Quotes & Sayings About The U.s. Army

There is one other wall, of course. One we never speak of. One we never see, One which separates memory from madness. In a place no one offers flowers. THE WALL WITHIN. We permit no visitors. Mine looks like any of a million nameless, brick walls - it stands in the tear-down ghetto of my soul; that part of me which reason avoids for fear of dirtying its clothes and from atop which my sorrow and my rage hurl bottles and invectives at the rolled-up windows of my passing youth. Do you know the wall I mean? - Steve Mason, U.S. Army captain (Vietnam), poet Excerpted from the poem "The Wall Within" by Steve Mason, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran considered the unofficial poet laureate of the Vietnam War. "The Wall Within" was read at the 1984 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and was entered in its entirety into the Congressional Record. — Kevin Sites

We grow up hearing so often that a straight line is the shortest distance between two points that we end up thinking it is also the best way to get there. A river knows better-:it has to do with how it dissipates the energy of its flow most efficiently; and how, in its bends, the sediment deposited soon turns into marshes and swampy islands, harboring all manner of interesting life, imparting charm and character to the whole waterway. I would defy you to find a river on this planet that prefers to run straight, unless it has been taught so by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. — Thomas W. Horton

I got active in this business of politics and self-government in 1958 when my father, who was serving in the U.S. Army, took us to the battlefield of Verdun. — Newt Gingrich

I joined the Army at 19 as a soldier and spent about four and a half years with them. Then I broke my back in a freefall parachuting accident and spent a year in rehabilitation back in the U.K. — Bear Grylls

Globally, as the nation-state becomes increasingly less meaningful - a provider of positive goods and more and more just an army and some domestic enforcement - people are withdrawing to shape and support more localised forms of organisation and power. To the extent that it's part of that civilised and localising world, the same is true of the U.S. — Rebecca Solnit

I wasn't a good student in high school. I wanted to go to college, but they weren't exactly beating down my door to offer me admission, and it's so expensive in the U.S. If you join up for a period, the army will pay your school and provide a stipend. — Kevin Powers

After I got shot, you want to know the very first thing that entered my mind? The U.S. Mint. I am coin in the U.S. Army. Now, I have two small holes in me. I'm no longer perfectly culled. Do you want to know the very last thing that entered my mind, You. — Nicholas Sparks

I am the best damn ass-kicker in the whole U.S. Army! — George S. Patton

Japan admitted the Imperial Army ordered the building of these brothels and the trafficking of the women. And now that it's been 70 years, there are only 46 remaining comfort women still alive in South Korea. So also in this deal, Japan is going to pay 1 billion yen - that's about 8 million U.S. dollars - to provide social services and health care to the surviving victims. — Elise Hu

We use the official definitions of terrorism. The definitions in the U.S. code, in British law, in U.S. Army manuals and so on. And if you use those definitions it follows instantly that the United States is the leading terrorist state in the world. — Noam Chomsky

After seventeen days of flying school he could now call himself a pilot. After putting in twenty-five hours of flying time, he was commissioned a first lieutenant in the U.S. Army. W — Winston Groom

WE STOLE THE EAGLE FROM THE AIR FORCE, THE ANCHOR FROM THE NAVY AND THE ROPE FROM THE ARMY.
ON THE SEVENTH DAY WHILE GOD RESTED, WE OVERRAN HIS PERIMETER, STOLE THE GLOBE AND WE'VE BEEN RUNNING THE WHOLE SHOW EVER SINCE. — U.S. Marine Corps

Pentagon records show that at least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. Army have deserted since the Iraq war began. Hey, at least somebody has an exit strategy. — Tina Fey

The whole military structure in Haiti that existed until the early 1990s was put in place by the American occupation. At the top there were Southern white officers, who led an army that crushed the indigenous resistance - the cacos. A high-ranking U.S. officer said when he arrived, "To think these niggers speak French!" Later, Haitian officers attended the notorious School of the Americas at Fort Benning. The threat from the U.S. is something that is always hanging over people's heads: If we don't behave, we'll have occupation again. — Edwidge Danticat

A letter arrives stamped with the slogan "The U. S. Army, key to peace." No army is the key to peace, neither the U. S. Army nor the Soviet Army nor any other. No "great" nation has the key to anything but war. Power has nothing to do with peace. The more men build up military power, the more they violate peace and destroy it. — Thomas Merton

U.S. adversaries exploit power gaps. It's easier for Russia to invade Ukraine with irregular forces out of uniform, the so-called 'little green men,' than to send a conventional army that would challenge NATO. — David Ignatius

China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) sees U.S. battle networks - "which rely heavily on satellites and the Internet to identify targets, coordinate attacks, guide 'smart bombs' and more" - as its "Achilles' heel. — Robert D. Kaplan

Is it the realization that people recently psychoanalyzed tend to be dreadful bores which makes the U.S.A. army reject them for the draft? — Sylvia Townsend Warner

My parents, fleeing a repressive regime in the Dominican Republic, were embraced by this country and taught us to love it in return. After my father served proudly in the U.S. Army, they settled in Buffalo, N.Y., and were able to live the American Dream. — Thomas Perez

The U.S. Army cancelled an order for 600,000 black berets that were made in China. It's not just that they were made by slave laborers. It's that no soldier can feel good about himself wearing headgear from the Kathie Lee Collection. — Argus Hamilton

In 1812 the U.S. Army consisted of fewer than seven thousand regular troops. — Gordon S. Wood

WikiLeaks published the Afghan War Logs and U.S. diplomatic cables stolen from a classified network by an Army private. — Rebecca MacKinnon

It would be as if the Navy Seals defected from the U.S. Army to help the Crips take over Los Angeles
and succeeded. — Johann Hari

The U.S. spent years and years and billions of dollars to build the Iraqi army only to watch it collapse and hand over so many of its weapons. — Richard Engel

The U.S. spent billions of dollars to build a secular, professional national Iraqi army but failed because, despite all the U.S.-supplied guns, tanks and planes, the Iraqi military fell apart when challenged by a band of terrorists. — Richard Engel

Wilkinson remained a central figure in the Spanish Conspiracy even after he became a lieutenant colonel and later general and commander of the U.S. Army. Even without knowing that he was a paid agent of Spain, John Randolph of Virginia said that Wilkinson was the only man he ever knew who from the bark to the very core was a villain. — Gordon S. Wood

Whereas the larger caliber .45 Colt revolver bullets caused the cattle to drop to the ground after three or four shots, the animals shot with smaller caliber .38 bullets failed even after ten shots to drop to the ground. And ever since the U.S. Army has gone confidently into battle knowing that when cows attack, their men will be ready. — Mary Roach

Most people don't realize that two-thirds of the federal budget is Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the Pentagon. The U.S. government is an insurance company with an Army. — Scott Pelley

I was told by journalists who can't publish it that there are in Mexico, close to the U.S. border, big areas that used to be devoted to agriculture that are now devoted to poppies. They say you can't get in there because they're guarded, first by the cartels, but also by the army, which goes hand in hand with the cartels. — Noam Chomsky

Because we usually do not consider unimportant events stressful, stress can also be an excellent indicator of the significance we attach to an event--in other words, it highlights what is important to us. — U.S. Department Of The Army

The UN to some extent diffuses U.S. power. Therefore it's less direct an agency of the United States than the U.S. Army is. But still, it can't escape the distribution of power in the world. — Noam Chomsky

My point is that it's incorrect to say that the Iraq policy isn't working. It is working. It is doing what they want. They have got control of the oil and they are exporting it, and they have stripped a government that was 90% state owned and they are privatizing it ... They have taken a country that was self defining and self developing and is now an impoverished prostrate devastated country where people will line up to work for slave wages or become members of the police or army because it's the only job they can get and serve as adjuncts to U.S. imperialism. — Michael Parenti

And ever since, the U.S. Army has gone confidently into battle, knowing that when cows attack, their men will be ready. For — Mary Roach

While public school history courses in the United States stress the horrors of the German Nazi murder of 6 million Jews and Josef Stalin's pogroms against racial minorities and political dissidents in the Soviet Union, the facts that the U.S. Army's solution to the 'Indian Problem' was the prototype for the Nazi 'Final Solution' to the 'Jewish Problem' and that the North American Indian Reservation was the model for the twentieth century gulag and concentration camp, are conveniently overlooked. — Jonathan Ott

You got any experience? (Carlos)
I'm former army intelligence, Special Forces, on contract to the U.S. government now for national security. That good enough for you, amigo? (Stoner)
It'll do. (Carlos) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

He said he ate his food out of our big refrigerators, drove our eight-cylinder American cars, un-hesitatingly used our medicines when he was sick, and relied on the U.S. Army to protect his parents and sisters from Hitler's Germany, and nothing, not one single thing in all his poems, reflected these realities. — J.D. Salinger

If I can go to the U.S. Army and fight the war at 18 why can't you play basketball for 48 minutes? — Jermaine O'Neal

Deploying LOGCAP or other contractors instead of military personnel can alleviate the political and social pressures that have come to be a fact of life in the U.S. whenever military forces are deployed," wrote Lt. Col. Steven Woods in his Army War College study about the effects of LOGCAP. "While there has been little to no public reaction to the deaths of five DynCorp employees killed in Latin America or the two American support contractors from Tapestry Solutions attacked (and one killed) in Kuwait ... U.S. forces had to be withdrawn from Somalia after public outcry following the deaths of U.S. soldiers in Mogadishu. ... "Additionally, military force structure often has a force cap, usually for political reasons. Force caps impose a ceiling on the number of soldiers that can be deployed into a defined area. Contractors expand this limit. — Rachel Maddow

I don't think you're going to be seeing the U.S. employing large army divisions to deal with small terrorist groups again. I don't think they're going to be occupying foreign nations in order to dry up terrorist groups within them. I think that lesson has been learned. — Richard Engel

War: First day in the U.S. Army, the government placed a Bible in my left hand, a bayonet in the other. — Edward Abbey

Because of my own family's service (in the U.S. Army, Navy, and Massachusetts and New York National Guard), I am a strong supporter of the military and do believe that there are just wars. — Camille Paglia

The U.S. army confirmed that it gave a lucrative fire fighting contract in Iraq to the firm once run by the Vice President Dick Cheney without any competitive bidding. When asked if this could be conceived as Cheney's friends profiting from the war, the spokesman said 'Yes.' — Conan O'Brien

The Department of Health, Education and Welfare, established in 1953 to consolidate the scattered welfare programs, began with a budget of $2 billion, less than 5 percent of expenditures on national defense. Twenty-five years later, in 1978, its budget was $160 billion, one and a half times as much as total spending on the army, the navy, and the air force. It had the third largest budget in the world, exceeded only by the entire budget of the U.S. government and of the Soviet Union. The department supervised a huge empire, penetrating every corner of the nation. More than one out of every 100 persons employed in this country worked in the HEW empire, either directly for the department or in programs for which HEW had responsibility but which were administered by state or local government units. All of us were affected by its activities. (In late 1979, HEW was subdivided by the creation of a separate Department of Education.) — Milton Friedman

First developed as a weapon by the U.S. Army, VX is an oily, odorless and tasteless liquid that kills on contact with the skin or when inhaled in aerosol form. Like other nerve agents, it is treatable in the first minutes after exposure but otherwise leads swiftly to fatal convulsions and respiratory failure. — Barton Gellman

I wanted - and still want - to tell my mother's story. She fled Stalin's army in 1944, leaving Latvia, which was to be occupied by the Soviets for the next 50 years, and arrived to the U.S. when she was 11. — Amity Gaige

As a 29 year veteran of the US Army/Army Reserves, retiring as a Colonel and having served as a U.S. diplomat for 16 years and resigning in 2003 in opposition to the Iraq war, I firmly believe war does not resolve political issues. We must work diligently to force the governments of our nations to use diplomacy, not weapons. — Ann Wright

Benedict Arnold was appointed to the rank of general in the Continental Army by George Washington during the American War of Independence. It was up to him to protect the fortifications at West Point, New York, which in 1802 became the U.S. Military Academy. Arnold however planned to surrender his command to the British forces. When his treasonous act was discovered Arnold fled down the Hudson River to the British sloop-of-war Vulture, avoiding capture by the forces of George Washington, who had previously been alerted to the plot. Arnold was hailed a hero by the British, who gave him a commission in the British Army as brigadier general. In the winter of 1782, after the war, he moved to London with his wife where he was received as a hero by King George III. In the United States his name "Benedict Arnold" became synonyms for the words "TRAITOR & TREASON."
Cohorting with a foreign power to overthrow the government or purposely aiding the enemy is an act of Treason! — Hank Bracker

U.S. history that while the nation fought its greatest war against the world's worst racist, it maintained a segregated army abroad and a total system of discrimination at home. — Stephen E. Ambrose

My pacifism came after I joined the army and was shipped over to Korea. There was a little one-room orphanage there called Song-do. There were 180 babies in there, and they were GI babies. The U.S. government would not acknowledge this, and the Korean government had nothing to do with them. They were living on a 100-pound bag of rice a month. Some of those kids, when they were old enough, would go out and shine shoes. They would show up at the gate of our compound to shine shoes, and you'd swear they were looking for their fathers. — Utah Phillips

Each year, the The U.S. Army & its contractors SHOOT, STAB, MUTILATE, & KILL more than TEN THOUSAND live animals in cruel training exercises. — Oliver Stone

Sergeant Axel Dane ordinarily opened the San Jose recruiting office at eight o'clock, but if he was a little late Corporal Kemp opened it, and Kemp was not likely to complain. Axel was not an unusual case. A hitch in the U.S. Army in the time of peace between the Spanish war and the German war had unfitted him for the cold, unordered life of a civilian. One month between hitches convinced him of that. Two hitches in the peacetime army completely unfitted him for war, and he had learned enough method to get out of it. The San Jose recruiting station proved he knew his way about. He was dallying with the youngest Ricci girl and she lived in San Jose. Kemp hadn't the time in, but he was learning the basic rule. Get along with the topkick and avoid all officers when possible. — John Steinbeck

I thought we stopped using grunts as guinea pigs decades ago. Even the Nazis didn't run medical experiments on their own troops in combat. This book explodes like a grenade in the Pentagon's privy. Red it and weep; better yet, get mad."

Col. David H. Hackworth (U.S. Army, ret.) — Gary Matsumoto

Half my family was from the Imperial Japanese Navy, and the other half was U.S. Army, and I was raised on Army posts during my childhood, so I pretty much began my life with a split-brain sort of thing. — Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa

The U.S. Army records alone for World War II weigh 17,000 tons, and even the best historians have not done more than just scratch the surface. The story is such that 500 years from now people will be writing and reading about it. — Rick Atkinson

Though she isn't stupid at all. "Wow, other people are mastering this, even people who were as clueless as I was in the beginning, and I just can't seem to learn to think in this manner." 5. Caroline Sacks was experiencing what is called "relative deprivation," a term coined by the sociologist Samuel Stouffer during the Second World War. Stouffer was commissioned by the U.S. Army to examine the attitudes and morale of American soldiers, and he ended up studying half a million men and women, looking at everything from how soldiers viewed their commanding officers to how black soldiers felt they were being treated to how difficult soldiers found it to serve in isolated outposts. But one set of questions Stouffer asked stood out. He quizzed both — Malcolm Gladwell

Hollywood continues to present the U.S. Army as being the good guys, always defeating the aliens or foreigners. — Hideo Kojima

The condition that is most disagreeable in your life becomes the most useful one. You know, I feel the same way about the U.S. Army. It was absolutely the worst experience of my life, and it was probably the single most valuable experience. — Norman Mailer

In the 1980s, the U.S. Army invaded two Caribbean countries, Grenada and Panama, to depose leaders who had defied Washington. — Stephen Kinzer

The psyche questionnaire asks me to list the things I dislike. Why don't they just use the word, hate? Why is everyone so afraid to admit they hate something? I write Advil, and then add Athens, Afghanistan and the U.S. Army. "In conclusion, I hate a lot of things that begin with the letter A," I write in the space provided. — Katherine Owen

Smallpox in a blanket, which the U.S. Army gave to the Cherokee Indians on their long march to the West, was nothing compared to what I'd like to see done to these people — Michael Savage

You want to know who's now running the U.S. Army, the U.S. Navy and the Marines and calling the shots where it counts? Fundamentalist Muslims and homosexual activists. — Bryan Fischer

our Army, (U. S.), would adopt the systematic methods of any of our large manufacturing concerns, they could either cut off half the amount of money they are now expending or use that much additional for practical training — Herbert W. McBride

China has secretly developed an army of 180,000 cyber spies and warriors, mounting an incredible ninety thousand computer attacks a year against the U.S. Defense Department networks alone. The totality of the thefts and their impact on American national security are breathtaking. — Marc Goodman

I returned to New Orleans and my problems with pari-mutuel windows and a dark-haired, milk-skinned wife from Martinique who went home with men from the Garden District while I was passed out in a houseboat on Lake Pontchartrain, the downdraft of U.S. Army helicopters flattening a plain of elephant grass in my dreams. — James Lee Burke

ISIS already has strongholds in Syria, while the Free Syrian Army desperately needs more U.S. assistance. — John Barrasso

The U.N. is asking Italy to oversee this effort. And if a government is formed, you're likely to see up to 5,000 Italian troops maybe go in to provide security and also train a Libyan army. — Tom Bowman

For ten years after the atomic bomb was dropped there was so little public discussion of the bomb or of radioactivity that even the Chugoku Shinbun, the major newspaper of the city where the atomic bomb was dropped, did not have the movable type for 'atomic bomb' or 'radioactivity'. The silence continued so long because the U.S. Army Surgeons Investigation Team in the fall of 1945 had issued a mistaken statement: all people expected to die from the radiation effects of the atomic bomb had by then already died; accordingly, no further cases of physiological effects due to residual radiation would be acknowledged. — Kenzaburo Oe

The U.S. Army has recently removed the cross from the insignia worn by chaplains. In its place is a sun with its rays, symbolizing the divine in all things. — Chris Murray

Lots of people wrote to the magazine to say that Marilyn vos Savant was wrong, even when she explained very carefully why she was right. Of the letters she got about the problem, 92% said that she was wrong and lots of these were from mathematicians and scientists. Here are some of the things they said: 'I'm very concerned with the general public's lack of mathematical skills. Please help by confessing your error.' -Robert Sachs, Ph.D., George Mason University ... 'I am sure you will receive many letters from high school and college students. Perhaps you should keep a few addresses for future columns.' -W. Robert Smith, Ph.D., Georgia State University ... 'If all those Ph.D.'s were wrong, the country would be in very serious trouble.' -Everett Harman, Ph.D., U.S. Army Research Institute — Mark Haddon

It was 1943. The U.S. had already entered World War II, so I decided to join the army. — Lloyd Alexander

When asked to give his opinion as to why airpower was stillborn in the U.S., with little funding or interest coming from the navy or army, he replied: Conservatism ... You see, the army and the navy are the oldest institutions we have. They place everything on precedent. You can't do that in the air business. You have got to look ahead. — James D. Bradley

While in medical school, I was drafted into the U.S. Army with the other medical students as part of the wartime training program, and naturalized American citizen in 1943. I greatly enjoyed my medical studies, which at the Medical College of Virginia were very clinically oriented. — Baruj Benacerraf

Jim returned from his journey in 1979 and wrote a confidential paper for his superiors. The first line read, "The U.S. army doesn't really have any serious alternative than to be wonderful." A disclaimer at the bottom read, "[This] does not comprise an official position by the military as of now." This was Jim Channon's First Earth Battalion Operations Manual. — Jon Ronson

Nor should the U.S. military be forced to remain in Iraq essentially as an army for one side of a civil war. — Peter DeFazio

I am a legal immigrant whose parents went from Russia to China to Chile to finally reach the United States and thereby give me a chance to have a better life. I served six years in the U.S. Army Reserve, went to college, have a successful career and have dedicated my life to being a good citizen. — Mike Medavoy

With no other security forces on hand, U.S. military was left to confront, almost alone, an Iraqi insurgency and a crime rate that grew worse throughout the year, waged in part by soldiers of the disbanded army and in part by criminals who were released from prison. — John Spratt

I have broken all ties that bind me to the (U.S.) Army, not suddenly, impulsively, but conscientiously and after due deliberation. I sacrifice more to my principles than any other officer in the Army can do. I would rather carry a musket in the cause of the South than be commander-in-chief under Mr. Lincoln. — Edmund Kirby Smith

The door opened. A guy came in. Busy, bustling, sixty-something, medium size, a gray suit, a tight waistband, a warm and friendly face. Pink and round. Lots of energy, and the start of a smile. A guy who got things done, with a lot of charm. Like a salesman. Something complicated. Like a financial instrument, or a Rolls-Royce automobile. "I'm sorry," the guy said. To Sinclair only. "I didn't know you had company." American. An old-time Yankee accent. No one spoke. Then Sinclair said, "Excuse me. Sergeant Frances Neagley and Major Jack Reacher, U.S. Army, meet Mr. Rob Bishop, CIA head of station at the Hamburg consulate." "I just did a drive-by," Bishop said. "On the parallel street. The kid's bedroom. The lamp has moved in the window. — Lee Child

History demonstrates that previous military drawdowns invited aggression by our enemies. After World War I, America drew down forces until the U.S. Army had fewer than 100,000 men in uniform. That weakness invited Nazi aggression in Europe and the imperial Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. — Frank Gaffney

Forty-seven years old, tired, but none the worse for wear. In a little more than thirteen months, he had discovered, analyzed, and packed tens of thousands of pieces of artwork, including eighty truckloads from Altaussee alone. He had organized the MFAA field officers at Normandy, pushed SHAEF to expand and support the monuments effort, mentored the other Monuments Men across France and Germany, interrogated many of the important Nazi art officials, and inspected most of the Nazi repositories south of Berlin and east of the Rhine. It would be no exaggeration to guess he put 50,000 miles on his old captured VW and visited nearly every area of action in U.S. Twelfth Army Group territory. And during his entire tour of duty on the continent, he had taken exactly one and a half days off. — Robert M. Edsel

She pressed buttons and waited for answering beeps, and then she said, "I want the personnel jacket for U.S. Army Private First Class Wiley, first name unknown, currently four months absent without leave from an air defense unit in Germany. To me in Hamburg, seriously fast." Then she clicked off. The National Security Council. The keys to the kingdom. There was a knock at the door. For — Lee Child