Gilbert K. Chesterton Quotes

'Tis the soldier's life to have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.

Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says "Bad war, good soldier." Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior.

If you talk to these young men and women who are fighting, they'll tell you that they think it's a worthwhile cause, and they're fighting for freedom, and they-well, they-all I'm saying-the overwhelming majority of them do.

I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.

I always like to make explicit the fact that before I went off not too long ago to fight in the trenches, I was a mathematician by profession. I don't like people to get the idea that I have to do this for a living. I mean, it isn't as though I had to do this, you know, I could be making, oh, three thousand dollars a year just teaching.

Death on the battlefield is welcome to a soldier.

And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight.

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.

This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war.

The sex is ever to a soldier kind.

All of us who served in one war or another know very well that all wars are the glory and the agony of the young.

Fighting for men back then, I think, was just more a way of life, especially if you were a soldier obviously.

As an old soldier, I admit the cowardice: it's as universal as seasickness, and matters just as little.

Yeah, I know a lot of soldiers. I know soldiers who don't like to hear thank you for your service. And I know soldiers that do like to be told thank you for your service. The ones who don't like to be told are the ones who've been through serious sh*t. They don't care about feedback. They did their job. They did what they have to do. Sometimes the people that thank them are exactly the ones they don't want to be thanked by.

I am a soldier and accustomed to risking my life every day. I am full of the fire of youth; I cannot act with the restraint of an accomplished diplomat.

No man is a man until he has been a soldier.

I had been in that part of the world as a soldier in Korea, so I had been interested in Vietnam.

I live a soldier's life when I'm working. That's how it feels to me, except I've got a slightly greater chance of survival.

During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American footsoldiers. Not one of them, however, had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice.

I am not going to talk about patriotism, duty, liberty, and the defense of freedom because that's all dung to a soldier.

I drew pictures for and about the soldiers because I knew what their life was like and understood their gripes. I wanted to make something out of the humorous situations which come up even when you don't think life could be any more miserable.

We have lost all sense of other considerations, because they are artificial. Only the facts are real and important to us. And good boots are hard to come by." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 2

Soldier or sailor, the fighting man is but a fiend; and the staff and body-guard of the Devil musters many a baton.

There was sort of a negative association with the military. Maybe growing up in the South or being in a family with members of the military, I didn't have that negative connotation, but I did have this 'separate' connotation. I was ashamed to realize I had it and did not realize I had it until I was [in Iraq]. I was so impressed by the people I met over there and there was just a sense of connection and gratitude towards those people.

Revolutions are good times for soldiers of talent and courage.