#military

I doubt that my sense of personal freedom is any stronger than anybody else's. I'm happy to respect authority when it's genuine authority, based on moral or intellectual or even technical superiority. I'm eager to follow a hero if we can find one. But I tend to resist or evade any kind of authority based merely on the power to coerce. Government, for example. The Army tried to train us to salute the uniform, not the man. Failed. I will salute the man, maybe, if I think he's worthy of it, but I don't salute uniforms anymore. ↗

— Edward Abbey

#coerce #government #military #respect-for-authority #salute

Never run after a man or a bus, there's always another one in five minutes. ↗

— Cherry Adair

#military #romantic-suspense #humor

The Tausennigan Ob'enn warlords look like cuddly teddy-bears? Yes, they do, and they'd cheerfully exterminate your entire race for making that observation! I guess that explains their rich military history, then. -Ennesbey & Petey ↗

— Howard Tayler

#contradictions #cuddly #humour #military #overreaction

Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way. ↗

— George S. Patton Jr.

#military #leadership

The day the soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. ↗

— Colin Powell

#leading #military #leadership

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them! ↗

— Albert Einstein

#military #violence #war #life

War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of. ↗

— Sebastian Junger

#army #combat #life #marine-corps #military

Every GI signs a blank check, payable to the United States, drawn in an amount up to and including his life. ↗

— G.E. Nolly

#life

Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible. ↗

— Stonewall Jackson

#operations-strategy #tactics #men

Military intervention cannot liberate women because it is embedded within a set of assumptions, beliefs, and social relations that reinforce and reproduce gender inequality, as well as other social inequalities within and across nation-states. Military intervention depends upon a belief in the legitimacy of armed violence in resolving political problems, which in turn depends upon our adherence to particular ideas about what it means to be a man or a woman. ↗

— Nadje Al-Ali

#liberation #men #military #war #women