Charles XII of Sweden quotes

“I have resolved never to start an unjust war, but never to end a legitimate one except by defeating my enemies.”
-- Charles XII of Sweden

#War Quotes #Enemy Quotes #Unjust Quotes

“His Majesty the King requires that the Royal Chancellery in all written documents endeavor to write in clear, plain Swedish.”
-- Charles XII of Sweden

#Kings Quotes #Writing Quotes #Royal Quotes

“This shall hence become my music.”
-- Charles XII of Sweden

#Military Quotes

“I'll likely be married to the soldier mob for better and for worse to live and to die.”
-- Charles XII of Sweden

#Military Quotes #Soldier Quotes #Married Quotes

“A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the brigadiers, then a bit of a gap and the colonels and wing commanders and passed-over majors, then a steady trickle of captains and lieutenants. As they get older and rarer, so the soldiers are mythologised and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honours like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that.”

“Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.”

“War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life.”

“Bismarck fought 'necessary' wars and killed thousands, the idealists of the twentieth century fight 'just' wars and kill millions.”

“Even if my country remains in war with yours. . .remember. . . i am not your enemy.”

“I never encourage deceit, and falsehood, especially if you have got a bad memory, is the worst enemy a fellow can have. The fact is truth is your truest friend, no matter what the circumstances are.”

Source : Rosemary Altea (2008). “A Matter of Life and Death: Remarkable True Stories of Hope and Healing”, p.203, Penguin

“Have I not destroyed my enemy when I have made him into my friend?”

“We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.”

“How to achieve the moral breakdown of the enemy before the war has started - that is the problem that interests me. Whoever has experienced war at the front will want to refrain from all avoidable bloodshed.”

“There's no free will," says the philosopher; "To hang is most unjust." "There is no free will," assents the officer; "We hang because we must.”