Military Officer Quotes

“Just as the sentence contains one idea in all its fullness, so the paragraph should embrace a distinct episode; and as sentences should follow one another in harmonious sequence, so paragraphs must fit into another like the automatic couplings of railway carriages.”

“Quotations when engraved upon the memory give you good thoughts.”

“We proceeded systematically, village by village and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation.”

“The Chinese said of themselves several thousand years ago: China is a sea that salts all the waters that flow into it. Theres another Chinese saying about their country which is much more modernit dates only from the fourth century. This is the saying: The tail of China is large and will not be wagged. I like that one. The British democracy approves the principles of movable party heads and unwaggable national tails. It is due to the working of these important forces that I have the honour to be addressing you at this moment.”

“I am a sporting man. I always like to give trains and aeroplanes a fair chance of getting away.”

“Nobody wants to intervene in Russian affairs. Russia is a very large country, a very old country, a very disagreeable country inhabited by immense numbers of ignorant people largely possessed of lethal weapons and in a state of extreme disorder. Also Russia is a long way off.”

“The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.”

“A state of society where men may not speak their minds cannot long endure.”

“Danger gathers upon our path. We cannot afford - we have no right - to look back. We must look forward... The stronger the advocate of monarchical principle a man may be, the more zealously he must now endeavor to fortify the Throne and to give to His Majesty's successor that strength which can only come from the love of a united nation and Empire.”

“Unpunctuality is a vile habit.”

“Land monopoly is not only monopoly, but it is by far the greatest of monopolies; it is a perpetual monopoly, and it is the mother of all other forms of monopoly.”

“Hence we will not say that Greeks fight like heroes, but heroes fight like Greeks.”

“At one side of the palette there is white, at the other black; and neither is ever used neat.”

“I hate nobody except Hitler--and that is professional.”

“May it not also be that the cause of civilization itself will be defended by the skill and devotion of a few thousand airmen? There never has been, I suppose, in all the world, in all the history of war, such an opportunity for youth. The Knights of the Round Table, the Crusaders, all fall back into the past.”

“If you go on with this nuclear arms race, all you are going to do is make the rubble bounce.”

“Nothing will bring American sympathy along with us so much as American blood shed in the field.”

“What is a fine person or a beauteous face,Unless deportment give them decent grace;Blessed with all other requisites to please,To want the striking elegance of ease;Awkward, embarrassed, stiff, without the skillOf moving gracefully, or standing still.”

“Democracy means that when there's a knock in the door at 3 am, it's probably the milkman.”

“The head cannot take in more than the seat can endure.”

“I cannot forecast to you the action of Russia. It is a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma: but perhaps there is a key. That key is Russian national interest.”

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is a fateful fatalistic apathy.”

“Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.”

“If it weren't for painting, I wouldn't live; I couldn't bear the extra strain of things.”

“And a pamphlet called Pick me up There is no genuine hatred against Herr Hitler.”