Desertion Quotes

I didn't desert the Democratic party; the Democratic party deserted me.

Resistance to conscription [in WWI] was quite strong. By the end of the war, the ranks of noncooperators were stunningly large. Roughly 3 million eligible men never registered, in violation of the law — compared with the 24 million who did. And some 338,000 who did register either failed to obey an induction notice or deserted after they joined the ranks .... Altogether, a higher percentage of American men successfully resisted conscription during World War I than during the Vietnam War half a century later.

Must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert? I think in such a case to silence the agitator and save the boy is not only constitutional, but withal, a great mercy.

Nobody grows old merely by living a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

An officer in Howe's army told me they executed ONLY two men in the last year. Their discipline prevents crimes. OUR WANT of it creates them. We have had 20 executions in the last year, & our army is not a bit the better for them. If Howe should lie still, desertions, sickness, accidental deaths & executions would waste our whole army in one year.

One who deserteth the Means, deserteth the Ends

The soldier may die; the deserter must die.

On a visit to Cologne in March 1945, after a heavy bombing, I met hundreds and hundreds of deserters who were squatting in the rubble, many in the deep cellars left from Roman times. They had been hiding there after the retreat from France.

Cairo became an empty desert, and there was no one to be seen in the streets. A man could go from the Zuwayla Gate to the Bab al-Nasr without encountering another soul. Wailing could be heard on all sides, and you did not pass a house without being assailed by shrieks. Corpses lay piled along the public way, burial trains jostled one another, and the dead were carried to the graves amidst commotion.

Nobody loves you when you're down and out.

So he was deserted. The whole world was clamouring: Kill yourself, kill yourself, for our sakes. But why should he kill himself for their sakes? Food was pleasant; the sun hot; and this killing oneself, how does one set about it, with a table knife, uglily, with floods of blood, - by sucking a gaspipe? He was too weak; he could scarcely raise his hand. Besides, now that he was quite alone, condemned, deserted, as those who are about to die are alone, there was a luxury in it, an isolation full of sublimity; a freedom which the attached can never know.

Somehow our society must make it right and possible for old people not to fear the young or be deserted by them.

It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that everyone was forsaking me and going away from me.

My daddy left home when I was three and he didn't leave much to Ma and me, just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.

Men who abandon their units, if there be any such, are to be hunted down and immediately shot.

The brave man inattentive to his duty, is worth little more to his country than the coward who deserts in the hour of danger.

So she doesn't call desertion, poverty, and hard work troubles? She's a brave little girl, and I shall be proud to know her.

I would rather reign in a desert than over a country peopled with heretics.

It suddenly seemed to me that I was lonely, that every one was forsaking me and going away from me. Of course, any one is entitled to ask who "every one" was. For though I had been living almost eight years in Petersburg I had hardly an acquaintance. But what did I want with acquaintances? I was acquainted with all Petersburg as it was.

When the strong box contains no more both friends and flatterers shun the door.

The desertion of the army is now the most serious evil we have to encounter.

My father is American and deserted the Vietnam War.

Many free countries have lost their liberty, and ours may lose hers; but, if she shall, be it my proudest plume, not that I was the last to desert, but that I never deserted her.

The environmental movement doesn't have many deserters and has a high level of recruitment. Eventually, there will be open war.

And voices singing out of empty cisterns and exhausted wells.