Quotes About Sacrifice

To save the world takes one cold son of a bitch.

It is always useful to face an enemy who is prepared to die for his country, he read. This means that both you and he have exactly the same aim in mind.

Esme Weatherwax hadn't done nice. She'd done what was needed .

You say that you people don't burn folk and sacrifice people anymore, but that's what true faith would mean, y'see? Sacrificin' your own life, one day at a time, to the flame, declarin' the truth of it, workin' for it, breathin' the soul of it. That's religion. Anything else is just . . . is just bein' nice. And a way of keepin' in touch with the neighbors.

It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are the main thing. If they are on the other side then this is a valuable bonus.

It's like chess, you know. The Queen saves the King.

Sybil's female forebears had valiantly backed up their husbands as distant embassies were besieged, had given birth on a camel or in the shade of a stricken elephant, had handed around the little gold chocolates while trolls were trying to break into the compound, or had merely stayed at home and nursed such bits of husbands and sons as made it back from endless little wars.  The result was a species of woman who, when duty called, turned into solid steel.

No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for.

War, Nobby. Huh! What is it good for? he said. Dunno, Sarge. Freeing slaves, maybe? Absol—well, okay. Defending yourself against a totalitarian aggressor? All right, I'll grant you that, but— Saving civilization from a horde of— It doesn't do any good in the long run is what I'm saying, Nobby, if you'd listen for five seconds together, said Fred Colon sharply. Yeah, but in the long run, what does, Sarge?

There would be a price... But if you were worried about the price, then why were you in the shop?

You can die for your country or your people or your family, but for a god you should live fully and busily, every day of a long life.

A number of religions in Ankh-Morpork still practiced human sacrifice, except that they didn't really need to practice any more because they had got so good at it.

He wanted to go home. He wanted it so much that he trembled at the thought. But if the price of that was selling good men to the night, if the price was filling those graves, if the price was not fighting with every trick he knew…then it was too high.

When he was a boy he'd read books about great military campaigns, and visited the museums and looked with patriotic pride at the paintings of famous cavalry charges, last stands and glorious victories. It had come as rather a shock, when he later began to participate in some of these, to find that the painters had unaccountably left out the intestines. Perhaps they just weren't very good at them.

Men marched away, Vimes. And men marched back. How glorious the battles would have been that they never had to fight!

Colon has always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they'd get yelled at if they didn't.

Perhaps that's why men did it. You didn't do it to save duchesses, or countries. You killed the enemy to stop him killing your mates, that they in turn might save you ...

You always knew where you stood with Quezovercoatl. It was generally with a lot of people on top of a great stepped pyramid with someone in an elegant feathered headdress chipping an exquisite obsidian knife for your very own personal use.

I've been given something for a while, and the price of it is that I have to give it back.

It's all trickery. They keep you down and when they piss off some other country, you have to fight for them! It's only your country when they want you to get killed!

You're saying,' he said, weighing each word, 'that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle.

Bein' a soldier is not hard. If it was, soldiers would not be able to do it.

Oh, I daresay they're all very well as decoration, somethin' nice to look at while you're workin', somethin' for show, but the start and finish, the start and finish, is helpin' people when life is on the edge. Even people you don't like. Stars is easy, people is hard.

And it be well for a knowlessman that he should not be here, for he would be taken from this place and his gaskin slit, his moules shown to the four winds, his welchet torn asunder with many hooks and his figgin placed upon a spike (...)