Quotes About Mercenaries

In France they were called écorcheurs (skinners) and routiers (highwaymen), in Italy condottieri from the condotta or contract that fixed the terms of their employment as mercenaries.

A Dutch mercenary in Kinshasa once told me that the only time he ever stopped hating himself was when the risk he faced became so great that he acted without thinking or feeling anything at all. I wished he hadn't said it to me because I knew exactly what he meant.

I don't think you're cut out for this job. You look like a kid, and Wall Street's no place for kids. It's a place for killers. A place for mercenaries. So in that sense you're lucky I'm not the one who does the hiring around here.

Immediately after the war, a group of Jewish partisans known as the Nokmim traveled throughout Germany and Austria hunting down former members of the SS. Also known as the Avengers, this band of mercenaries paid by the government of Great Britain made northern Italy their home base.3

He was thinking of Max MacKilligan as his girlfriend? The crazy female who'd decimated an entire team of well-trained mercenaries with her badger teammates? Or who didn't seem too concerned that he'd almost eaten a child? That woman he was thinking of as his girlfriend?

Missionaries have righteous goals and are trying to make the world a better place. Mercenaries are out for money and power and will run over anyone who gets in the way.

Thousands of mercenaries, who have trained in camps on the territory of Chechnya as well as come in from abroad, are actually preparing to impose extremist ideas on the whole world.

That tells us something, at least. They weren't true believers, not radicals. This wasn't ISIS or Al Qaeda or any of their cancerous branches. They were mercenaries for hire.

Vive la mort, vive la guerre, vive le sacre mercenaire

Big bad merc, down with a basic hip toss. In your place I'd be blushing.

I am not a mercenary. Milan was my home. They made a good deal, though. They signed me for 10 million euros and sold me for 42 million euros.

Commerce has changed the ethics of citizenship and the incentives for national service. America now buys private contractors - we used to call them mercenaries - to do the country's fighting.

Hired guns were such babies.

French mercenaries armed with up-to-date weaponry had helped Gia Long establish his empire, and he had granted trading concessions to them in exchange for their help. But neither he nor any of his successors was comfortable with their presence or with that of the European missionaries who had been at work converting Vietnamese to Roman Catholicism for more than a century.

The first recorded European epidemic of syphilis erupted in late 1494 or early 1495. In the former year, Charles VIII of France led fifty thousand vagabond mercenaries from every alley of Europe to attack Naples, which he desired to rule.

You really want a company full of missionaries, not mercenaries.

The arts and soldiering took time to acquire – time and discipline and desire. No, he was up against bullies. And bullies were cowards. These were mercenaries who acted for money. Shot as, on the other hand, took great pride that he performed his DUTIES for love of country and, though he didn't quite think of it in those terms, for love of his fellow soldiers.

There are old sellswords and bold sellswords, but no old bold sellswords.

Paying good coin to bad men.

In peace one is despoiled by the mercenaries, in war by one's enemies.

Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious, and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy.

In short, with mercenaries your greatest danger is from their inertness and cowardice, with auxiliaries from their valour. Wise Princes, therefore, have always eschewed these arms, and trusted rather to their own, and have preferred defeat with the latter to victory with the former, counting that as no true victory which is gained by foreign aid.

príncipe cuyo gobierno descanse en soldados mercenarios no estará nunca seguro ni tranquilo, porque están desunidos, porque son ambiciosos, desleales, valientes entre los amigos, pero cobardes cuando se encuentran frente a los enemigos; porque no tienen disciplina, como tienen temor de Dios ni buena fe con los hombres; de modo que no se difiere la ruina sino mientras se difiere la ruptura; y

Se concluye de esto que todo el que no quiera vencer no tiene más que servirse de esas tropas, muchísimo más peligrosas que las mercenarias, porque están perfectamente unidas y obedecen ciegamente a sus jefes, con lo cual la ruina es inmediata; mientras que las mercenarias, para someter al príncipe, una vez que han triunfado, necesitan esperar tiempo y ocasión, pues no constituyen un cuerpo unido y, por añadidura, están a sueldo del príncipe. En