Combatant Quotes & Sayings

The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals. Hence his ability to pick out the right men and utilize combined energy — Sun Tzu

Sword rang on sword, the metallic sounds echoing throughout the wide market place and filling the crannies of every dark alley. Strength waged against strength, as, indeed, rivals of evil have ever-battled the adversaries of truth. The face of one combatant appeared cool and certain, the other passionate in his resolve, intent upon seeing the battle through and winning the day with valor... — Alicia A. Willis

Language is a powerful thing, and it changes the way we view ourselves, and other people, in delightful and horrifying ways. Anyone with any knowledge of the military, or who pays attention to how the media talks about war, has likely caught on to this.
We don't kill "people." We kill "targets." (Or japs or gooks or ragheads). We don't kill "fifteen year old boys" but "enemy combatants" (yes, every boy 15 and over killed in drone strikes now is automatically listed as an enemy combatant. Not a boy. Not a child.). — Kameron Hurley

Investors tended to infer future changes in fiscal and monetary policy from political events, which were regularly reported in private correspondence, in newspapers and by telegraph agencies. Among the most influential bases for their inferences were three assumptions: that any war would disrupt trade and hence lower tax revenues for all governments; that direct involvement in war would increase a state's expenditure as well as reducing its tax revenues, leading to substantial new borrowings; and that the impact of war on the private sector would make it hard for monetary authorities in combatant countries to maintain the convertibility of paper banknotes into gold, thereby increasing the risk of inflation. — Niall Ferguson

Every joy that life gives must be earned ere it be secured; and how hardly earned, those only know who have wrestled for great prizes. The heart's blood must gem with red beads the brow of the combatant, before the wreath of victory rustles over it. — Charlotte Bronte

Business is merely a form of warfare in which each combatant strives to get the business away from his competitors and at the same time keep them from getting what he already has. — David McCullough

In Judo, he who thinks is immediately thrown. Victory is assured to the combatant who is both physically and mentally nonresistant. — Robert Linssen

People were born with two hands; why not use both of them? As it was, swordsmen fought with only one sword, and often one hand. This made sense, so long as everybody followed the same practice. But if one combatant were to employ two swords at once, what chance would an opponent using only one have of winning? — Eiji Yoshikawa

After one month with a saxophone shoved in my mouth, my military combatant's enthusiasm disappeared completely. Instead of flying choppers behind enemy lines, I started to fantasise about living in New York, London or Paris. — Gilad Atzmon

What line separates the lawful wartime targeting of an enemy combatant from the extrajudicial murder of a man suspected, but not convicted, of wrongdoing? (p8) — Rosa Brooks

it suffices to say that the artificial establishment of equality is as little compatible with liberty as the enforcement of unjust laws of discrimination. (It is obviously just to discriminate - within limits - between the innocent and the criminal, the adult and the infant, the combatant and the civilian, and so on.) Whereas greed, pride and arrogance are at the base of unjust discrimination, the driving motor of the egalitarian and identitarian trends is envy, jealousy2 and fear. "Nature" (i.e., the absence of human intervention) is anything but egalitarian; if we want to establish a complete plain we have to blast the mountains away and fill the valleys; equality thus presupposes the continuous intervention of force which, as a principle, is opposed to freedom. Liberty and equality are in essence contradictory. — Erik Von Kuehnelt-Leddihn

The world had ended, so why had the battle not ceased, the castle fallen silent in horror, and every combatant laid down their arms? Harry's mind was in freefall, spinning out of control, unable to grasp the impossiblity, because Fred Weasley could not be dead, the evidence of all his senses must be lying - — J.K. Rowling

War hath no fury like a non-combatant. — Charles Edward Montague

If you're an American citizen and you decide to join up with ISIS, we're not going to read you your rights. You're going to be treated as an enemy combatant, a member of an army attacking this country. — Marco Rubio

No wise combatant underestimates their antagonist. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

If now we were livingin the Revolutionary War and George Washington he being arrested through Britain. For sure he, they would consider him enemy combatant. But American, they consider him as hero. — Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Grief is a bad moon, a sleeper wave. It's like having an inner combatant, a saboteur who, at the slightest change in the sunlight, or at the first notes of a jingle for a dog food commercial, will flick the memory switch, bringing tears to your eyes. — Meghan O'Rourke

Gratitude is the number one spiritual combatant against bitterness and anger. A thankful spirit naturally uproots and prevents dark emotions from poisoning the soil of our spirits. — Anna Blanc

(1) War becomes a completely isolated act, which arises suddenly, and is in no way connected with the previous history of the combatant States. (2) If it is limited to a single solution, or to several simultaneous solutions. (3) If it contains within itself the solution perfect and complete, free from any reaction upon it, through a calculation beforehand of the political situation which will follow from it. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Who gets to decide who's an enemy combatant and who's an American citizen? Are we really so frightened and so easily frightened that we would give up a thousand-year history? — Rand Paul

Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him. — Sun Tzu

Tell the military the end result you want, and you'll get it. But don't try and tell us how to do it. All those rules about when and under what circumstances an enemy combatant could be killed didn't just make our jobs harder, they put our lives in danger. — Chris Kyle

The decision to leave [Iraq] should be based solely on the judgment of the combatant commanders on the ground who say, "My Iraqi counterparts can now handle this particular area of the country on their own with minimum American support or with no American support." When they can do that, we should leave. — Duncan Hunter

the nonphysical nature of cyberconflict has also made the private sector a combatant. — Alec J. Ross

Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it. — Herman Melville

Whoever is the first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy will be fresh for the fight ... Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy ... By holding out advantages to him, he can cause the enemy to approach of his own accord; or by inflicting damage, he can make it impossible for the enemy to draw near. — Sun Tzu

She is playing a game that she doesn't want to play, but can't seem to quit. As a player she wishes to see how the game concludes, but she also wishes the other player would retreat. She wants to win after-all and she makes for a sore loser, but her combatant uses his moves to keep her off-guard and primed for his advance. Should she block him, outmaneuver him, or just play dead until his back is turned? Isn't the last the way of the female? — Donna Lynn Hope

The First Lady and I both spotted the President standing under the mistletoe and she moved in to grab a kiss from him following a dinner for Combatant Commanders and military leadership at Blair House in Washington, D.C. — Pete Souza

When a public quarrel is envenomed by private injuries, a blow that is not mortal or decisive can be productive only of a short truce, which allows the unsuccessful combatant to sharpen his arms for a new encounter. — Edward Gibbon

Golf is not a wrestle with Bogey; it is not a struggle with your mortal foe; it is a physiological, psychological and moral fight with your self; it is a test of mastery over self; and the ultimate and irreducible element of the game is to determine which of the players is the more worthy combatant. — Arnold Haultain

This war ends, then so do the taxpayer-funded contracts, the drumbeats in the media, the nice Combatant faces, and the patriotic cause to lull the civilians and shame the dissenters. The other thing that comes to an end is all the justification for why this country's run the way it is. People will wonder why their paychecks are still getting halved to pay off the men who own their utility companies, their roads, their national parks. They'll wonder why they've got to work eighty-hour weeks to support the folks who took their houses and destroyed the middle-class jobs. There's not going to be an enemy to point a finger at anymore. People will see the real problem. — S.J. Kincaid

I think the combatant is always burdened with returning and making his way through his past. And that we as citizens have a responsibility to those guys upon return. We have to make some kind of an attempt to understand what their life is like. — Anthony Swofford