#soldiers

All around them were the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers. They lined the verges of the roads and floated in the canals, jammed together around the pillars of the bridges. In the trenches between the burial mounds hundreds of dead soldiers sat side by side with their heads against the torn earth, as if they had fallen asleep together in a deep dream of war. ↗

— J.G. Ballard

#soldiers #war #word-war-two #dreams

[Iain, addressing the Rangers at the end of the French & Indian war] "Never has the world see a war as this one, but you turned the tide of it, spillin' your blood to keep frontier families safe. Years from now, people will remember the Rangers, the sacrifices you made, the battles you fought, the victories you won. I pray that peace will follow you all your days. ↗

— Pamela Clare

#soldiers #war #family

As Lynn writes: "What angers me is the loss of control. At any moment someone could come to me, be dressed the right way and use the right code, and I no longer have free will. I will do anything that person requests. I hate them for that. Nothing else is as bad as knowi that I am always out of control; knowing that I am still a laboratory experiment, a puppet whose strings are hidden from ever but my handlers, and I don't yet know how to break free. p216

— Lynn Hersha

#control #free-will #government-abuse #manipulation #military

We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost. ↗

— Erich Maria Remarque

#forlorn #lost #old #soldiers #sorrow

Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "use it well, use it wisely." We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training. ↗

— John Steinbeck

#soldiers #men

The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle. ↗

— Heinrich Heine

#music #soldiers #war #marriage

Dad, how do soldiers killing each other solve the world's problems? ↗

— Bill Watterson

#fighting #peace #soldiers #war #problems

There has seldom if ever a shortage of eager young males prepared to kill and die to preserve the security, comfort and prejudices of their elders, and what you call heroism is just an expression of this simple fact; there is never a scarcity of idiots. ↗

— Iain Banks

#soldiers #war #heroism

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them. ↗

— Napoleon Bonaparte

#credit #generally #generals #get #soldiers

Our platform calls for a balanced deficit reduction plan where the wealthy pay their fair share. And when your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism. ↗

— Cory Booker

#asked #balanced #being #calls #class