Christian Bale Quotes

When you're in the battlefield, survival is all there is. Death is the only great emotion.

There's no such thing as a crowded battlefield. Battlefields are lonely places.

I'm interested in wartime stories, as I think it's important to remember what the soldiers went through.

I served two tours of duty in Vietnam. I won the Bronze Star. I won the Purple Heart.

I was only a gun captain on the battleship Alabama for 34 months. People have called me a hero for that, but I'll tell you this - heroes don't come home. Survivors come home.

I saw some war heroes... John Kerry is not a war hero. He couldn't tie the shoes of some of the people in Coastal Division 11.

I think human society for tens of thousands of years has sent young men out in small groups to do things that are necessary but very dangerous. And they've always gotten killed doing it. And they've always turned it into a matter of honor and a way of gaining acceptance back into society if they survived.

'The Red' delivers intense action, leavened by a genuinely sympathetic portrait of soldiers caught up in battles they never chose.

I was interested in the war part of 'Star Wars,' so I started reading about what it's like to go to war, what that does to you psychically, about the adrenaline and the rush.

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.

War is fear cloaked in courage.

I wasn't a hero. I just got shot.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can.

Vietnam was my nightmare for a good ten years.

Sure, there's pressure when you have one dart at double top when there's a world 'championship to be won, but real 'pressure is what our troops are doing in 'Afghanistan.

A lot of us in Slipknot, we get to go to wounded soldier hospitals where soldiers have lost their limbs. That's surreal. It's even more surreal to talk to them about your band. They're talking to you about war and losing their limbs, and at same time, they're talking about their favorite album, these kind of things.

My father made many narrow escapes during his time in Vietnam.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.

People try to glorify war, particularly those who aren't actually fighting in them. People tend to make heroes of those who are fighting in them.

When you've married someone who's been at war, there is nothing you can do that compares to that level of selflessness and bravery.

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.

I wonder if a soldier ever does mend a bullet hole in his coat?

As a veteran, I know firsthand the satisfaction there is in defending the democracy you so strongly believe in, but I can also attest to the trauma encountered from combat on the battlefield.