Ralph Waldo Emerson Quotes

I can't tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I'd done so much reading.

Every soldier must know, before he goes into battle, how the little battle he is to fight fits into the larger picture, and how the success of his fighting will influence the battle as a whole.

The enemy would not have been in danger if Mr. Stanton had been in the field.

When I was in the Army, 100 percent of our effort was to really be sharp, and soldiers, we were under live fire all the time.

What do I care about danger? I've sent soldiers and airmen to death against the enemy - why should I be afraid?

If there were 10,000 U.S. forces ashore [in Lebanon], authorized to move about, there would be less risk to American lives than there is with an immobile force of 1,300.

How are you, G.I. Joe? It seems to me that most of you are poorly informed about the going of the war, to say nothing about a correct explanation of your presence over here. Nothing is more confused than to be ordered into a war to die.

Soldiers! Here is the battle you have so long desired! Henceforth victory depends on you; we have need of it.

Actual combat experience is the only teacher. You never come out of a skirmish without having picked up a couple of new tricks; without having learned more about your enemy...Total involvement with the war was the only thing that kept me alive and pushing.

Can the foot soldier teach anything important about war, merely for having been there? I think not. He can tell war stories.

Air Power is, above all, a psychological weapon - and only short-sighted soldiers, too battle-minded, underrate the importance of psychological factors in war.

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.

It was the German schoolhouse which destroyed Napoleon III. France, since then, is making monster cannon and drilling soldiers still, but she is also building schoolhouses. As long as war is possible, anything that makes better soldiers people want.

These kids today, they want to be men, they want to be foxhole guys, but they’re not being allowed to do that. Imagine if these computer geeks who are running baseball now were allowed to run a war? They’d be telling our soldiers: ‘That’s enough. You’ve fired too many bullets from your rifle this week!’

The truth is, no study is possible on the battle-field; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows . Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well.

The hardest thing of all for a soldier is to retreat.

To have good soldiers, a nation must always be at war.

Therefore I say: know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never be in peril. When you are ignorant of the enemy but know yourself, your chances of winning or losing are equal. If ignorant both of your enemy and of yourself, you are certain in every battle to be in peril.

We of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility: But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger.

An all-volunteer army is best suited to fight the new wars of the 21st century.

It is not set speeches at the moment of battle that render soldiers brave.

So there might be a kind of collective effort that allows for those risks to be taken, pose a certain danger but not a suicidal one.

When a general, unable to estimate the enemy's strength, allows an inferior force to engage a larger one, or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one, and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank, the result must be rout.

Sometimes I think we can tell how important it is to risk by how dangerous it is to do so.