Quotes & Sayings About Officership

You are the commanders, your men will look to you and act as you do. Let no officer keep to himself or his brother officers, but circulate daylong among his men. Let them see you and see you unafraid. Where there is work to do, turn your hand to it first; the men will follow. Some of you, I see, have erected tents. Strike them at once. We will all sleep as I do, in the open. Keep your men busy. If there is no work, make it up, for when soldiers have time to talk, their talk turns to fear. Action, on the other hand, produces the appetite for more action. — Steven Pressfield

It has not been stylish to pay attention to those warrior castes who neither planted nor herded, but devoted their lives to pillage and forgotten causes: the illiterate Greek chieftains on their decade-long excursion to the plains of Asia Minor; the tribal bands of Northern Europeans who raided Rome and then its Christian outposts; the Asiatic "hordes" who swept through medieval Europe; the Crusaders who looted the Arab world; the elite officership of European imperialism; and so on. These were men - not counting their conscripts and captives - who lived only parasitically in relation to the production of useful things, who lived for perpetual war, the production of death — Anonymous

This, I realized now watching Dienekes rally and tend to his men, was the role of the officer: to prevent those under this command, at all stages of battle
before, during and after
from becoming "possessed." To fire their valor when it flagged and rein in their fury when it threatened to take them out of hand. That was Dienekes' job. That was why he wore the transverse-crested helmet of an officer. His was not, I could see now, the heroism of an Achilles. He was not a superman who waded invulnerably into the slaughter, single-handedly slaying the foe by myriads. He was just a man doing a job. A job whose primary attribute was self-restraint and self-composure, not for his own sake, but for those whom he led by his example. — Steven Pressfield