Military Science Quotes & Sayings

You are a military man and should know better. If there is one science into which man has probed continuously and successfully, it is that of military technology. No potential weapon would remain unrealized for ten thousand years. — Isaac Asimov

I appeal to the contemptible speech made lately by Sir Robert Peel to an applauding House of Commons. 'Orders of merit,' said he, 'were the proper rewards of the military' (the desolators of the world in all ages). 'Men of science are better left to the applause of their own hearts.' Most learned Legislator! Most liberal cotton-spinner! Was your title the proper reward of military prowess? Pity you hold not the dungeon-keys of an English Inquisition! Perhaps Science, like creeds, would flourish best under a little persecution. — John Joseph Griffin

Caleb shoved back from the table and stood to retreat to the kitchen. "No. Find another plan."

"There is no other plan. This isn't even a plan, merely a nugget of an idea for the start of a plan that's certain to fail and end in your deaths. — G.S. Jennsen

Robert Kennedy, whose summer home is eight miles from the home I live in all year round, was shot two nights ago. He died last night. So it goes. Martin Luther King was shot a month ago. He died, too. So it goes. And every day my Government gives me a count of corpses created by military science in Vietnam. So it goes. My father died many years ago now - of natural causes. So it goes. He was a sweet man. He was a gun nut, too. He left me his guns. They rust. — Kurt Vonnegut

US government button specifications run to twenty-two pages. This fact on its own yields a sense of what it is like to design garments for the Army. — Mary Roach

This is a Spartacan fighting knife. Heard of the Spartacan Scouts? Rough boys. This knife belonged to one of them. He died saving my life. — Henry V. O'Neil

Chaos that closely resembled panic awaited.

Shuttles raced to the presumed safety of the planet below while fighters crisscrossed the perimeter of the station. Platoon-sized formations of frigates and several cruisers formed up and accelerated away. To where the approaching attackers were located?

She didn't give a damn what her mother said in public. This was a bona fide insurrection. — G.S. Jennsen

That's it. Keep that edge. Fight like there's no tomorrow. — Henry V. O'Neil

Never diagnosed the enemy before. — Henry V. O'Neil

What you mons making all the racket about? You wake me again and I'll put the voodoo hex on you. All you only call me Tuberculosis behind my back now. You want the real thing?" Sergeant "T. B" Tinkerbelle Bettina Jones. — Ellen Dawn Benefield

The arts put man at the center of the universe, whether he belongs there or not. Military science, on the other hand, treats man as garbage - and his children, and his cities, too. Military science is probably right about the contemptibility of man in the vastness of the universe. Still - I deny that contemptibility, and I beg you to deny it, through the creation of appreciation of art. — Kurt Vonnegut

A government that spoke of military glory as an aim would betray ignorance of, or contempt for, the spirit of nations and the age. It would be an error by a thousand years. Even if it should initially succeed, it would be interesting to see who in the end would win this odd wager, our own century or the offending government. — Benjamin Constant

Neither science, nor the politics in power, nor the mass media, nor business, nor the law nor even the military are in a position to define or control risks rationally. — Ulrich Beck

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

Veil wouldn't make his military invincible, but it would render every other military indefensible. Veil was it. Game over, fuckholes. — Aaron Overfield

My two Jamaican cousins ... were studying engineering. 'That's where the money is,' Mom advised ... I was to be an engineering major, despite my allergy to science and math ... Those who preceded me at CCNY include the polio vaccine discoverer, Dr. Jonas Salk ... and eight Nobel Prize winners ... In class, I stumbled through math, fumbled through physics, and did reasonably well in, and even enjoyed, geology. All I ever looked forward to was ROTC.
Autobiographical comments on his original reason for going to the City College of New York, where he shortly turned to his military career. — Colin Powell

The thing about people who are truly and malignantly crazy: their real genius is for making the people around them think they themselves are crazy. In military science this is called Psy-Ops, for your info. — David Foster Wallace

Because he let the entire world press upon him. For instance? Well, for instance, what it means to be a man. In a city. In a century. In transition. In a mass. Transformed by science. Under organized power. Subject to tremendous controls. In a condition caused by mechanization. After the late failure of radical hopes. In a society that was no community and devalued the person.Owing to the multiplied power of numbers which made the self negligible. Which spent military billions against foreign enemies but would not pay for order at home. Which permitted savagery and barbarism in its own great cities. At the same time, the pressure of human millions who have discovered what concerted efforts and thoughts can do. — Saul Bellow

We do a hard fantasy as well as hard science fiction, and I think I probably single-handedly recreated military science fiction. It was dead before I started working in it. — Jerry Pournelle

Nisi flashed his charismatic, mysterious smile. "Now, with this in mind, are you ready to take the next step?"

Despite Caleb's attempts at caution - at circumspection and even suspicion - the man's words stirred his blood. They teased the possibilities of the power within his reach, real power extending far beyond parlor tricks and personal protection to a place where the course of life itself could be changed.

"I am. — G.S. Jennsen

This was not, of course, the first time that significant monies were spent on military programs. Kennedy knew, if only implicitly, that while bravery may win battles, science and technology provide security. Science and technology win wars. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I don't mean to sound sexist, but as far as women have come over the last 40 years, you don't really see a lot of women hunters. They're still in the minority in the military, and there's not a lot of female construction workers. I hope that's not taken the wrong way. I think women are as smart, resourceful, and capable in most things as any man could be ... but they are generally physically weaker. That's science. — Robert Kirkman

Lieutenant Mortas is the black sheep of the family--I thought you knew that. — Henry V. O'Neil

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

The best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for good seamanship. — Chester W. Nimitz

No food, you die in weeks. No water, you die in days. — Henry V. O'Neil

What happens," called out Max, "if you win?"
"We die anyway, but I become legend" I explained — Philip Palmer

You could say I lost my faith in science and progress
You could say I lost my belief in the holy Church
You could say I lost my sense of direction
You could say all of this and worse, ...

Some would say I was a lost man in a lost world
You could say I lost my faith in the people on TV
You could say I'd lost my belief in our politicians
They all seemed like game show hosts to me...

I never saw no miracle of science
That didn't go from a blessing to a curse
I never saw no military solution
That didn't always end up as something worse

--Excerpts from "If I Ever Lose My Faith In You — Sting

If you can read the book and say, 'Space Marines, YEEEAAAHHH!' That's Military Science Fiction." (Brigham Young writing lecture, March 2012) — Brandon Sanderson

Heroism doesn't always happen in a burst of glory. Sometimes small triumphs and large hearts change the course of history. Sometimes a chicken can save a man's life. — Mary Roach

Mechanized warfare still left room for human qualities to play an important part in the issue. 'Automatic warfare' cancels them out, except in a passive form. Archidamus is at last being justified. Courage, skill and patriotism become shrinking assets. The most virile nation might not be able to withstand another, inferior to it in all natural qualities, if the latter had some decisively superior technical appliance.
(...)The advent of 'automatic warfare' should make plain the absurdity of warfare as a means of deciding nations' claims to superiority. It blows away romantic vapourings about the heroic virtues of war, utilized by aggressive and ambitious leaders to generate a military spirit among their people. They can no longer claim that war is any test of a people's fitness, or even of its national strength. Science has undermined the foundations of nationalism, at the very time when the spirit of nationalism is most rampant. — B.H. Liddell Hart

Food's the killer. The clock starts as soon as the troops are on the ground. You wouldn't believe how fast they consume what they're carrying, and then ... if I don't get them more, if I don't find them more ... they die. — Henry V. O'Neil

[Every age], however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown. — Edward Gibbon

I love really exploring ... you know, a cop drama for example is a great way to explore class in this country and explore, you know, really, identity in the country and who we are in a way that is extremely exciting, but it's also real, you know, it's also real people and real drama. The same with the military. I mean, a good science fiction story is also great. — Ethan Hawke

A study of Disease-of Pestilences methodically prepared and deliberately launched upon man and beast-is certainly being pursue in the laboratories of more than one great country. Blight to destroy crops, Anthrax to slay horses and cattle, Plague to poison not armies but whole districts - such are the lines along which military science is remorselessly advancing. — Winston Churchill

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

Unbreakable is a little bit Starship Troopers and a little bit Esmay Suiza, with a dash of Firefly for flavor. W. C. Bauers gives us everything we want in our military science fiction, but never allows the hardware and action to overshadow Paen and everyone else caught in the crossfire. — Dayton Ward

I expected, as I approached the corporate world, to enter a brisk, logical, nonsense-free zone, almost like the military - or a disciplined, up-to-date military anyway - in its focus on concrete results. How else would companies survive fierce competition? But what I encountered was a culture riven with assumptions unrelated to those that underlie the fact- and logic-based worlds of, say science and journalism - a culture addicted to untested habits, paralyzed by conformity, and shot through with magical thinking. — Barbara Ehrenreich

God, I swear I've never seen a more
nervous bunch of people. Like a bunch of rats in a science lab. — Feather Stone

That's the difference between good military commanders and good politicians, John Geary. You've shown me that a good military commander spends the lives of their people reluctantly and with regret, but does spend them when necessary. The good politician does the same thing with principles. There aren't any fine burials for sacrificed principles, though. — Jack Campbell

Just who has imposed on the suffering human race poison gas, barbed wire, high explosives, experiments in eugenics, the formula for zyklon b, heavy artillery, pseudo-scientific justifications for mass murder, cluster bombs, attack submarines, napalm, intercontinental missiles , military space platforms and nuclear weapons? If memory serves it was not the Vatican. — David Berlinski

An illusion is when everyone is in on the joke, a delusion is when you are the joke. — Austin Aragon

A few words in defense of military scientists. I agree that squad leaders are in the best position to know what and how much their men and women need to bring on a given mission. But you want those squad leaders to be armed with knowledge, and not all knowledge comes from experience. Sometimes it comes from a pogue at USUHS who's been investigating the specific and potentially deadly consequences of a bodybuilding supplement. Or an army physiologist who puts men adrift in life rafts off the dock at a Florida air base and discovers that wetting your uniform cools you enough to conserve 74 percent more of your body fluids per hour. Or the Navy researcher who comes up with a way to speed the recovery time from travelers' diarrhea. These things matter when it's 115 degrees and you're trying to keep your troops from dehydrating to the point of collapse. There's no glory in the work. No one wins a medal. And maybe someone should. — Mary Roach

I feel very strongly that history is about everything. It isn't just about politics or the military or social issues. If art, music, engineering, science, medicine, finance, the world of architecture and technology - if those are left out, then you're not getting a full sense of the human condition. History is human and we human beings are involved in all kinds of things and that's part of our humanity. — David McCullough

My father was career military. He was a veteran, he was a doctor of political science, he taught at West Point and Air Command Staff and lectured at the War College. — Suzanne Collins

When Numa died, Rome by the twin disciplines of peace and war was as eminent for self-mastery as for military power. — Livy

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology. — Rebecca West

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

We need to reduce military budgets; raise living standards; engender respect for learning; support science, scholarship, invention, and industry; promote free inquiry; reduce domestic coercion; involve the workers more in managerial decisions; and promote genuine respect and understanding derived from an acknowledgement of our common humanity and our common jeopardy. — Carl Sagan

This is what I hate most about guys like you. You didn't even try. — Henry V. O'Neil

History is not just about dates and quotations. And it's not just about politics, the military and social issues, though much of it of course is about that. It's about everything. It's about life history. It's human. And we have to see it that way. We have to teach it that way. We have to read it that way. It's about art, music, literature, money, science, love - the human experience. — David McCullough

There is nothing wrong with the United States
or the world at large
that cannot be stabilized and reconstructed by restoring the intelligence and integrity of all our organizations across the eight communities (academic, civil society, commerce, government, law enforcement, media, military, non-governmental/non-profit). — Robert David Steele

Mankind are in the end always governed by superiority of intellectual faculties, and none are more sensible of this than the military profession. When, on my return from Italy, I assumed the dress of the Institute, and associated with men of science, I knew what I was doing: I was sure of not being misunderstood by the lowest drummer boy in the army. — Napoleon Bonaparte

The technical genius which could find answers ... was not cooped up in military or civilian bureaucracy, but was to be found in universities and in the people at large. — Henry H. Arnold

Because taxes are so high - in part to pay for state-serving science experiments, a lot of parents feel they both need to work and so the mum can't breastfeed her kid. These fucking scientists, these fucking fascist corporations, these fucking warmongers, these military industrial clusterfucks, these arsehole academics are literally profiting from the ripping of mothers milk out of the mouths of babes. — Stefan Molyneux

If the tribal peoples actually represented Western origins at a much earlier time, it was exceedingly valuable that they should be studied intensely for clues about the nature and origin of human society. Consequently it was an injury to science and human knowledge to allow the military to simply exterminate them. — Vine Deloria Jr.

Teaching isn't rocket science. It's about being engaged, listening, paying attention. Despite conventional wisdom, you don't need to talk a lot to teach well. You do need to care, though. Not so much about what people think of you or whether or not they like you, but about the kids and doing what's best for them. — Tucker Elliot

How long you been in the infantry, sir? Anything under ten miles counts as 'almost there'. — Henry V. O'Neil

Triumphant science and technology are only at the threshold of man's command over sources of energy so stupendous that, if used for military purposes, they can wipe out our entire civilization. — Cordell Hull

Whole fields have disappeared from view: the clergy, the military, electoral politics, teaching, even academia itself, for the most part, including basic science. — William Deresiewicz

In military science there is a principle more important than "Forward": it is that the task should be proportionate to the means. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

I see you have returned, my love; and your mood is as dark as ever. Did your soldiers not adore you to your complete satisfaction? — Wayne Gerard Trotman

Remember what they did to Broadleaf, and remember what they did to us. Now it's time for us to kill 'em back. — Henry V. O'Neil

Was Cook's ship a scientific expedition protected by a military force or a military expedition with a few scientists tagging along? That's like asking whether your petrol tank is half empty or half full. It was both. The Scientific Revolution and modern imperialism were inseparable. People such as Captain James Cook and the botanist Joseph Banks could hardly distinguish science from empire. — Yuval Noah Harari

Here at great expense,' [Colonel Groves] moaned to Oppenheimer, 'the government has assembled the world's largest collection of crackpots. — Steve Sheinkin

He relaxed into the dirt, it was all right, he was infantry and the dirt was home. He felt warm liquid all over his left thigh and wondered if he'd peed himself, it didn't matter, none of it mattered, the stars were out in the blackness overhead and that was where he was going. — Henry V. O'Neil

In the past few years, genetics have confirmed that the hunter-gatherers were not overwhelmed by the new wave of sedentary farmers, and that the first agricultural revolution spread well in advance of its first users, by contact and trade in ideas. Nice to see science catching up with economics and military history. Any economist could tell you technology spreads beyond its first adopters, even if they stay at home. And any military historian could tell you that, in a contest between people who hunt and kill aurochs and farmers armed with hoes, the smart money is on the hunters. — Markham Shaw Pyle

There's not a hell of a lot of difference between bravery and stupidity." - Commander Boaz Aurigae — Charles Nall

The universe is not ordered, and it will not become so simply because one wishes it. The universe is chaos made manifest. The military does a fine job of creating an illusion of structure, of dependable rules to provide an answer for every situation.

"But it is only an illusion, one which on its best days holds the chaos at bay. — G.S. Jennsen

I am probably not alone in sensing above me the huge corporations and monstrous banks, science, politics and technologies, spy satellites and stock markets, military systems and massive wealth - forces and dynamics I don't understand or can hardly imagine. — Michael Leunig

[A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience. — Edward Gibbon

I am in short, a witch of the quantumverse. — Philip Palmer

Some information is classified legitimately; as with military hardware, secrecy sometimes really is in the national interest. Further, military, political, and intelligence communities tend to value secrecy for its own sake. It's a way of silencing critics and evading responsibility - for incompetence or worse. It generates an elite, a band of brothers in whom the national confidence can be reliably vested, unlike the great mass of citizenry on whose behalf the information is presumably made secret in the first place. With a few exceptions, secrecy is deeply incompatible with democracy and with science. — Carl Sagan

In this war, which was total in every sense of the word, we have seen many great changes in military science. It seems to me that not the least of these was the development of psychological warfare as a specific and effective weapon. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

In that moment, she hated his quiet patient tone, hated the stench of the incense, and hated the beauteous pity painted on the faces of the women on the walls. Their expressions contained serene understanding; their eyes seemed able to peer into her soul. She found their forgiveness suffocating. And above all, she hated the tiny niggling thing in her that wanted to know more. — Amy J. Murphy

Carl took on the military-industrial complex. He campaigned around the world for an end to the production of weapons of mass destruction. To him it was a perversion of science. — Ann Druyan

My family didn't have time for me, so I decided to join the Suvorov military academy, which is in St. Petersburg. I spent two years there and studied general military science. At that point, once I graduated, I joined the Chernigov higher education pilot academy. — Roman Romanenko

Jack Campbell's dazzling new series is military science fiction at its best. Not only does he tell a yarn of great adventure and action, but he also develops the characters with satisfying depth. I thoroughly enjoyed this rip-roaring read, and I can hardly wait for the next book. — Catherine Asaro