Army Service Quotes & Sayings

If the ghost that haunts the towns of Ypres and Arras and Albert is the staturory British Tommy, slogging with rifle and pack through its ruined streets to this well-documented destiny 'up the line', then the ghost of Boulogne and Etaples and Rouen ought to be a girl. She's called Elsie or Gladys or Dorothy, her ankles are swollen, her feet are aching, her hands reddened and rough. She has little money, no vote, and has almost forgotten what it feels like to be really warm. She sleeps in a tent. Unless she has told a diplomatic lie about her age, she is twenty-three. She is the daughter of a clergyman, a lawyer or a prosperous businessman, and has been privately educated and groomed to be a 'lady'. She wears the unbecoming outdoor uniform of a VAD or an army nurse. She is on active service, and as much a part of the war as Tommy Atkins. — Lyn Macdonald

Combat and rape, the public and private forms of organized social violence, are primarily experiences of adolescent and early adult life. The United States Army enlists young men at seventeen; the average age of the Vietnam combat soldier was nineteen. In many other countries boys are conscripted for military service while barely in their teens. Similarly, the period of highest risk for rape is in late adolescence. Half of all victims are aged twenty or younger at the time they are raped; three-quarters are between the ages of thirteen and twenty-six. The period of greatest psychological vulnerability is also in reality the period of greatest traumatic exposure, for both young men and young women. Rape and combat might thus be considered complementary social rites of initiation into the coercive violence at the foundation of adult society. They are the paradigmatic forms of trauma for women and men. — Judith Lewis Herman

Here I was presented with an opportunity of speaking before quite a large audience. I was now able to confirm what I had hitherto merely felt, namely, that I had a talent for public speaking. My voice had become- so much better that I could be well understood, at least in all parts of the small hall where the soldiers assembled. No task could have been more pleasing to me than this one; for now, before being demobilized, I was in a position to render useful service to an institution which had been infinitely dear to my heart: namely, the army. — Adolf Hitler

After I spent my compulsory army service in the 'top secret office' of the Medical Forces, where I was fortunate to be exposed to clinical and medical issues, I enrolled to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. — Ada Yonath

My hope and prayer for all who read this book is a reformation - that an army of African-American men will make their way back into the church, back into the leadership of the church, back into leading a change in the church to be and do what it is called to be and do, so that we may have power to do good for our people, and people all over the world, in a way that no government or service organization has been or will be able to do, and that no one will be able to take away. — Eric Redmond

The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness. — Leo Tolstoy

So I didn't pass. It was the army's decision that they didn't want me to go into the service. They're the boss. I don't want to say no whole lot about it. — Muhammad Ali

Our people are not calculated to be confined in garrisons or kept in any particular service; they soon grow troublesome and uneasy by reflecting on their folly in bringing themselves into a state of subjection when they might have continued free and independent'. This was a society unlike any in the world, in which people placed great value on their status as independent individuals, beholden to no man. They were suspicious of standing armies and impatient of discipline, and while they realized the need to resist the enemy, they preferred to do so on their own terms at a time and place of their own choosing. It did not make for the kind of army on which generals could pin great hopes. — Richard M. Ketchum

The General most earnestly requires, and expects, a due observance of those articles of war, established for the government of the army which forbid profane cursing, swearing and drunkenness; and in like manner requires and expects, of all officers, and soldiers, not engaged on actual duty, a punctual attendance on divine service, to implore the blessings of heaven upon the means used for our safety and defence. — George Washington

The White House released documents it claims validates the president's (National Guard) service ... When deciphered the documents showed that in a one-year period, 1972 and 1973, Bush received credit for nine days of active National Guard service. The traditional term of service then and now for the National Guard is one weekend a month and two full weeks a year, meaning that Bush's nine-day stint qualifies him only for the National Guard's National Guard. That's the National Guard's National Guard, an Army of None. — Jon Stewart

The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one's country — George S. Patton Jr.

I've always had this core belief in public service. Even before I became a citizen, I volunteered in the Army. — Gregorio Sablan

Centralized sounds good ... but the reality is that the National Guard and Army don't have the kind of ties with local organizations that ultimately deliver lots of service, your nonprofits, churches, humanitarian organizations. Those types of linkages get built up over time, in local communities. — Peter May

As he spoke, he looked into their faces and saw, as though in his own features, that fundamentally they all bore the indelible impress of a similar background: army tradition; long spells of garrison service in a world isolated from the rest of society; a sense of alienation, of being despised by that society and ridiculed by liberal writers; the official ban on discussing politics and political literature, resulting in a blunting or stultifying of the intellect; a permanent shortage of money; and yet, despite it all, the knowledge that they represented, in purified and concentrated form, the vitality and courage of the whole nation. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Who supports the troops? The troops support the troops. — Clint Van Winkle

In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment. — Edward Gibbon

All the qualities of a man acquire dignity when he knows that the service of the collectivity that owns him needs them. If proud of the collectivity, his own pride rises in proportion. No collectivity is like an army for nourishing such pride ... — William James

There was a nuisance in the service known as the army correspondent. — Daniel H. Hill

Best if the driver didn't have to get hurt. Though having been fool enough to volunteer for army service, of course, and worse still, having been fool enough to accept orders unquestioningly from a machine ...
But everybody did that. Everybody, all the time. Otherwise none of this would have been possible.
Similarly, none of it would have had to happen. — John Brunner

That there would be a political advantage in having the declaration written by a Virginian was clear, for the same reason there had been political advantage in having the Virginian Washington in command of the army. But be that as it may, Jefferson, with his "peculiar felicity of expression," as Adams said, was the best choice for the task, just as Washington had been the best choice to command the Continental Army, and again Adams had played a key part. Had his contributions as a member of Congress been only that of casting the two Virginians in their respective, fateful roles, his service to the American cause would have been very great. — David McCullough

Iraq had forced massive changes to the Army's equipment, training, and strategy. But the most important legacy of the war had been cultural. The war had upended most of the service's basic assumption about how it should fight, undermining the Powell Doctrine with its emphasis on short, intense wars not replacing it with anything nearly so straightforward. Chiarelli wasn't sure he could predict what the next war would look like. But he knew what kind of officers would be needed. He wanted an officer corps that argued, debated, and took intellectual risks. Even that laudable goal was far from accepted within the Army. — David Cloud

The oldest of the service branches, the Army as an insitution has maintained the protocol, customs, and courtesies of a bygone era. At their best these can be an indearing salute to the past: The gracious homes, the parades and pageantry, the patriotic speeches, the uniforms and balls are all throwbacks to a simpler, more innocent time. — Tanya Biank

To those who fought World War II, it was plain enough that Allied bombs were killing huge numbers of German civilians, that Churchill was fighting to preserve imperialism as well as democracy, and that the bulk of the dying in Europe was being done by the Red Army at the service of Stalin. It is only in retrospect that we begin to simplify experience into myth - because we need stories to live by, because we want to honor our ancestors and our country instead of doubting them. In this way, a necessary but terrible war is simplified into a "good war," and we start to feel shy or guilty at any reminder of the moral compromises and outright betrayals that are inseparable from every combat. The best history writing reverses this process, restoring complexity to our sense of the past. — Adam Kirsch

Totalitarianism extends to whatever touches it ... psychological technique, as it operates in the army or in a great industrial plant, entails a direct action on the family. It involves a psychological adaptation of family life to military or industrial methods, supervision of family life, and training family life for military or industrial service. Technique can leave nothing untouched in a civilization. Everything is its concern. Technique, which is destroying all other civilizations, is more than a simple mechanism: it's a whole civilization in itself. — Jacques Ellul

In those days, reserve duty lasted for six years, which, I might add, was three times as long as service in the regular army, although to be perfectly honest, I was unable to fulfill my entire obligation because I was taking acting classes and they said I could skip my last year. — Larry David

I was first introduced to Kafka's writing during my compulsory army-service basic training. During that period, Kafka's fiction felt hyperrealistic. — Etgar Keret

Because of my own family's service (in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Massachusetts and New York National Guard), I am a strong supporter of the military and do believe that there are just wars. — Camille Paglia

One-year enlistment had proven problematic since the troops were scheduled to rotate out of the army just when they had begun to internalize the discipline of military service and became reliable soldiers. — Joseph J. Ellis

The next thing I knew, I was out of the service and making movies again. My first picture was called, GI Blues. I thought I was still in the army. — Elvis Presley

What we need is a royal army of returned missionaries reenlisted into service. — L. Tom Perry

Finished their compulsory training under universal service and were between the ages of twenty-three and thirty-four were classed as reserves. Upon mobilization the youngest classes filled out the regular army units to war strength; the others were formed into reserve regiments, — Barbara W. Tuchman

Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defense, the militia, is put in the hands of Congress? Of what service would militia be to you when, most probably, you will not have a single musket in the state? For, as arms are to be provided by Congress, they may or may not provide them. — Patrick Henry

With the backdrop of The Salvation Army's century and a half of service to the world's poor, these songs and reflections are born of meaningful engagement with a living Gospel — Sara Groves

I don't want to sound like an ad, a public service ad on TV, but the fact is if you can read, you can walk into a job later on. If you don't, then you've got, the Army, Iraq, I don't know, something like that. It's, it's not as bright. So, that's my little commercial for that. — Stephen King

From the moment the organizer enters a community he lives, dreams ... only one thing and that is to build the mass power base of what he calls the army. Until he has developed that mass power base, he confronts no major issues ... Until he has those means and power instruments, his tactics are very different from power tactics. Therefore, every move revolves around one central point: how many recruits will this bring into the organization, whether by means of local organizations, churches, service groups, labor Unions, corner gangs, or as individuals. — Saul Alinsky

My time in the Army gave me an understanding for what it takes to provide for our national security and what it means to our service members and their families. — James Inhofe

The president is commander-in-chief of the army and navy and of the state militia when called into the service of the United States. He holds this power in time of peace as well as in time of war. — Charles A. Beard

Look at all the marriages that have been wonderfully successful where fellows finished their army service and came home to go to college on G.I. bills and their wives worked. — Marta Kristen

Nothing can be more hurtful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another. — George Washington

This revolutionary idea of Western citizenship - replete with ever more rights and responsibilities - would provide superb manpower for growing legions and a legal framework that would guarantee that the men who fought felt that they themselves in a formal and contractual sense had ratified the conditions of their own battle service. The ancient Western world would soon come to define itself by culture rather than by race, skin color, or language. That idea alone would eventually bring enormous advantages to its armies on the battlefield. (p. 122) — Victor Davis Hanson

God uses millions of no-name influencers every day in the simplest selfless acts of service. They are the teachers whose names will never be in the newspaper, pastors who will never author a book, managers who will never be profiled in a magazine, artists whose work is buried in layers of collaboration, writers whose sphere of influence is a few dozen people who read their blogs. But they are the army that makes things happen. To them devotion is its own reward. For them influence is a continual act of giving, nothing more complicated than that. — Mel Lawrenz

Giving kids clothes and food is one thing, but it's much more important to teach them that other people besides themselves are important and that the best thing they can do with their lives is to use them in the service of other people. — Dolores Huerta

His woolly grey hair, short thick body, air of perpetual busyness, suggested an industrious gnome conscripted into the service of the army; a gnome who also liked to practise considerable malice against the race of men with whom he mingled, by making as complicated as possible every transaction they had to execute through himself. — Anthony Powell

So, he reasoned, if you can identify the sources of a government's power - people working in civil service, police and judges, even the army - then you know what a dictatorship depends on for its existence. — Gene Sharp

Lee tells his troops. After four years of arduous service marked by unsurpassed courage and fortitude the Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources. — Robert E.Lee

When an army unit returns from service in Iraq or Afghanistan, it barely gets a breather before it begins training for its next deployment. — Hillary Clinton

Stella was one of Mr Bullock's 'chorus girls' and confessed (readily) to being a 'striptease artiste' but Mr Armitage the opera singer said, "We're all artistes here, darling."
"What a bloody fairy that man is," Mr Bullock muttered, "put him in the army, that would sort him out." "I doubt it," Miss Woolf said. (And it did rather beg the question why the strapping Mr Bullock himself had not been called up for active service.) "So," Mr Bullock concluded, "we've got a Yid, a pansy and a tart, sounds like a dirty music-hall joke."
"It is intolerance that has brought us to this pass, Mr Bullock," Miss Woolf reproved him midly. — Kate Atkinson

The Army's new pitch was simple. Good pay, good benefits, a manageable amount of adventure ... but don't worry, we're not looking to pick fights these days. For a country that had paid so dear a price for its recent military buccaneering, the message was comforting. We still had the largest and most technologically advanced standing army in the world, the most nuclear weapons, the best and most powerful conventional weapons systems, the biggest navy. At the same time, to the average recruit the promise wasn't some imminent and dangerous combat deployment; it was 288 bucks a month (every month), training, travel, and experience. Selling the post-Vietnam military as a career choice meant selling the idea of peacetime service. It meant selling the idea of peacetime. Barf. — Rachel Maddow

This world is intended to toughen us for the next life. She says that our honesty, integrity, courage, and determined resistance to evil are evaluated at the end of our days here, and that if we come up to muster, we will be conscripted into an army of souls engaged in some great mission in the next world. Those who fail the test simply cease to exist. In short, Stormy sees this life as boot camp. She calls the next life service. — Dean Koontz

The only use for military service is that it reveals the number of morons in the population," he would remark. "And that can be discovered in the first two weeks; there's no need for two years. Army, Marriage, the Church and Banking: the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Yes, go on, laugh. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

At the age of nineteen, on my own initiative and at my own expense, I raised an army by means of which I restored liberty to the republic, which had been oppressed by the tyranny of a faction. For which service the senate, with complimentary resolutions, enrolled me in its order ... — Augustus

I don't miss the bureaucracy of being in the Army. But I still love the relationships you can build. And it doesn't have to be in military service - it can be anything you're doing with someone that matters. You develop a bond. — Stanley A. McChrystal

Maybe the answer to Selective Service is to start everyone off in the army and draft them for civilian life as needed. — Bill Vaughan

So long as the Constitution is not amended beyond recognition, so long as elections are held regularly and fairly and the ethos of secularism broadly prevails, so long as citizens can speak and write in the language of their choosing, so long as there is an integrated market and a moderately efficient civil service and army, and - lest I forget - so long as Hindi films are watched and their songs sung, India will survive — Ramachandra Guha

No sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, no aristocracy, no church, no clergy, no army, no diplomatic service, no country gentlemen, no palaces, no castles, nor manors, nor old country-houses, nor parsonages, nor thatched cottages nor ivied ruins no cathedrals, nor abbeys, nor little Norman churches no great Universities nor public schools
no Oxford, nor Eton, nor Harrow no literature, no novels, no museums, no pictures, no political society, no sporting class
no Epsom nor Ascot Some such list as that might be drawn up of the absent things in American life. — Henry James

The one thing I never want to see again is a military parade. When I resigned from the army and went to a farm I was happy. When the rebellion came, I returned to the service because it was a duty. I had no thought of rank; all I did was try and make. — Ulysses S. Grant

Length of service: one year or duration of war. Duration of war, of course. He didn't want to spend a whole year in the army. — Louisa Young

The military offered the opportunity to see the world, and meet other people and learn new customs. Plus, the Army taught soldiers discipline. The life I experienced in the service was an education I could never have obtained as a cowboy. — Tom Johnson

Most people today couldn't tell a bombardier from a brigadier - said during a lecture in aid of the Army Benevolent Fund in 2009 — Richard Holmes

I regret that the Army felt it was necessary to rescind their invitation to the National Day of Prayer Task Force to participate in the Pentagon's special prayer service. I want to express my strong support for the United States military and all our troops. I will continue to pray that God will give them guidance, wisdom and protection as they serve this great country. — Franklin Graham

Justice Denied
Thousands of women, probably more
I cannot reach them behind justice doors
Many stay silent, barred just like me.
Haunted by demons, faces unseen.
Still by the hundreds, they continue to serve
Duty and country, active and reserve.
Thankless, forgotten through America's wars
Scarred like their brethren, treated as foes.
Volunteered to go to the shores.
Died like the others, shamed to the core.
Where is the dignity, long since denied?
Lost in the White House of Justice Denied
Women in service since beginning of time
Often they're treated like victims in crime.
Where is their voice, silence throughout the years?
It's dead in the Senate and House, with their tears! — Diane Chamberlain

Under the chivalrous rules of warfare as practiced in Europe and the Middle East during the Crusades, enemy aristocrats displayed superficial, and often pompous, respect for one another while freely slaughtering common soldiers. Rather than kill their aristocratic enemy on the battlefield, they preferred to capture him as a hostage whom they could ransom back to his family or country. The Mongols did not share this code. To the contrary, they sought to kill all the aristocrats as quickly as possible in order to prevent future wars against them, and Genghis Khan never accepted enemy aristocrats into his army and rarely into his service in any capacity. — Jack Weatherford