Military Philosophy Quotes & Sayings

I don't train to be in a gunfight; I'd much rather be in a shooting - there's a difference. A gunfight means he's shooting back at me. In a shooting, I'm doing all the work. — Jamie Smith

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

Destiny had decreed that the Gauls were still to feel the true meaning of Roman valor, for when the raiders started on their mission Rome's lucky star led them to Ardea, where Camillus was living in exile, more grieved by the misfortunes of his country than by his own. Growing, as he felt, old and useless, filled with resentment against gods and men, he was asking in the bitterness of his heart where now were the men who had stormed Veii and Falerii - the men whose courage in every fight had been greater even than their success, when suddenly he heard the news that a Gallic army was near. The men of Ardea, he knew, were in anxious consultation, and it had not been his custom to assist at their deliberations; but now, like a man inspired, he burst into the Council chamber. — Livy

Nothing but sunrise and sunsetting
Men fighting the things that are-
Birthgiving and bloodletting
And a drunk god snoring afar. — Dan Levin

Don't stop aspiring. Just learn to duck. . . — Leif Herrgesell

War makes persons special, peoples cheap. — Brian Spellman

Question the answers, I repeated every class. Reevaluate your conclusions when the evidence changes. — Craig M. Mullaney

We are shocked by thieves taking pride in their clever touch, prostitutes in their depravity and murderers in their callousness. But it is shocking only because the atmosphere of the circles they move in is restricted, and - what matters most - we are on the outside. But isn't the same thing happening when rich men take pride in their wealth (which is theft), military commanders in their victories (which are murder) and rulers in their power (which is violence)? We do not see them as people who corrupt the concept of life, or good and evil, in order to justify their own situation, but only because the circles of people who share these corrupt concepts are wider, and we belong to them. — Leo Tolstoy

Military service is not just a vocation. It is a way of life, an attitude that you carry in your heart even after you are discharged. — Carlos Wallace

Our knowledge of circumstances has increased, but our uncertainty, instead of having diminished, has only increased. The reason of this is, that we do not gain all our experience at once, but by degrees; so our determinations continue to be assailed incessantly by fresh experience; and the mind, if we may use the expression, must always be under arms. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Looking back at the recent history of the world, I find it amazing how far civilization has retrogressed so quickly. As recently as World War I - granted the rules were violated at times - we had a set of rules of warfare in which armies didn't make war against civilians: Soldiers fought soldiers. Then came World War II and Hitler's philosophy of total war, which meant the bombing not only of soldiers but of factories that produced their rifles, and, if surrounding communities were also hit, that was to be accepted; then, as the war progressed, it became common for the combatants simply to attack civilians as part of military strategy. By the time the 1980s rolled around, we were placing our entire faith in a weapon whose fundamental target was the civilian population. — Ronald Reagan

My indirect exposure to war for most of my life constantly pushed me toward seeking, and becoming comfortable with, a pro-peace philosophy, as well as refusing to be intimidated by the false charges that such a position is unpatriotic, un-American, and expresses a lack of concern for military personnel. — Ron Paul

It's hard to win a war with a front at your back. — Gregory S. Close

Perhaps the strangest manifestation of the Eurocentric approach to the history of military technology is ... the attempt to discern fundamental cultural roots in the distant past that have resulted in the perceived current Western dominance of the world. This essentialism attempts to contrast ancient Greek logic and philosophy with the less rationally minded philosophies of the non-West. Modern science and technology, in this view, is a simple jump from ancient Greece to early modern Europe. — Peter A. Lorge

Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy. — Sun Tzu

Zombies don't bother me, sir," Faith said, dimpling cutely. "They're insane, hungry, angry animals. They won't kill me from professional courtesy, sir. — John Ringo

Fundamentalism is the philosophy of the powerless, the conquered, the displaced and the dispossessed. Its spawning ground is the wreckage of political and military defeat, as Hebrew fundamentalism arose during the Babylonian captivity, as white Christian fundamentalism appeared in the American South during Reconstruction, as the notion of the Master Race evolved in Germany following World War I. In such desperate times, the vanquished race would perish without a doctrine that restored hope and pride. Islamic fundamentalism ascends from the same landscape of despair and possesses the same tremendous and potent appeal. What exactly is this despair? It is the despair of freedom. The dislocation and emasculation experienced by the individual cut free from the familiar and comforting structures of the tribe and the clan, the village and the family. It is the state of modern life. The — Steven Pressfield

O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible, and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands. — Sun Tzu

SCREW CHILDREN!
That's the mantra of the world.
Instead of burying them with a national debt, shoving them in shitty schools, drugging them if they don't comply, hitting them, yelling at them, indoctrinating them with religion and statism and patriotism and military worship, what if we just did what was right for them? The whole world is built on "screw children", and if we changed that, this would be an alien planet to us. — Stefan Molyneux

Just the opposite. In childhood and youth their study, and what philosophy they learn, should be suited to their tender years: during this period while they are growing up towards manhood, the chief and special care should be given to their bodies that they may have them to use in the service of philosophy; as life advances and the intellect begins to mature, let them increase the gymnastics of the soul; but when the strength of our citizens fails and is past civil and military duties, then let them range at will and engage in no serious labour, as we intend them to live happily here, and to crown this life with a similar happiness in another. How — Plato

There are no second-place finishers - you don't take silver, you simply lose gold. Second place is nothing but the best loser - nobody lost better than the guy in second place. But on the battlefield that guy usually winds up dead. — Jamie Smith

Maybe I trust you to be a man and handle the gray reality of truth better than all these kids who still think in black-and-white."

Commander Zeke Waters from The Only Way Out Is In — Lyn Gala

The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. Was war just a power game for an elite few? Did the loss of human lives really matter to them, or was it just a way to keep score? In reading their own staff-authored speeches over and over again, had they deluded themselves, believing that any action they took was in the cause of freedom and thereby righteous? — Richard Cezar

Mohammed took his tribal customs and traditions and injected them into his new religion. Many of the ideas and traditions he implemented were already contained in the tribes he conquered, so in many cases, no major changes were required of his new followers. For example, most, if not all, of the tribes were polygamous. Women were seen primarily as chattel and under the complete control of their fathers or husbands. The communities of the new Islamic religion in the 600s CE often converted en masse. With minor modifications, they kept practicing their traditions. Mecca was already a major pagan religious shrine; Mohammed conveniently changed it into a place of worship and pilgrimage for Allah.
Practically speaking, Mohammed unified a fracture region under a single religion and did it with a superior military. Conquest, war, and male predominance were the hallmarks of Islam. Despite political splits over the centuries, the tribal nature of Islam remains intact. — Darrel Ray

Interestingly, when they are on our side, we usually refer to them as guerrillas or partisans or freedom fighters. When they, the men in the hills, oppose a government we support, we call them insurgents. — Dick Couch

Certainly, I believed that our democratic system of government was the best thing going. I was a flag-waver from way back. I was proud of my country. It was the moral weakness of our leaders that concerned me. They were prone to the same frailties of arrogance, greed, and sanctimony as those of any other country. The primitive concept of 'might makes right' still reigned supreme. Hadn't thousands of years of history taught us anything? — Richard Cezar

Ronald Reagan was a president of strength. His philosophy was a philosophy of strength - a strong military, a strong economy and strong families. — Mitt Romney

I lived in the world of poetry and ideas. I thought life was all about art and philosophy. In the military, I suddenly found out about the real world. — Shahin Najafi

Very few people in the USA realize that a nuclear war was waged with nature in the southwest by their own military. — Steven Magee

As calls rang out the world over for new treaties and organizations to be established with the intent of preventing future wars, America and her allies took a more realistic approach to the problem - we maintained allied military bases across Europe and Asia and we stationed troops in these foreign territories on a permanent basis. We weren't invaders or conquerors and for sure we had no intention of being an empire. We were liberators. That's all. But having fought and sacrificed so much and for so long, the pragmatic thing to do was to follow this simple philosophy: it's great to have dialogue, it just works a lot better when you have a strong military strategically placed and ready to act around the globe. — Tucker Elliot

As the demands of the positions differed, and as I grew in age and experience, I found that I had changed as a leader. I learned to ask myself two questions: First, what must the organization I command do and be? And second, how can I best command to achieve that? — Stanley McChrystal

I wanted that future officer to weigh decisions with a supple mind and to be comfortable with nuance and uncertainty. — Craig M. Mullaney

The path not taken, was not taken. No point wondering. — Philip Palmer

something: scenario x is responded to by action y. Everyone learns it and then practices it until responses are almost instinctive. It's all part of the "train hard, fight easy" philosophy that's central to military life - though veterans of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan smile — Nick Pope