Armies Quotes

“Too many kings can ruin an army”
― Homer

“Wars are never fought for altruistic reasons.”
― Arundhati Roy

“Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act which deprived a whole nation of arms as the blackest.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“It is the rule in war, if our forces are ten to the enemy's one, to surround him; if five to one, to attack him; if twice as numerous, to divide our army into two.”
― Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“The army of men that will come for us will be our sustenance.”
― Marie Montine, Mourning Grey: Part Two

“I called you a fool for a reason: it would probably take an eternity before the temple stops playing with you and another eternity before you realize it.”
― Marie Montine, Mourning Grey: Part Three The Guardians Of The Temple Saga

“Aryans?" I asked, thinking I must have heard the word incorrectly.
Christian and Allie nodded.
"Aryans as in white supremacist, those sorts of Aryans?"
"Yes," Christian said.
"Neo-Nazis?" My mind was having a hard time grasping the idea of a power-hungry vampire leading an army of Hitler's Youth. "Skinheads and their ilk?"
"Hasi, what is it you find so unbelievable?" Adrian asked, a smile in his voice.
"Oh, I don't know. I guess I just expected that any army Saer raised would be… you know… the evil undead." Everyone just looked at me. "Oh, yeah, I guess you're right. Neo-Nazis are more or less the evil undead. Right. So we have Saer about to attack at any moment with a bunch of goose-stepping Nazis. Great. Anyone here do a really good Winston Churchill impression?”
― Katie MacAlister, Sex, Lies and Vampires

“But an army that is made up of good and bad elements cannot win a war. All must be brought to a certain level of political development; all must know why they are fighting, and its importance. All must believe in the fight they are to make and all must accept discipline.
- For Whom the Bell Tolls”
― Ernest Hemmingway

“War is a soul-shattering experience for the innocent.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“I say, therefore, that the arms with which a prince defends his state are either his own, or they are mercenaries, auxiliaries, or mixed. Mercenaries and auxiliaries are useless and dangerous; and if one holds his state based on these arms, he will stand neither firm nor safe; for they are disunited, ambitious and without discipline, unfaithful, valiant before friends, cowardly before enemies; they have neither the fear of God nor fidelity to men, and destruction is deferred only so long as the attack is; for in peace one is robbed by them, and in war by the enemy. The fact is, they have no other attraction or reason for keeping the field than a trifle of stipend, which is not sufficient to make them willing to die for you. They are ready enough to be your soldiers whilst you do not make war, but if war comes they take themselves off or run from the foe; which I should have little trouble to prove, for the ruin of Italy has been caused by nothing else than by resting all her hopes for many years on mercenaries, and although they formerly made some display and appeared valiant amongst themselves, yet when the foreigners came they showed what they were.”
― Niccolò Machiavelli

“You humans destroyed my life, my family’s life, everything I loved and treasured. It was because of your ancestor that my kind fell. And then, the one thing I could still love in the shadows of the Night Realm was Oliara. When that was taken away from me, I became empty. So do not tell me you love me; even if I could give it back – which would never be given to a human – I could not: I no longer know how to.”
― Marie Montine, Mourning Grey: Part Two

“Mounting tensions in Eastern Europe send shivers down the spine. Barely a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War we seem to be sliding inexorably towards another.”
― Alex Morritt, Impromptu Scribe

“There is a world outside the one we know,” he said softly, “with cultures and races and armies who have never heard of us. Yes, and cities greater than Yenking and Karakorum. To survive, to grow, we must remain strong. We must conquer new lands, so that our army is always fed, always moving. To stop is to die, Chagatai.”
― Conn Iggulden, Khan: Empire of Silver

“It is strange that people should talk so much about ending all war at a time when the ravages it causes are greater than they have ever been, not only because the means of destruction have been multiplied, but also because, as wars are no longer fought between comparatively small armies composed solely of professional soldiers, all the individuals on both sides are flung against each other indiscriminately, including those who are the least qualified for this kind of function. Here again is a striking example of modern confusion, and it is truly portentous, for those who care to reflect upon it, that a 'mass uprising' or a 'general mobilization' should have come to be considered quite natural, and that with very few exceptions the minds of all should have accepted the idea of an 'armed nation'. In this also can be seen an outcome of the belief in the power of numbers alone: it is in keeping with the quantitative character of modern civilization to set in motion enormous masses of combatants; and at the same time, egalitarianism also finds its expression here, as well as in systems such as 'compulsory education' and 'universal suffrage'. Let it be added that these generalized wars have only been made possible by another specifically modern phenomenon, that is, by the formation of 'nations' -a consequence on the one hand of the destruction of the feudal system, and on the other of the disruption of the higher unity of medieval Christendom.”
― René Guénon

“They might have been two furious armies and the kiss a life-or-death battle.”
― Cristiane Serruya, Not A Book

“Most battles are decided when one side or the other loses heart. Armies and nations do not typically fight to the last man. They fight until their faith gives out. And this is what we must fortify against. It is time to inwardly prepare because a great test lies in front of us. If we fail that test there is no second chance. There is no opportunity to go back.”
― J.R.Nyquist

“Think, ” she added, with a bite, “instead of going on blindly wanting. There is some power deep in your valley, some strangeness beyond mortal magic that draws men in, plants roots in them—and not only men. Whatever thing it is that lives in the Wood, that puts out corruption, it’s come to live there and drink from that power like a cup. It killed the people of the tower, and then it slumbered for a thousand years because no one was fool enough to bother it. Then along we come, with our armies and our axes and our magic, and think that this time we can win.”
― Naomi Novik

“War is the most complex, physically and morally demanding enterprise we undertake. No great art or music, no cathedral or temple or mosque, no intercontinental transport net or particle collider or space programme, no research for a cure for a mass-killing disease receives a fraction of the resources and effort we devote to making war. Or to recovery from war and preparations for future wars invested over years, even decades, of tentative peace.”
― Cathal J. Nolan, The Allure of Battle: A History of How Wars Have Been Won and Lost

“How many enemies were headed my way whose battle lines I never saw and whose piercing arrows never flew in my direction because God destroyed them before I ever caught sight of them, or they of me? More than I can count, but never more than God can destroy.”
― Craig D. Lounsbrough

“a regular army can only be defeated by another army. Militias or other irregular forms of military organization alone, while capable of heroic resistance, will ultimately collapse before a regular army. The collapse of a national army (almost always precipitated by a military defeat) can create an opening for a revolutionary movement. But if that movement does not create its own army the old order will reconstitute its army or a foreign power will do it for them.”
― Christopher Day, The Historical Failure of Anarchism: Implications for the Future of the Revolutionary Project

“There is a reason that the world is dominated by regular armies with unified command structures. It is not because the states of the world simply find their authoritarian form more agreeable in spite of its comparative military inefficiencies. If that were so states would be constantly striving to obtain the benefits of decentralism in military matters (as they sometimes do in other matters in which decentralism is in fact more efficient). But the military remains the most centralized institution in any society, its authoritarianism the model by which less authoritarian institutions are judged.”
― Christopher Day, The Historical Failure of Anarchism: Implications for the Future of the Revolutionary Project

“We have laws, jails, courts, armies, guns and armories enough to make saints of us all, if they were the true preventives of crime; but we know they do not prevent crime; that wickedness and depravity exist in spite of them, nay, increase as the struggle between classes grows fiercer, wealth greater and more powerful and poverty more gaunt and desperate.”
― Lucy Parsons

“If armies become terrorists, terrorism, blackmailing, and bargaining will prevail.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“...the power of battle is in generalship more than in the number of soldiers. -- JAMES LONGSTREET, From Manassas to Appomattox: Memoirs of the Civil War in America (1876)”
― Elizabeth Varon, Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South

“It is the discipline which is the soul of armies, as indeed the soul of power in all intelligence. Other things -- moral considerations, impulses of sentiment, and even natural excitement -- may lead men to great deed; but taken in the long run, and in all vicissitudes, an army is effective in proportion to its discipline.”
― Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain

“Bitcoin value is created from collective belief and network effects rather than atoms or armies.”
― Gun Gun Febrianza

“Seeing them, stretched out from one end of the valley to the other like a giant braid of gold and red, I was struck again by how beautiful armies could be - until the fighting starts.”
― Damian Dibben, Tomorrow

“Aimed at army units with no prior training, Manual for the Solution of Military Ciphers showed how to set up a quick-and-dirty deciphering office in the field with five or six soldiers, some radio equipment to intercept enemy signals, and a day or two of study. Hitt went over the basics of military cryptography and explained, accurately, that the methods of the world's armies had not changed much in hundreds of years. Just like there are millions of chicken recipes in the world but only several basic methods to cook the bird (roasting, frying, poaching, boiling), there are countless ciphers but only a handful of common types.”
― Jason Fagone, The Woman Who Smashed Codes: A True Story of Love, Spies, and the Unlikely Heroine who Outwitted America's Enemies

“We know that man's a fighting animal by nature, that cruelty's his birthright; and we also know that what keeps us in the pit as animals are the armies and armaments.”
― James Leslie Mitchell, Three Go Back

“Remember, our Mistress is a Queen. She led armies into battle, and convinced all the other lands to give up their deads to her armies, so that she could destroy the Demon King and his forces. One of the first thing any leader does is learn how to calm their troops.”
― Stuart Grosse, The OP Lich is a Returnee: Book 11 - The Seal of Wind