Military Life Quotes:

A military life has ever comported with my inclination.

- George Stoneman

topic: Military, Military Life

I am one of the million or more male residents of the United Kingdom, who a year ago had no special yearning towards military life, but who joined the army after war was declared.

- Patrick MacGill

source: Patrick MacGill (2008). “The Amateur Army”, Forbes Press

topic: Military, War, Army, Military Life

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

- Nathan Hale

source: Before being executed as a spy by the British, 22 September 1776, in Henry Phelps Johnston 'Nathan Hale, 1776' (1914) ch. 7.

topic: Inspirational, Life, Country, Independence Day Patriotic, American Revolution

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

source: Speech in Washington, 16 Apr. 1953, in Public Papers of Presidents 1953 (1960) p. 182

topic: Peace, Children, Military, Hunger And Poverty, Make Love Not War

We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.

- Winston Churchill

topic: Inspirational, Strength, Beach, Military Leadership, Never Surrender

The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

- Winston Churchill

topic: Gratitude, War, Home, Military History, Military Power

The sergeant was describing a military life. It was all drinking, he said, except that there were frequent intervals of eating and love making.

- Charles Dickens

source: Charles Dickens (1874). “Barnaby Rudge. Sketches. pt.2”

topic: Military, Drinking, And Love, Military Life

I liked the military life. They teach you self-sufficiency early on. I always say that I learned most of what I know about leadership in the Marine Corps. Certain basic principles stay with you - sometimes consciously, mostly unconsciously.

- Raymond Kelly

topic: Military, Marine, Self, Military Life

The allure of military life and its heroic promise seem indestructible, but nothing threatens the romance of war more effectively than war itself.

- Elizabeth Samet

source: Elizabeth D. Samet (2007). “Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point”, p.55, Macmillan

topic: Military, War, Romance, Allure, Military Life

Chickenshit refers to behavior that makes military life worse than it need be: petty harassment of the weak by the strong; open scrimmage for power and authority and prestige; sadism thinly disguised as necessary discipline; a constant 'paying off of old scores'; and insistence on the letter rather than the spirit of ordinances.

- Paul Fussell

source: "Private Ryan was a hero, but there were bums, too" by Stephen Ambrose, www.cnn.com. August 5, 1998.

topic: Strong, Military, Discipline, Sadism, Ordinances

The progress of manufactures and commerce insensibly collects a large multitude within the walls of a city: but these citizens are no longer soldiers; and the arts which adorn and improve the state of civil society, corrupt the habits of the military life.

- Edward Gibbon

source: Edward Gibbon (2016). “The Collected Works of Edward Gibbon: Historical Works, Autobiographical Writings and Private Letters, Including The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire”, p.1212, e-artnow

topic: Art, Wall, Military, Military Life

The entrance of the woman with equal rights into practical modern life, her new freedom, her finding herself side by side with men in the streets, offices, professions, factories, sports, and now even in political and military life, is one of those dissolutive phenomena in which, in most cases, it is difficult to perceive anything positive. In essence, all this is simply the renunciation of the woman's right to be a woman.

- Julius Evola

topic: Sports, Military, Men, Military Life

As there is no pleasure in military life for a soldier who fears death, so there is no independence in civil existence for the man who has an overpowering dread of solitude.

- Philip Gilbert Hamerton

topic: Military, Men, Solitude, Overpowering, Military Life

A military life had no charms for me, and I had not the faintest idea of staying in the army even if I should be graduated, which I did not expect,

- Ulysses S. Grant

topic: Military, Army, Ideas, Military Life