Phil Klay Quotes

Men go to war for fear, honor or interest.

War is an arena for the display of courage and virtue. Or war is politics by other means. War is a quasi-mystical experience where you get in touch with the real. There are millions of narratives we impose to try to make sense of war.

I think it is a mistake to focus - as we most often do - only on the sacrifice of life that war requires. War also requires that we sacrifice our normal unwillingness to kill.

For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love. With each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances, you can't help but love.

War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood.

Surviving is the only glory in war.

Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people—and kill them.

There's nothing but brutality and bravery or cowardice that comes out of war. That's pretty much it.

When you go to war, it's important for everybody to know that they're going to come home in one way or other.

As a combat veteran, I know the cost of war.

For the most part, everybody who fights in war fights to survive.

No one hates war like a soldier hates war.

Going to war was the only unselfish thing I have ever done for humanity.

Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.

War isn't just about bravery and courage and jingoism and patriotism. It's also fundamentally about grief. And the people that go and do the fighting and the dying are never the people who actually benefit from the fighting and the dying.

War - the ordinary man's most convenient means of escaping from the ordinary.

Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land, drawing no dividend from time's tomorrows.

War taught me that not everything is glamorous.

Everything starts and finishes with the soldier.

One of the reasons it's important for me to write about war is I really think that the concept of war, the specifics of war, the nature of war, the ethical ambiguities of war, are introduced too late to children. I think they can hear them, understand them, know about them, at a much younger age without being scared to death by the stories.

As one who participated in all the wars of the state of Israel, I saw the horror of wars. I saw the fear of wars. I saw my best friends being killed in battles. I was seriously injured twice.

Sacrifice is going to war for your country. Sacrifice is a brave young man being blown up by a landmine in Afghanistan.

Nothing like war reveals man in the same strength—their courage, their stupidity, their fears, their hopes, their ugliness ….

I have fought for many years. I have killed many men. I have never seen a foreigner die.

Anyone who wants to carry on the war against the outsiders, come with me. I can’t offer you either honours or wages; I offer you hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Anyone who loves his country, follow me.