conqueror returning from a victory on the battlefield had come adorned with nobler laurels.
— Opening words of Leader column referring to Neville Chamberlain's negotiation of the Munich agreement, 1 October 1938.
Rules of conduct which govern men in their relations to one another are being applied in an ever-increasing degree to nations. The battlefield as a place of settlement of disputes is gradually yielding to arbitral courts of justice.
william howard taft— William Howard Taft, Dawn of World Peace, in U.S. Bureau of Education Bulletin, No. 8. (1912).
Whether on the scaffold high Or on the battle-field we die, Oh, what matter, when for Erin dear we fall.
— T. D. Sullivan, God Save Ireland.
But the grandsire's chair is empty, The cottage is dark and still; There's a nameless grave on the battle-field, And a new one under the hill.
william winter— William Winter, After All.
March to the battle-field, The foe is now before us; Each heart is Freedom's shield, And heaven is shining o'er us.
— B. E. O'Meara, March to the Battle-Field.
Any man with a collection like this is a man who's never set foot on a battlefield. To him a minié ball from Shiloh is just an artifact. But to a combat vet, it's a hunk of metal that caused some poor bastard a world of pain.
— General Eugene Irwin, The Last Castle.
The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought. ... Europe and large parts of Asia and Africa became one vast battlefield on which after years of struggle not armies but nations broke and ran. When all was over, Torture and Cannibalism were the only two expedients that the civilized, scientific, Christian States had been able to deny themselves: and they were of doubtful utility.
— Winston Churchill, From The World Crisis, 1911-1918 : Chapter I (The Vials of Wrath), Churchill, Butterworth (1923)
You cannot choose your battlefield, God does that for you; But you can plant a standard Where a standard never flew. ~ Nathalia Crane ~
— used on 1 November 2007, proposed by Kalki
The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
— Abraham Lincoln, closing of First Inaugural Address (4 March 1861)
The point is that we are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue, and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for an indefinite time: the only check on it is that sooner or later a false belief bumps up against solid reality, usually on a battlefield.
— George Orwell, "In Front of Your Nose", Tribune (22 March 1946)
