Casualty Quotes & Sayings

So please stop pretending you were the only casualty in the game of you and me. Because I bled just like you did. I died a little that day too. — Nicole Williams

A cousin of mine who was a casualty surgeon in Manhattan tells me that he and his colleagues had a one-word nickname for bikers: Donors. Rather chilling. — Stephen Fry

We should never allow presentation to become a casualty of method. — Tommy Wonder

And you, Tacitus,
observe how I make my grove
on an old crannog
piled by the fearful dead:

a desolate peace.
Our mother ground
in sour with the blood
of her faithful,

they lie gargling
in her sacred heart
as the legions stare
from the ramparts.

Come back to this
'island of the ocean'
where nothing will suffice.
Read the inhumed faces

of casualty and victim;
report us fairly,
how we slaughter
for the common good

and shave the heads
of the notorious,
how the goddess swallows
our love and terror.
- Kinship — Seamus Heaney

stayed as close to Theatre as she could, working Casualty or Men's; — Colleen McCullough

Hospitals strip a lot from you - your independence, your confidence, sometimes your will to live. But pettiness too. Pettiness is the first casualty of the ICU waiting room. No one has the energy for it. — Dennis Lehane

A martyr's just a casualty with really good PR. I'd rather be a living coward any day. — Mira Grant

I was done with hesitation. It wasn't just that we'd run out of options, or that so much was riding on the firebird's power. I'd simply grown ruthless enough or selfish enough to take another creature's life. But I missed the girl who had shown the stag mercy, who had been strong enough to turn away from the lure of power, who had believed in something more. Another casualty of this war. — Leigh Bardugo

I like to be alone so I can write. But focus can hurt you. I don't want to be some stress casualty in early middle age. — James Ellroy

Every finding costs a casualty, every search done makes you victim. Every though makes you easy as a victim. — Deyth Banger

Every marriage that ends in divorce; every serviceman who kills him- or herself; and every time a young warrior experience substance abuse issues, we witness a casualty of war. — Jay Kopelman

In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion. — James Reston

I don't want to waste my time, being another casualty of society — Sum 41

States will invent obscure constructs like "white privilege" and "male privilege" because they are convenient to further the state's ends. They are untestable, unmeasurable, and unprovable, but they sound legitimate to those who consider themselves a casualty of society. Despite the lack of evidence, they put the burden on the white male to disprove the accuser. Since no such constructs exist, no method of defense is possible. — Stefan Molyneux

Sarah Palin and her virtual burqa have me and my friends retching into our handbags. She's such a power-mad, backwater beauty-pageant casualty, it's easy to write her off and make fun of her. But in reality I feel as horrified as a ghetto Jew watching the rise of National Socialism. — Cintra Wilson

More than men had died at Lincoln. It seemed to Stephen that reality was a casualty, too, for nothing made sense anymore. What was he doing here in the solar of Lincoln Castle, bleeding all over the Earl of Chester's wife? — Sharon Kay Penman

I think the self-burning itself on practice of non-violence. These people, you see, they easily use bomb explosive, more casualty people. But they didn't do that. Only sacrifice their own life. So this also is part of practice of non-violence. — Dalai Lama

A terrorist, massive, casualty-producing event [will occur] somewhere in the Western world - it may be in the United States of America - that causes our population to question our own Constitution and to begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass, casualty-producing event. — Tommy Franks

We've all but abandoned soaps in our own culture. I lost my beloved 'Guiding Light' in 2009, and 'One Life to Live' was just the latest casualty to fall beneath the programming axes. — Teresa Medeiros

The image of the scientist who puts the pursuit of truth before anything else has been shattered and replaced by a man on the make or a quasi-religious enthusiast who wants to prove his case at any cost. Science is becoming the tool of campaigning warfare, in which truth is the first casualty. — Paul Johnson

Aeschylus said, 'In war, truth is the first casualty.' now we can add politics." Captain Hank Bracker — Hank Bracker

Well, politics is war, and in war, truth is the first casualty. — Jeff Greenfield

I was disappearing. It was as if I stripped myself away in that darkened
bedroom on a spring afternoon, and when I was finished there would be a pile of
clothes neatly folded and I would be another number for the cable news shows. I
could almost hear it. "Another casualty today," they'd say, "vanished into thin
air after arriving home." Fine. I leaned down and finished unlacing the boot
and strung the dog tag back around my neck and let it lie against the other.
Left boot and left sock off. Pants off. Underwear off. I was gone. — Kevin Powers

Reagan was president. He had the authority to end the infighting, set policy, and advance American interests in the Middle East. Before him was a clear choice; Shultz arguing for engagement, Weinberger for disengagement. Engagement would likely have involved the use of military force; disengagement offered the comfort of a casualty-free retreat. In the post-Vietnam era, for this president, at this time, disengagement made more sense. He still talked a good game, but when it was time for a decision, he punted. "In the weeks immediately after the bombing," he later wrote, "I believed the last thing we should do was turn tail and leave."58 And yet, fearful of another Vietnam, he waited a few months and then pulled the remaining marines out of Beirut. According to McFarlane many years later, his decision opened the door to the terrorism that has plagued the region and the world ever since. "I am convinced we could have stopped it then, just as it was starting, but Reagan chose not to. — Marvin Kalb

It was this newsletter thing called "They Walk Among Us" ... All the news that no one in their right mind would ever believe. It's all this stuff about aliens and weird happenings that might be connected to alines. Like, apparently a twelve-year-old girl was murdered in London and people think she might have been a casualty in a secret war between extraterrestrials living on Earth. Totally nuts. — Pittacus Lore

I am not only a casualty, I am also a warrior. — Audre Lorde

I've been accused of every death except the casualty list of the World War. — Al Capone

What sort of soldier are you? she asked. Not much of one. Using his book, he tapped the triangular brown patch with its inset green circle sewn on his tunic shoulder. 2/7th Casualty Clearing Station. I'm a doctor. He — Richard Flanagan

Like secondhand smoke, the leakage of emotions can make a bystander an innocent casualty of someone else's toxic state. — Daniel Goleman

As many as six out of ten American adults have never read a book of any kind, and the bulletins from the nation's educational frontiers read like the casualty reports from a lost war. — Lewis H. Lapham

There is no such thing as a natural disaster. In earthquakes the architecture fails. If you're out in a grassy meadow, it doesn't matter how big the earthquake is: it might knock you down, but if nothing falls on top of you and nothing catches fire from broken gas mains or power lines, then you're probably okay. Architecture is the first casualty of earthquakes, and human beings under the architecture are the casualties of the architecture. Even with a wholly natural disaster, whatever that might be - a tsunami, maybe - who gets help, who has resources to rebuild, who is treated as a threat or a malingerer - those are not natural but social phenomena. — Rebecca Solnit

The first casualty of the conflict must be our own sentimentality — Max Brooks

They would have all the same stressors still in place, and they would have no means of lessening them, because, their will, if they had amassed any in their time away, was still weak and always a quick casualty. No match for the horrors of lost chances. — Norah Vincent

Christina Baker Kline writes exquisitely about two unlikely friends - one, a 91-year-old survivor of the grinding poverty of rural Ireland, immigrant New York and the hardscrabble Midwest; and the other, a casualty of a string of foster homes - each struggling to transcend a past of isolation and hardship. Orphan Train will hold you in its grip as their fascinating tales unfold. — Cathy Marie Buchanan

I was being taken around by a press agent at the Venice Film Festival at age 18. Was it fun? Sure. But it was a dangerous path to be walking on as far as having a substantive life. Because the casualty rate at the Venice Film Festival for 18-year-olds? High. — Ethan Hawke

Truth be told, if Islam and the Sixth Mass Extinction continue on their path unhindered, chances are worlds will collide with high casualty rates... — Anita B. Sulser PhD

As the mask of deception falls off the face of humanity
Unveiling the grim reality of duality
In which everyone is a casualty, no one will be exempt
Truth has many shades
It's not a matter of black and white, but gray
Although many, we are one, so in the final analysis
Could it be that we are fighting a war that can't be won? — Morgan Freeman

If truth is the main casualty in war, ambiguity is another. — Paul Fussell

When love dies and a marriage lies in ruins, the first casualty is honest memory, decent, impartial recall of the past. Too inconvenient, too damning of the present. It's the spectre of old happiness at the feast of failure and desolation. — Ian McEwan

The marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable.
The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not, he will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, or swabbie, or desk jockey, because this is war, baby, and war is hell. — Steven Pressfield

When times are tough, vision is the first casualty. Before conditions can improve, it is the first thing we must recover. — Michael Hyatt

Years go by Will I still be waiting For somebody else to understand Years go by If I'm stripped of my beauty And the orange clouds Raining in head Years go by Will I choke on my tears Till finally there is nothing left One more casualty You know we're too easy Easy Easy — Tori Amos

I met this kid from Miles City, Montana, who read the Stars and Stripes every day, checking the casualty lists to see if by some chance anybody form his home town had been killed. He didn't even know if there was anyone else from Miles City in Vietnam, but he checked anyway because he knew for sure that if there was someone else and they got killed, he would be all right. I mean, can you just see *two* guys from a raggedy-ass town like Miles City getting killed in Vietnam? — Michael Herr

My throat closes up then, and we're both silent, with only the rain on the roof to break up the quiet. I study the girl I knew, another casualty of this fight, wondering how the wounds of it will mark her.
"Clear skies, Sof." It's all I have left to say.
"Clear skies," she whispers. "I hope you find what you're looking for. — Amie Kaufman

Hosiah Lister, now dead, rec'd his freedom."
Consider, then, the full measure of my sadness, reading this inscription; not merely for Hosiah Lister, but for all of us, consider the dear cost of liberty in a world so hostile, so teeming with enemies and opportunists, that one could not become free without casting aside all casualty, all choice, all will, all identity; finding freedom only in the spacious blankness of unbeing, the wide plains of nonentity, infinite and still. — M T Anderson

In war the first casualty is the truth. — Aeschylus

Truth is always the first casualty of war. — Aeschylus

The first casualty of hitting rock bottom is vanity. — Richard Paul Evans

Most executives I know are so action-oriented, or action-addicted, that time for reflection is the first casualty of their success. — Margaret Heffernan

So one important lesson of Vietnam is, the first casualty of an unwise and unjust war are the American troops called on to fight it. Their service should be honored. — Paul Begala

We've protected thousands of people in Libya; we have not seen a single U.S. casualty; there's no risks of additional escalation. This operation is limited in time and in scope. — Barack Obama

Nobody is asking you to forget," I said. "I'm asking you to remember those that you saved and to honour those you couldn't save. Giving up your life honours nobody, saves nobody. By living like this you're saying that life isn't precious. It is precious. Every life...including yours. Don't let Rwanda - don't let evil - claim one more victim. Don't let yourself be another casualty of Rwanda. — Eric Walters

Love is always the first casualty of a religious war, the second is Truth and the third...Humanity. — Jason Versey

There's two kinds of rock n' roll casualty: the one that has huge success and adoration, and then suddenly it stops. Or there's when you're in a band: it is all-consuming, so then you have the dream of that, and then the dream's taken away from you even before it happens. — Rhys Ifans

I consider myself a casualty, one of the many casualties of the war on terror. — Alberto Gonzales

If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war. Pentagon official, on why US military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War In time of war the first casualty is truth. — Boake Carter

My mother is a Senior Casualty Claims Specialist I, which in layman's terms means the head insurance adjuster! — Ciara Renee

Value investors will not invest in businesses that they cannot readily understand or ones they find excessively risky. Hence few value investors will own the shares of technology companies. Many also shun commercial banks, which they consider to have unanalyzable assets, as well as property and casualty insurance companies, which have both unanalyzable assets and liabilities. — Seth Klarman

Truth is always the first war casualty. The emotional disturbances and distortions in historical writing are greatest in wartime. — Harry Elmer Barnes

As in any war, the truth is the first casualty. I — John Grisham

Time for reflection and interaction is a casualty of the digital age, and one of the primary goals of higher education should be to reclaim this time. — Jose Antonio Bowen

Of the 664 men who rode into the Valley of Death about 540 eventually got out of it again. By far the highest casualty rate was among the horses. Compared with the Somme or an evening in the Blitz, the Valley of Death was a piece of cake. — Simon Heffer

Every human being wants to be seen, really seen, by another human being, not as a statistic in some sociological study, not as a casualty of poverty, not as a victim of a corrupt social structure. We can start by seeing both what is and what can be. — Nancy Rue

That goddamn Louis, you see what he done? Put his cigarette butt in here. I'm gonna punch him right in his smokin' mouth." Max turned back to the form, glades mutual casualty printed across the top. He said, "I know how you feel. But when you hit an ex-con who's done three falls, they say you better kill him. — Elmore Leonard

When love dies and marriage lies in ruins, the first casualty is honest memory, decent, impartial recall of the past. Too inconvenient, too damning of the present. It's the spectre of old happiness at the feast of failure and desolation. So, against that headwind of forgetfulness I want to place my little candle of truth and see how far it throws its light. — Ian McEwan

Innocence is doomed to die a senseless death at our own hands, a casualty of the mistakes we can never undo. So we lay to rest the wide-eyed wonder we once thrived upon, replacing it with the scars of which we never speak, too knotted for any amount of technology to repair. — Neal Shusterman

It is often observed that the first casualty of war is truth, but how do you tell the truth without betraying the sacrifice of those who accepted the terms of battle? War is a sacrificial system that creates its own justification. — Stanley Hauerwas

They keep telling us that in war truth is the first casualty, which is nonsense since it implies that in times of peace truth stays out of the sick bay or the graveyard. — Alexander Cockburn

Proving yourself in a field where the casualty rate is so notoriously high is an ongoing challenge. — Richard E. Grant

If you go through life being casual, you will end up a casualty — Les Brown

Like everything else in his life, he crashed forward, caution the first casualty. — Neal Shusterman

It is well known that in war, the first casualty is truth - that during any war truth is forsaken for propaganda. — Harry Browne

The first casualty when war comes is truth. — Hiram Johnson

Shocked to learn of the serious attacks against certain areas in New York City and Washington D.C. on September 11, which caused horrendous casualty, I wish to express, on behalf of the Chinese Government and people, our deepest sympathy and solicitude to you and, through you, to the Government and people of the United States. I wish also to extend our condolences to the families of the victims. The Chinese Government has consistently condemned and rejected all forms of terrorist violence. — Jiang Zemin

The Annual Register for 1763 tabulated the casualty list for British sailors in the Seven Years' War with France. Out of 184,899 men raised or rounded up for the war, 133, 708 died from disease, primarily scurvy, while only 1,512 were killed in action. — Stephen R. Brown

All this long human story, most passionate and tragic in the living, was but an unimportant, a seemingly barren and negligible effort, lasting only for a few moments in the life of the galaxy. When it was over, the host of the planetary systems still lived on, with here and there a casualty, and here and there among the stars a new planetary birth, and here and there a fresh disaster. — Olaf Stapledon

But all three of them had had to lose things in order to gain other things. Will had lost his shell and his cool and his distance, and he felt scared and vulnerable, but he got to be with Rachel; and Fiona had lost a big chunk of Marcus, and she got to stay away from the casualty ward; and Marcus had lost himself, and got to walk home from school with his shoes on. — Nick Hornby

When power is up for grabs," Pitt said, "the first casualty is often liberty. — Clive Cussler

Whereas once medieval Europe had adhered to a common Catholic religion, a common Latin language, and common well-spiced cuisine (at least, for the elite), the balkanization of the Christian world along national lines now meant that nations could no longer gather around the same table as easily as before. Even though it would take some years, the Europe-wide fashion for spices-as much as Latin-would be a casualty of Martin Luther's squabble with the bishop of Rome. — Michael Krondl

Freedom is often the first casualty of war. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

[The General Staff] maintained three sets of casualty figures, one to fool the public, one to fool the Government and one to fool themselves. — David Lloyd George

The first casualty in every war is truth. — Muriel Lester

In war, truth is often the first casualty. — Winston Churchill

Truth has anciently been called the first casualty of war. Money may, in fact, have priority. — John Kenneth Galbraith

In war, the first casualty is truth. — Aeschylus

Every step you take - everywhere you stand - the ground beneath your feet is tainted by some kind of casualty. It's an inescapable fact. Nothing is untouched by death. Nothing. — J.M. Darhower

There are no memories which I wanted to blot out of my mind. Always, I have been rather objective in my point of view, able to stand off and observe myself and my surroundings in a rather impersonal fashion. The actual sight of my first casualty was not nearly as bad as I had imagined. — James Carl Nelson

At Travelers, we were much more opportunistic. It was very successful, but it wasn't an integrated financial services company. We had a property casualty company, a life company, a brokerage company. We were a financial conglomerate. It wasn't a unified, coordinated strategy of any sort. When it merged with Citi, that became a big issue; Citi, at that time, wasn't yet a fully integrated, coordinated company. — Jamie Dimon

I was very careful to send Mr. Roosevelt every few days a statement of our casualties. I tried to keep before him all the time the casualty results because you get hardened to these things and you have to be very careful to keep them always in the forefront of your mind. — George C. Marshall

To say that the first casualty of war is truth is to miss the rather more important point that a principal weapon of war is lies. — Harry M. Collins

He is a true casualty of battle. There's not a physical scar, but look at the man's heart, and his head, and there are scars galore. — David Finkel

Men endure the losses that befall them by mere casualty with more patience than the damages they sustain by injustice. — Walter Raleigh

Truth is the first casualty of war. — Sophie Masson

It's often been observed that the first casualty of war is the truth. But that's a lie, too, in its way. The reality is that, for most wars to begin, the truth has to have been sacrificed a long time in advance. — L. Neil Smith

I have nothing to lose. My personal casualty means nothing. — Christopher Dorner

For political and bureaucratic reasons, governments at all levels are telling far less to the public than to insiders about how to prepare for and behave in the initial chaos of a mass-casualty event. — Barton Gellman

If you killl yourself, Comorra, it will wreck him. Utterly. Believe me on this one. So there you go - there's another casualty of war. And sure, in the grand scheme of things, whoop-dee-doo, who gives a crap about some dude's broken heart. But what about the not-so-grand scheme? Doesn't love count for something? Do you think all this ... this carnage would have happened if the Romans hadn't taken Prasutagus away from your mother? If she hadn't been so blinded by grief maybe she would have found a way to work things out with the governor instead of goading him to war." Clare shrugged helplessly. "I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe two people alone in the darkness can't generate enough light to drive it back. But maybe they can be a beacon for others. A candle in the window at midnight, you know? I mean, they can at least be there for each other, right? — Lesley Livingston

But unfortunately, in my unrelenting drive to get back on that drum stool, the major casualty in all of it was that I really forgot about me. — Rick Allen

Truth, it has been said, is the first casualty of war. — Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden

One of the comforts of firing a big gun during a siege must be the satisfaction of watching the results at long range. Inside a tank or behind an M107, a smudge of smoke against a building can be marked off against a map coordinate. The blood and shattered bones at the other end of the trajectory have no physical contact with the gun. But Randal and I were driving towards the other end of the trajectory, back to west Beirut, where the casualty statistics marked the other side of the concave mirror through which armies fight their wars. — Robert Fisk