Military Philosophers Quotes

Short, square, cleanshaven, his head seemed carved out of an elephant's tusk, the whole massive cone of ivory left more or less complete in its original shape, eyes hollowed out deep in the roots, the rest of the protuberance accommodating his other features, terminating in a perfectly colossal nose that stretched directly forward from the totally bald cranium. The nose was preposterous, grotesque, slapstick, a mask from a Goldoni comedy. ~ Anthony Powell

Socrates: So even our walks are dangerous here. But you seem to have avoided the most dangerous thing of all.
Bertha: What's that?
Socrates: Philosophy.
Bertha: Oh, we have philosophers here.
Socrates: Where are they?
Bertha: In the philosophy department.
Socrates: Philosophy is not department.
Bertha: Well, we have philosophers.
Socrates: Are they dangerous?
Bertha: Of course not.
Socrates: Then they are not true philosophers. ~ Peter Kreeft

We must all realise that the Israeli society is a military society - men and women. We cannot describe the society as civilian ... they are not civilians or innocent. ~ Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

I first met Winston Churchill in the early summer of 1906 at a dinner party to which I went as a very young girl. Our hostess was Lady Wemyss and I remember that Arthur Balfour, George Wyndman, Hilaire Belloc and Charles Whibley were among the guests…

I found myself sitting next to this young man who seemed to me quite different from any other young man I had ever met. For a long time he seemed sunk in abstraction. Then he appeared to become suddenly aware of my existence. He turned on me a lowering gaze and asked me abruptly how old I was. I replied that I was nineteen. "And I," he said despairingly, "am thirty-two already. Younger than anyone else who counts, though, "he added, as if to comfort himself. Then savagely: "Curse ruthless time! Curse our mortality. How cruelly short is this allotted span for all we must cram into it!" And he burst forth into an eloquent diatribe on the shortness of human life, the immensity of possible human accomplishment - a theme so well exploited by the poets, prophets, and philosophers of all ages that it might seem difficult to invest it with new and startling significance. Yet for me he did so, in a torrent of magnificent language which appeared to be both effortless and inexhaustible and ended up with the words I shall always remember: "We are all worms. But I do believe that I am a glow worm."

By this time I was convinced of it - and my conviction remained unshaken throughout the years that followed. Later he asked ~ Violet Bonham Carter

A Marine is a Marine. I set that policy two weeks ago - there's no such thing as a former Marine. You're a Marine, just in a different uniform and you're in a different phase of your life. But you'll always be a Marine because you went to Parris Island, San Diego or the hills of Quantico. There's no such thing as a former Marine. ~ James F. Amos

Only recently, the word scientist had been coined, by the polymath William Whewell. Many scholars had objected to this blunt new term, as it sounded so sinisterly similar to that awful word atheist; why not simply continue to call themselves natural philosophers? Was that designation not more godly, more pure? But divisions were being drawn now between the realm of nature and the realm of philosophy. Ministers who doubled as botanists or geologists were becoming increasingly rare, as far too many challenges to biblical truths were stirred up through investigation of the natural world. It used to be that God was revealed in the wonders of nature; now God was being challenged by those same wonders. Scholars were now required to choose one side or the other. As ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Apparently almost anyone can do a better job of educating children than our so-called 'educators' in the public schools. Children who are home-schooled by their parents also score higher on tests than children educated in the public schools ... Successful education shows what is possible, whether in charter schools, private schools, military schools or home-schooling. The challenge is to provide more escape hatches from failing public schools, not only to help those students who escape, but also to force these institutions to get their act together before losing more students and jobs. ~ Thomas Sowell

The entire premise behind the Bush administration's policy of holding 'enemy combatants' in foreign military bases such as Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was so that neither U.S. domestic law nor American obligations under international law would be applicable. ~ Mark Gibney

The military has been determined to control the images of war since Vietnam. They're convinced that they lost the war because of loss of political support back home, because people saw what was going on. ~ Bob Simon

Before Nelson Mandela was arrested in 1962, he was an angry, relatively young man. He founded the ANC's military wing. When he was released, he surprised everyone because he was talking about reconciliation and forgiveness and not about revenge. ~ Desmond Tutu

My father-in-law was a nuclear-submarine captain. My father was in the military. ~ David Gregory

Of course, I strongly sympathized with Habermas and the philosophers representing the Frankfurt school, but I also saw the lack of conceptual clarity, and perceived the not-so-revolutionary self-importance in the epigones of Horkheimer, Adorno, and Habermas. ~ Thomas Metzinger

Democritus and Heraclitus were two philosophers, of whom the first, finding the condition of man vain and ridiculous, never went out in public but with a mocking and laughing face; whereas Heraclitus, having pity and compassion on this same condition of ours, wore a face perpetually sad, and eyes filled with tears. I prefer the first humor; not because it is pleasanter to laugh than to weep, but because it is more disdainful, and condemns us more than the other; and it seems to me that we can never be despised as much as we deserve. Pity and commiseration are mingled with some esteem for the thing we pity; the things we laugh at we consider worthless. I do not think there is as much unhappiness in us as vanity, nor as much malice as stupidity. We are not so full of evil as of inanity; we are not as wretched as we are worthless. ~ Michel De Montaigne

Mystical experiences (unlike scientific conclusions) cannot be communicated from one person to another. Philosophers and little children are continually amazed that we, unaccountably, find ourselves in a somewhat intelligible world. ~ Sam Keen

It is a mistake to suppose, with some philosophers of aesthetics, that art and poetry aim to deal with the general and the abstract. This misconception has been foisted upon us by mediaeval logic. Art and poetry deal with the concrete of nature, not with separate 'particulars,' for such rows do not exist. ~ Ernest Fenollosa

I bid you welcome to a new Utopia where men may be free of the so-called moral subjugations and constraints, and where for a time we may shake off those bonds of servitude wherein we are so tyrrannously enslaved."
"You are the humanist,George, not I- what the deuce does he natter on about?"
"Mostly whores and Booze," George replied with a grin.
Sandwidh contined while rapping once more upon the door, "Man is led into vice only when he is denied, my friends; for it is his nature to long after things forbidden and to desire most fervently what is denied."
"Another translation?" Philip asked George.
"Whores and booze ... in boundless supply."
"Ah,"Philip said. "I stand in renewed appreciation of the philosophers. ~ Emery Lee

My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war-and I hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society, to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair. ~ Thomas Jefferson

In America, quite often, for people from a certain economic position two choices become very evident as to their adult life. One is crime, one is the military. And it is quite often that some people choose one or the other, their options not being as many as someone from a higher income. ~ Henry Rollins

In addition, the United States Delegation will suggest a series of steps to improve the United Nations machinery for the peaceful settlement of disputes ... - for extending the rule of international law. For peace is not solely a matter of military or technical problems - it is primarily a problem of politics and people. ~ John F. Kennedy

It comes as no surprise to find [Norman] Mailer embracing [in the book On God] a form of Manicheanism, pitting the forces of light and darkness against each other in a permanent stand-off, with humanity as the battlefield. (When asked if Jesus is part of this battle, he responds rather loftily that he thinks it is a distinct possibility.) But it is at points like this that he talks as if all the late-night undergraduate talk sessions on the question of theism had become rolled into one. 'How can we not face up to the fact that if God is All-Powerful, He cannot be All-Good. Or She cannot be All-Good.'

Mailer says that questions such as this have bedevilled 'theologians', whereas it would be more accurate to say that such questions, posed by philosophers, have attempted to put theologians out of business. A long exchange on the probability of reincarnation (known to Mailer sometimes as "karmic reassignment") manages to fall slightly below the level of those undergraduate talk sessions. The Manichean stand-off leads Mailer, in closing, to speculate on what God might desire politically and to say: 'In different times, the heavens may have been partial to monarchy, to communism, and certainly the Lord was interested in democracy, in capitalism. (As was the Devil!)'

I think it was at this point that I decided I would rather remember Mailer as the author of Harlot's Ghost and The Armies of the Night. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Do you know what it's like to kill a man? You just pushed a knife into living, moving skin and you realize you pierced a heart that beats against your sharp knife.
-Lucas Tyrel ~ L'Poni Baldwin

It's the founding ideals that the flag draped over my father's coffin stand for.
Truth: His father was buried in Kenya, never served in the U.S. military. Which flag draped his father's coffin? And what ideals does the flag that draped his father's coffin in Kenya stand for? ~ Barack Obama

Kevyn, I'm promoting you from Tech Sergeant to Munitions Commander. I want you to take responsibility for all Company weapons.
Munitions Commander? Why me?
I don't know. Call it "suspicion of extreme competence" on my part.
-Captain Tagon & Commander Kevyn Andreyasn ~ Howard Tayler

Philosophers are as jealous as woman; each wants a monopoly of praise. ~ George Santayana

There are a lot of things that are said by people in the military, or civilian life, or in the Congress, or in the Executive Branch, that are their views. And that's the way we live. We're a free people. And that's the wonderful thing about our country. ~ Donald Rumsfeld

And if, as all philosophers on the subject have noted, art is a human activity that relies on the senses to reach the soul, did it not also stand to reason that dogs
at least dogs of Mr. Bones' caliber
would have it in them to feel a similar aesthetic impulse? Would they not, in other words, be able to appreciate art? As far as Willy knew, no one had ever thought of this before. Did that make him the first man in recorded history to believe such a thing was possible? No matter. It was an idea whose time had come. If dogs were beyond the pull of oil paintings and string quartets, who was to say they wouldn't respond to an art based on the sense of smell? Why not an olfactory art? Why not an art for dogs that dealt with the world as dogs knew it? ~ Paul Auster

This Administration has led us into an area without vision. Bush has no clear understanding of what is being asked of the citizens, and the military is under his direction. ~ Martin Sheen

These cumbersome vehicles were as convenient as if dinosaurs had survived to be used by cowboys for driving cattle ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

This is the true lesson of our history: war, preparation for war, and foreign military interventions have served for the most part not to protect us, as we are constantly told, but rather to sap our economic vitality and undermine our civil and economic liberties. ~ Robert Higgs

Before the military coup in Chile, we had the idea that military coups happen in Banana Republics, somewhere in Central America. It would never happen in Chile. Chile was such a solid democracy. And when it happened, it had brutal characteristics. ~ Isabel Allende

The philosophers who in their treatises of ethics assigned supreme value to justice and applied the yardstick of justice to ali social institutions were not guilty of such deceit. They did not support selfish group concerns by declaring them alone just, fair, and good, and smear ali dissenters by depicting them as the apologists of unfair causes. They were Platonists who believed that a perennial idea of absolute justice exists and that it is the duty of man to organize ali human institutions in conformity with this ideal. Cognition of justice is imparted to man by an inner voice, i.e., by intuition. The champions of this doctrine did not ask what the consequences of realizing the schemes they called just would be. They silently assumed either that these consequences will be beneficiai or that mankind is bound to put up even with very painful consequences of justice. Still less did these teachers of morality pay attention to the fact that people can and really do disagree with regard to the interpretation of the inner voice and that no method of peacefully settling such disagreements can be found.
Ali these ethical doctrines have failed to comprehend that there is, outside of social bonds and preceding, temporally or logically, the existence of society, nothing to which the epithet "just" can be given. A hypothetical isolated individual must under the pressure of biological competition look upon ali other people as deadly foes. His only concern is to preserve his own lif ~ Ludwig Von Mises

America loves a winner, and will not tolerate a loser, this is why America has never, and will never, lose a war. ~ George S. Patton

It was on 7 March 1936 that Hitler comprehensivelyviolated the Versailles Treaty by sending troops intothe industrial region of the Rhineland, which under Article 180 had been specifically designated ademilitarized zone. Had the German Army beenopposed by the French and British forces stationednear by, it had orders to retire back to base and sucha reverse would almost certainly have cost Hitler thechancellorship. Yet the Western powers, riven withguilt about having imposed what was described as a'Carthaginian peace' on Germany in 1919, allowedthe Germans to enter the Rhineland unopposed. 'After all,' said the influential Liberal politician andnewspaper director the Marquis of Lothian, who hadbeen Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster in RamsayMacDonald's National Government, 'they are onlygoing into their own back garden.' When Hitler assured the Western powers in March 1936 thatGermany wished only for peace, Arthur Greenwood,the deputy leader of the Labour Party, told the Houseof Commons: 'Herr Hitler has made a statement…holding out the olive branch… which ought to be takenat face value… It is idle to say that those statementsare insincere.' That August Germany adopted compulsory two-year military service ~ Andrew Roberts

Those who never philosophized until they met with disappointments, have mostly become disappointed philosophers ~ Arthur Helps

Well, human rights defenders, freedom of speech advocates, lawyers that we spoke to said this is really an expansion. After the military ouster of Egypt's unpopular, but elected Islamist president in 2013, we saw political opponents being arrested by the thousands, really. Then we saw a popular comedian go off the air out of fear of retribution. ~ Leila Fadel

I started asking the big questions that I had asked in college, that my compatriots the Greek philosophers had asked, like 'what is a good life?' Socrates famously said that 'The unexamined life is not worth living.' I started asking these questions from the starting point of 'what is success?' ~ Arianna Huffington

9:37, the west wall of the Pentagon was hit by hijacked American Airlines Flight 77, a Boeing 757. The crash caused immediate and catastrophic damage. All 64 people aboard the airliner were killed,as were 125 people inside the Pentagon (70 civilians and 55 military service members). One hundred six people were seriously injured and transported to area hospitals.192 While no emergency response is flawless, the response to the 9/11 terror= ist attack on the Pentagon was mainly a success for three reasons:first,the strong professional relationships and trust established among emergency responders; second, the adoption of the Incident Command System; and third, the pursuit of a regional approach to response. Many fire and police agencies that responded had extensive ~ Anonymous

In 1993, Israel and North Korea were moving towards an agreement in which North Korea would stop sending any missiles or military technology to the Middle East and Israel would recognize that country. President Clinton intervened and blocked it. ~ Noam Chomsky

If civilians are killed in an attack on a military installation, it is certainly regrettable, but I will not morally blame the I.R.A. for it. ~ Peter T. King

In taking action we must remember that the things which are happening to the Jews today are but a part of the general disintegration anticipated by philosophers and historians of different schools for almost half a century. ~ Louis Finkelstein

It must've been Albert's military background, because man, when he dropped a bomb the entire country shook. I was still jittery as a hurricane survivor in New Orleans, and I was sure that somewhere in Alaska some poor Inuit had just taken a tumble from his sled for the very same reason. ~ Jennifer Rardin

Today secular philosophers call that kind of divine invocation God of the gaps-which comes in handy, because there has never been a shortage of gaps in people's knowledge. ~ Neil DeGrasse Tyson

The new captain looked up. Oh, good grief, Vimes thought. It's bloody Rust this time round!
And it was indeed the Hon. Ronald Rust, the god's gift to the enemy, any enemy, and a walking encouragement to desertion.
The Rust family had produced great soldiers, by the undemanding standards of 'Deduct your own casualties from those of the enemy, and if the answer is a positive number, it was a glorious victory' school of applied warfare. But Rust's lack of any kind of military grasp was matched only by his high opinion of the talent he in fact possessed only in negative amounts. ~ Terry Pratchett

Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America. ~ Myra MacPherson

I leave marks on you, not the other way around. ~ Renee Rose