American Soldier Quotations

Men wholly bent on wordly treasures were the dupes of their own passions, rather than deceived by the writings or pretenses of those who claimed to be Alchemists.

Honest honey, I feel like crying every time I sit down to write you a letter... I am so unlucky.

Beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder.

We have arrived at that point of time in which we are forced to see our own humiliation, as a nation, and that a progression in this line cannot be a productive of happiness, private or public.

I don't think we should tell them what we're going to do in advance. Let them think. Worry. Wonder. Uncertainty is the most chilling thing of all.

All kids, when they go to school, are pretty good artists and dancers and singers and poets. All that gets buried, basically through being educated, or brainwashed.

Nothing can stop the attack of aircraft except other aircraft.

People may doubt what you say, but they will believe what you do.

That was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even skinned our elbows doing it.

You know you haven't stopped talking since I came here? You must have been vaccinated with a phonograph needle!

When we know as much about people as hog specialists know about hogs, we'll be better off.

By the time we reached Virginia City I was considered a remarkable good shot and a fearless rider for a girl of my age.

So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind.

You people are telling me what you think I want to know. I want to know what is actually happening.

We're all kind of basically involved in the same thing, putting up a blank of some kind and filling it in.

With us air people, the future of our nation is indissolubly bound up in the development of air power.

If the United States is hit with a weapon of mass destruction that inflicts large casualties, the Constitution will likely be discarded in favor of a military form of government.

Don't look now but there's one man too many in this room and I think it's you!

I was sick. I guess I was about to crack up thinking about all my good buddies. They were better men than me and they're not coming back. Much less back to the White House, like me.

I therefore beg that you would indulge me with the liberty of declining the arduous trust.

Mounting a large rock, I was able to see a considerable body of the enemy moving by the flank in rear of their line engaged, and passing from the direction of the foot of Great Round Top through the valley toward the front of my left.

The intolerance of the Middle, and even later, Ages, is a fact all too familiar to every one.

John Brown's effort was peculiar. It was not a slave insurrection.

If you're going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy; God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

The hooks didn't roll out any more sevens than my hands did before them.

In a few days an officer came to our camp, under a flag of truce, and informed Hamilton, then a captain of artillery, but afterwards the aid of General Washington, that Captain Hale had been arrested within the British lines condemned as a spy, and executed that morning.

We've already seen proliferation. We started it with Britain, then France. Then we benignly let the Israelis do it. The Pakistanis and the Indians have recently done it. The Chinese have nuclear weapons.

I'm just a landscape painter. I look out the window and I see what's going on, and I paint it. While I'm painting it, I also write thoughts about what I see going on out there.

I'll see you at the theater tonight. I'll hold your seat til you get there. After that you're on your own.

I went overseas hoping to prove that all our POWs were home. I came back convinced that they were still alive.

Every pioneer and musician who could carry a musket went into the ranks. Even the sick and foot-sore, who could not keep up in the march, came up as soon as they could find their regiments, and took their places in line of battle, while it was battle, indeed.

They should hold themselves absolutely upon the immovable foundation of truth and nature, whereby alone they can save themselves from misapprehensions and from the danger of being entirely carried away from reality into mere dreams and fictions.

Benteen, come on, big village, be quick. Bring packs.

I think we have played like a playoff team for some time. We can still do better. The key thing right now is to look forward, not behind you.

Well, the reports are correct that we're conducting very robust military operations on the Afghan side of the border in areas where we think al-Qaida is operating and Taliban remnants are.

Let us have faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.

I'm the last guy left. That's what happens when you live to 84.

When eating an elephant take one bite at a time.

It's like there are all these languages available, especially in terms of image. Why confine yourself to only English? There's all these languages and possibilities and concepts to speak or communicate with.

I've got a good mind to join a club and beat you over the head with it!

The House of Commons, refused to receive the addresses of the colonies, when the matter was pending; besides, we hold our rights neither from them nor from the Lords.

You can never tell when an artist really will take up someone's work and work with it happily.

Notwithstanding this high Ecclesiastical authority, he who dared accept truth only because it could be proved, or proved to be good, and disregard authority, was commonly stigmatized as an infidel.

The only luck I had in my life was when I married you. I knew it wouldn't last because I was too happy. I knew they would not let me be happy.

One is never more on trial than in the moment of excessive good fortune.

Your purpose, then, plainly stated, is, that you will destroy the Government, unless you be allowed to construe and enforce the Constitution as you please, on all points in dispute between you and us.

Among various demands and charges I gave them, was, that the said flag should be delivered to me, and one of the United States' flags be received and hoisted in its place.

I wish I could have known earlier that you have all the time you'll need right up to the day you die.

As to whether the people who were supposedly to put up the money and did put it up or whether it was Arthur's own money is something which I shall never know.

We ought instead of retreating should follow up the enemy and take Richmond. And in full view of all responsible for such declaration, I say to you all, such an order can only be prompted by cowardice or treason.

We fought no better, perhaps, than they. We exhibited, perhaps, no higher individual qualities.

I've made up my mind. I'll take my court martial.

We have been so trying to convince them from the very beginning of our organization, but with no success.

While the recent addition of the National Guard providing a support role manning computers and cameras has allowed more Border Patrol agents to work the field, more agents are still needed.

It was, however, in the interest of Osama bin Laden for us to destroy a secular Arab leader; it was very much in the interest of the Iranians because they wanted revenge against Saddam Hussein for Iraq's invasion in 1980.

I think being an artist, or just being creative, or imaginative, or aware, where I think everybody starts out, and by about the age of 10, that's been pretty effectively whipped out by education.

I haven't heard anything or seen anything out there that would lead me to believe that all of a sudden there's an unexpected drop in PCs.

As many of the riders before me had been held up and robbed of their packages, mail and money that they carried, for that was the only means of getting mail and money between these points.

Rations were scarcely issued, and the men about preparing supper, when rumors that the enemy had been encountered that day near Gettysburg absorbed every other interest, and very soon orders came to march forthwith to Gettysburg.

They're not shooting me for deserting the United Stated Army - thousands of guys have done that. They're shooting me for bread I stole when I was 12 years old.

To say that you now trust the Russian military command and control system because some Russian general told you from the bottom of his heart that's the case, strikes me as most unrealistic.

The whole Disney thing is really interesting, in a way, how that's so permeated life and the world and the planet.

That's the reason some schools of thinking don't rule out a destruction of the Chinese military potential before the situation grows worse than it is today. It's bad enough now.

For too long people have backed companies on hope value rather than solid products coming out. Now we are coming out the other side.

I wanted to take a stand against what I think was not so well established then but is thoroughly well established now, which is the substitution for a real sense of a country of a hideous distortion which you can sell to the people called 'heritage'.

What I do say is, yes, children may be resilient and they have been able to deal with all sorts of difficulties they have faced, but the bottom line is this: I believe very strongly children need a mother and a father in the home.

I've been attracted to imagery and occasionally I've drawn from it, but I never thought I'd be painting these paintings. I didn't have any desire to. I didn't think there was any reason to.

It may not be proper for me, perhaps, to let my feelings carry me further am therefore resigned to stop here, if sir, you think my particular reasons following too free, or will give offense to the House, which I would be sorry to be thought capable of intending.

But we can hold our spirits and our bodies so pure and high, we may cherish such thoughts and such ideals, and dream such dreams of lofty purpose, that we can determine and know what manner of men we will be, whenever and wherever the hour strikes and calls to noble action.

I'm sorry I didn't go to jail for six months, then I know you could come to see me anytime you wanted to.

With the dreary season in which we travelled part of the route; with our minds much more actively employed in forming resources for our preservation from famine.

I was authorized to do everything that I did.

Irish is the prominent nationality in the family, but beyond that, I really don't know. I see a lot of artistic or creative influence coming through on my mother's side.

And, Mr. Speaker, if the Governor and Council don't see fit to fall in with us, I say let the general duty law, and all, go to the devil, sir, and go about our business.

I thought using the Ayatollah's money to support the Nicaraguan resistance was a neat idea.

The frame of mind in the local legislatures seems to be exerted to prevent the federal constitution from having any good effect.

Our generals talk a good game about taking care of their grunts, and the majority of our Beltway politicians bay with moralistic fervor about how they, too, support the troops.

Second, recent polls over there show that the majority of Iraqis want us to leave precipitously.

The village had a mill near it, situated on the little creek, which made very good flour. The population consisted of civilized Indians, but much mixed blood.

Well, let's assume the world is linear. If we required a certain amount of troops per 25,000 population in the Balkans, if the world is not radically different, something of the same extent is going to be needed in Iraq.

I long to be in the Field again, doing my part to keep the old flag up, with all its stars.

Being on the run, having to change the way that you do business, being unable to plan in a safe and secure environment, always looking over your shoulder, knowing that some day somebody's going to knock on your door and it's going to be your last.

There had so lately been a large force of Spanish cavalry at the village, which had made a great impression on the minds of the young men, as to their power, consequence, which my appearance with 20 infantry was by no means calculated to remove.

The standards to get in are very high. We don't want to lower those standards.

I have never belonged to a party. I don't have party affiliation.

Just after writing those we were called up to defend a new position on the left, where the terrible storming of the bridge over the Antietam took place.

Give immediate instruction to all your posts in said territory, under your direction, at no time and on no pretence to hoist, or suffer be hoisted, the English flag.

The best doctors and the best hospitals in America, if they cannot get the patient information they need when they need it, it can lead to morbid consequences: Higher mortality.

Grunts on the line, where the enemy wants them dead, still goof off - even knowing that by letting their guard down they might die.

I will make a general statement that we have not had anything like the policy of holding people in high office responsible for their acts that I think we should.

I do not pretend to write much of a letter. You know under what circumstances I am writing.

The Spanish troops returned and we could yet discover the grass beaten down in the direction which they went.

Of course, it's imperative that we stabilize Iraq and quickly reduce our armed role there.

I think what actually works best is local-level individual targeting of key leadership nodes.

While people out there on the spot certainly have to be held accountable for what they've done personally, the chain of command responsibility for this strikes me as just as important and should be dealt with.

I was, somewhere in the neighborhood of about 300 jumps.

Providing patients and consumers with solid information on the cost and quality of their healthcare options can literally make the difference between life or death; and play a decisive role in whether a family or employer can afford healthcare.

It was not in our interest to enter Iraq in the first place.

I told myself I'd stay in until I reached major, and then go on and do something else.

Rather than improving the wealth of their own nation, the Mexican government encourages its poor to come to the U.S. and send money home.