Bob Hope Quotes

The volunteer system must be replaced … Let us not be blind to the realities … The day we could put guns into the hands of citizen soldiers, teach the manual of arms and send them to match their spirit and brawn against an enemy has passed.

I should be willing to risk all I have upon making, within six months, better troops in this department, than you can find in the United States army…. The value of the negro to us, at this moment, is in his enthusiasm, which far exceeds that of the white; in his cheerfulness, which is to be seen everywhere, North & South, especially under privation; in his capacity to bear hardships, and in his capacity for discipline. You can discipline colored troops in half the time that you can white. The negro gives his whole attention to the work, and takes a pride in it. They want to enlist. They do not feel themselves to be soldiers, until they get the muskets. They never feel sure of it, because they have been told so many times that they were enlisting for soldiers, and found themselves laborers…. two-thirds of them would prefer being soldiers to being laborers.

When she cannot reach her own boys, many a mother gets great satisfaction by cooking extra food and having boys who are on leave, or boys from the camps, come to her for Sunday dinner. The churches are one of the many organizations in every community working along these lines.

I feel that a period of service to the nation would be good for all of us, though I hope it will not be a purely military period. I have a great appreciation for the need for discipline and basic training in military methods, but above all, I believe we must develop the realization of every individual's responsibility in a democracy for his government. To me any period of training should stress this very clearly and should include service to the community. I believe both boys and girls should receive such training.

Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie.

Any time there's a lot of pressure, it's life and death, you go toward this very dark kind of humor. Soldiers do it. Cops do it.

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.

In Defense of the World Order . . . U.S. soldiers would have to kill and die.

Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.

War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it's a lottery.

I think the entire world knows, and North Korea knows, that if they used any weapons on our soldiers they would be obliterated. And it would be an overwhelming response.

Mud and rain and wretchedness and blood. Why should jolly soldier-boys complain? God made these before the roofless Flood - Mud and rain.

Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.

To expect ... the same service from raw and undisciplined recruits, as from veteran soldiers, is to expect what never did and perhaps never will happen. Men, who are familiarized to danger, meet it without shrinking; whereas troops unused to service often apprehend danger where no danger is.

I have never understood why the politicians who are most eager to send soldiers into harm's way are always depicted as their most ardent friends.

On this tenth day of June, nineteen hundred and forty, the hand that held the dagger has struck it into the back of its neighbor.... In our unity, in our American unity we will pursue two obvious and simultaneous courses; we will extend to the opponents of force the material resources of this nation, and at the same time we will harness and speed up the use of those resources in order that we ourselves in the Americas may have equipment and training equal to the task of any emergency and every defense.

I can work hard and be disciplined like a soldier, but I could never reach their level of fitness. I have a whole new appreciation of soldiers. I saw myself on screen and thought, 'That body is so not hard enough to be a soldier.'

Revolutions are good times for soldiers of talent and courage.

There have been many Presidents of the United States and the roll will be indefinitely extended. We have had a number of brilliant soldiers, but only one great general.

The madness of mobs or the insolence of soldiers, or both, when too near to each other, occasion some mischief.

It is unacceptable to risk the lives of American soldiers and sailors merely to accommodate the sexual lifestyles of certain individuals.

I did two things on my seventy-fifth birthday. I visited my wife's grave. Then I joined the army.

Ethics, decency and morality are the real soldiers

Soldiers' graves are the greatest preachers of peace.