Ben Thompson > Quotes

“perception shapes priorities, priorities shape people”
― Ben Thompson

“We don't know much about our hero before 325 BCE-he just sort of materialized out of thin air like a face-melting UFO or a vengeful, homicidal rainbow, but apparently he had some serious beef with people in charge...”
― Ben Thompson, Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live

“It's impressive when you're such a mysterious fictional character that even avid enthusiasts are debating your existence within the mythos.”
― Ben Thompson, Badass: The Birth of a Legend: Spine-Crushing Tales of the Most Merciless Gods, Monsters, Heroes, Villains, and Mythical Creatures Ever Envisioned – An Epic Mythology Compendium

“Since the dawn of time, nearly every man (and I'd wager to guess most women) has, at his most visceral level, secretly desired for one thing - to be standing triumphantly atop a heaping pile of his slain enemies, holding a gigantic axe aloft while some unbelievably attractive member of whatever gender he's attracted to desperately clutches his leg like it's the last life raft on the HMS Titanic.”
― Ben Thompson, Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch: Skull-Crushing True Stories of the Most Hardcore Duels, Showdowns, Fistfights, Last Stands, Suicide Charges, and Military Engagements of All Time – Illustrated Collection

“These invincible barbarian warriors committed acts of untold cruelty upon the unsuspecting citizenry, slaughtering all those before them in a frenzy of blood and fire and then drinking their chocolate milk right out of the carton.”
― Ben Thompson, Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live

“One account exists of how a French soldier disarmed one of the warriors only to have her take him down with a judo shoulder throw and tear out his jugular with her teeth.”
― Ben Thompson, Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live

“The men on the ramparts watched in horror as they realized that the first wave of soldiers was actually comprised entirely of captured villagers from the outlying settlements—poor, imprisoned farmers forced under pain of death to push forward massive siege engines, catapults, and ballistae, assigned the cruel task of bringing destruction and mayhem to their own kinsmen. The soldiers reluctantly opened fire on these wretched saps, but even an endless stream of arrows couldn’t stem the tide of heavy equipment being brought up to the massive moat surrounding the city. To their amazement, the defenders then saw the invading barbarians shoving their prisoners into the moat—using their bodies as a living bridge over which they rolled their infernal contraptions.”
― Ben Thompson, Badass: A Relentless Onslaught of the Toughest Warlords, Vikings, Samurai, Pirates, Gunfighters, and Military Commanders to Ever Live

“Another badass Gurkha in recent memory was Sergeant Dipprasad Pun of the Royal Gurkha Rifles. In 2010, while serving as the lone on-duty guard patrolling a small one-room outpost on the edge of the Afghan province of Helmand, Pun was suddenly ambushed by somewhere between fifteen and thirty Taliban warriors armed with RPGs and assault rifles. During his Ultimate Mega Gurkha Freakout Limit Break Mode, the five-foot-seven-inch sergeant fired off four hundred rounds of machine gun ammunition (every bullet he had), chucked seventeen grenades, detonated a remote mine, and then took an enemy soldier down by chucking a twenty-pound machine gun tripod into the dude’s face.”
― Ben Thompson, Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch: Skull-Crushing True Stories of the Most Hardcore Duels, Showdowns, Fistfights, Last Stands, Suicide Charges, and Military Engagements of All Time

“week.”
― Ben Thompson, Guts & Glory: The Vikings

“IN 1943 POLISH SOLDIERS TRAINED AN ADULT brown bear to help them fight Nazis in an old monastery atop a mountain in the Italian Alps. Yes, this is a true story, not the plot of the next Pixar film. The bear doesn’t sing or dance or talk, but it does carry artillery shells, take baths, and smoke cigarettes, even though smoking is really bad for you. Voytek the Soldier Bear’s story starts back during the German blitzkrieg against Poland at the very beginning of the war. As the Nazis were crushing their way through western Poland, the brave Polish defenders suddenly felt the stab of a knife in their back when the forces of the Soviet Union came rolling across Poland’s eastern border, eager to grab land for the USSR while the Polish were preoccupied with getting punched in the head by the German Army. One of the few, outnumbered defenders who stood his ground against the Soviet juggernaut was Captain Wladislaw Anders, a resolute cavalry officer who valiantly launched a charge against Soviet troops but was wounded in battle and taken as a prisoner of war. For over a year he rotted in Lubyanka Prison, one of Stalin’s worst and most inhospitable one-star prison facilities. Then a weird thing happened. On August 14, 1941, the Red Army guards unlocked the prison cell and told Anders he was a free man. The Germans had invaded Russia, and now the Soviets were prepared to offer Anders and 1.5 million other Polish citizens their freedom if they’d help old Uncle Joe Stalin battle those big evil Nazis. Anders cocked an eyebrow. He wasn’t exactly crazy about the idea of trusting his life to the men who had just shot and imprisoned him, but he agreed anyway. He was shipped out by rail and reunited with twenty-five thousand other Polish soldiers who had been similarly released from the Soviet prison system. Anders immediately”
― Ben Thompson, Guts & Glory: World War II

“Battle of the Bulge,” it’s not some annoying weight-loss reality TV series. It’s a sixty-mile-long formation of armored Nazi tanks wasting dudes with machine guns.”
― Ben Thompson, Guts & Glory: World War II

“COMMMMANNNNNNNDOOOOOO”
― Ben Thompson, Guts & Glory: World War II

“So when King Guy of Jerusalem (the overall ruler of the Crusader states in Outremer) refused to punish Reynald for his rampant douchebaggery, Saladin figured that it was up to him to kick this Reynald guy so hard in the gonads that his grandchildren would be born impotent.”
― Ben Thompson, Badass: Ultimate Deathmatch: Skull-Crushing True Stories of the Most Hardcore Duels, Showdowns, Fistfights, Last Stands, Suicide Charges, and Military Engagements of All Time

“On December 22, General McAuliffe of the 101st Airborne in Bastogne received a pretty long letter from the German commander, asking him to surrender the town or be destroyed. McAuliffe’s reply was just one word: Nuts! Then he handed the paper back to the German messenger. The dude looked at it, didn’t understand, and asked”
― Ben Thompson, Guts & Glory: World War II