Quotes About Combat

In a certain sense I could agree with the Futurists that war is the only hygiene of the world, except for one little correction: It would be, if only volunteers were allowed to wage it.

The wise man must attack falsehood not only with his sword but also with his tongue

traición. Y es que siempre pasa lo mismo, cuando fracasas en algo, buscas siempre alguien a quien acusar de tu incapacidad. Pero qué traición, me decía, es que no sabéis cómo se combate, pues anda que hacer la revolución…

observe the cascades of light that spread through the darkness of a cathedral, stirring within themselves a multitude of monads, seeds, indissoluble natures, drops of incense that exploded spontaneously, primordial atoms engaged in combat, battles, skirmishes by squadrons, amid numberless conjunctions and separations—obvious proof of the composition of this universe of ours, made of nothing but prime bodies teeming in the void.

Military men say that troops can stand twenty percent losses; more than that, they go to pieces. But we had many an outfit with only twenty percent survivors and they went on fighting.

What he told them was to organize and defend their government to the last man and woman; to gather paving-stones and hurl them from the rooftops upon the Fascist invaders; to fight them with pikes, kitchen knives, and clubs with nails in; to take for their own the slogan of the French at Verdun:

La nouvelle prose, c'est l'événement, le combat lui-même, et non sa description. Un document, la participation directe de l'auteur aux événements de la vie. Une prose vécue, en document.

Byerozkin knew very well that the man with no quiet at the bottom of his soul was unable to endure for long, however courageous he might be in combat. He thought of fear or cowardice, on the other hand, as something temporary, something that could be cured as easily as a cold.

After September 1939, perhaps one billion of the world's roughly two billion population were soldiers, partisans, and producers engaged in trying to kill people.

One was made famous by Ulysses S. Grant and later John J. Pershing, emphasizing finding the enemy, then confronting and destroying him through overwhelming firepower.

Nor was combat fatal to most combatants; annihilation of entire armies was rare in the classical age, as the nearly uniform adoption of the panoply—the Greeks' bronze breastplate, shield, helmet, greaves, spear, and sword—ensured protection from repeated attacks.

There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.

What pleases us in those who are rising is less pleasing in those who are falling. We do not admire the combat when there is no danger; and in any case, the combatants of the first hour alone have the right to be the exterminators in the last. He who has not been a determined accuser during prosperity should hold his peace in adversity. He alone who denounces the success has a right to proclaim the justice of the downfall.

Superstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices, those forms all forms as they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war must be made on them, and that without truce; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms. It is difficult to seize darkness by the throat, and to hurl it to the earth.

This blind-man's-buff musketry lasted for a quarter of an hour and killed several panes of glass.

with the exception of wars of liberation, everything that armies do is by foul means.

All war is a thing of terror, and there is no choice in it.

Superstitions, bigotries, affected devotion, prejudices, those forms all forms as they are, are tenacious of life; they have teeth and nails in their smoke, and they must be clasped close, body to body, and war must be made on them, and that without truce; for it is one of the fatalities of humanity to be condemned to eternal combat with phantoms.

Ce qui est certain, c'est que, d'ordinaire, après les vainqueurs viennent les voleurs. Mais mettons le soldat, surtout le soldat contemporain, hors de cause.

She is angry. And angry people make mistakes in war and die.

Turner was a lousy fighter, an inept swordsman, and most of the people he tried to kill didn't die by his hand. His sole strength was his superior brain. He became a leader of men because he had developed his mind by reading, which happened to be illegal. Coincidence?

If you're attacking, you don't get as tired as when you're chasing.

With peril a constant companion, a combat engineer took joy in life when he could and tended to shrug off dangers he considered minor.

I trust we have replaced mass hysteria with mass agreement, and 'mass agreement is the true substance of reality.' Frankly, it's only combat-engineer elementary mathematics.