West Point Quotes

For a West Point graduate to abandon his appointed task in the face of adversity or personal discomfort was all but inconceivable. ~ David McCullough

There's no doubt West Point impacted who I am ... It has an enormous emphasis, not only on military aspects, but character development. Whether it's the honor code, or the interactions you have, both with the cadet leadership and the academy leadership, every place you are is a character test. ~ Mike Pompeo

They were saying you would be a tremendous addition to the military, and we can get you into West Point with a full scholarship. And I simply said, I want to be a doctor. I really appreciate it. ~ Benjamin Carson

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. ~ Douglas MacArthur

I knew what my father, more than anything else, wanted me to do. Seventeen, vain, and spoiled by poems, I prepared to enter a remote West Point. I would succeed there, it was hoped, as he had. ~ James Salter

I'm in regular contact with people who are still in the military-friends, family, people I served with, men and women I taught at West Point-and I look at every military issue through that lens. What they say or think weighs heavily on my mind. ~ Tom Rooney

Phineas didn't really dislike West Point in particular or authority in general, but just considered authority the necessary evil against which happiness was achieved by reaction, the backboard which returned all the insults he threw at it. ~ John Knowles

I've led a life of such structured discipline and always had a goal in mind of knowing what I was doing, from West Point to the Air Force combat, MIT, looking for new things to study and get involved in. And then I got into the space program, and how disciplined can you get? ~ Buzz Aldrin

My father was career military. He was a veteran, he was a doctor of political science, he taught at West Point and Air Command Staff and lectured at the War College. ~ Suzanne Collins

Benedict Arnold was appointed to the rank of general in the Continental Army by George Washington during the American War of Independence. It was up to him to protect the fortifications at West Point, New York, which in 1802 became the U.S. Military Academy. Arnold however planned to surrender his command to the British forces. When his treasonous act was discovered Arnold fled down the Hudson River to the British sloop-of-war Vulture, avoiding capture by the forces of George Washington, who had previously been alerted to the plot. Arnold was hailed a hero by the British, who gave him a commission in the British Army as brigadier general. In the winter of 1782, after the war, he moved to London with his wife where he was received as a hero by King George III. In the United States his name "Benedict Arnold" became synonyms for the words "TRAITOR & TREASON."
Cohorting with a foreign power to overthrow the government or purposely aiding the enemy is an act of Treason! ~ Hank Bracker

During my 40-year coaching career at West Point, Indiana and Texas Tech, my teams reached the Final Four on five occasions, winning the national championship three times. ~ Bobby Knight

things started getting better when the people of West Point slum starting singing "No one is coming to save us!" It was a turning point. It meant they understood that local leaders were their best hope for surival. The people were finally in charge of their own future. The story turned from being about the failure of outsiders to the success of community resilience. And in the coming months when West Point slum's death toll fell far short of projections, citizens and local leaders could look at each other and say, "We did this ourselves! ~ Marc Maxmeister

I was driven when I was younger. Driven at West Point where it was much more competitive in that women were competing with men on many levels, and I was driven in the military and at Harvard, both competitive environments. ~ Paula Broadwell

It's so rarely about military genius, who the greater tactician might be, who sat higher in his class at West Point. It's about mistakes, some of them unavoidable, some of them purely stupid. My job is to make fewer mistakes than the enemy, ~ Jeff Shaara

This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "conciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him ... but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

Give me an Army of West Point graduates and I'll win a battle ... Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war. ~ George S. Patton Jr.

Not making the baseball team at West Point was one of the greatest disappointments of my life, maybe my greatest. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every member of our baseball team at West Point became a general: this proves the value of team sports. ~ Omar N. Bradley

I have therefore concluded to apply for the privilege of becoming a Cadet at West Point. ~ George Stoneman

He was a graduate of West Point, which is military academy that turns young men into homicidal maniacs for use in war. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

First is our unbreakable rule that every candidate must be a trained trooper, blooded under fire, a veteran of combat drops. No other army in history has stuck to this rule, although some came close. Most great military schools of the past - Saint Cyr, West Point, Sandhurst, Colorado Springs - didn't even pretend to follow it; they accepted civilian boys, trained them, commissioned them, sent them out with no battle experience to command men . . . and sometimes discovered too late that this smart young 'officer' was a fool, a poltroon, or a hysteric. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

Where, indeed? Captain Vincent Reed had been born in the city of Richmond, Virginia, of northern parents who were stationed there by the telegraph company. He had attended West Point and he thought he knew something about warfare, having served under General Pope in his long and futile struggle against General Stonewall Jackson. Those men were fighters who would face the enemy till the last bullet was fired, but neither would participate in such a slaughter.
Reed had had his troops in position. He was quite prepared to rush in for the kill, and he had positioned himself so that he would be in the vanguard when his men made their charge against the guns of the young braves threatening the left flank. But when he saw that the enemy had no weapons, that even their bows and arrows were not at hand, and that he was supposed to chop down little girls and old women, he rebelled on the spot, taking counsel with no one but his own conscience. ~ James A. Michener

In each succeeding war there is a tendency to proclaim as something new the principles under which it is conducted. Not only those who have never studied or experienced the realities of war, but also professional soldiers frequently fall into the error. But the principles of warfare as I learned them at West Point remain unchanged. ~ John J. Pershing

I like how you call homosexuality an abomination."
"I don't say homosexuality's an abomination, Mr. President, the bible does."
"Yes it does. Leviticus-"
"18:22"
"Chapter in verse. I wanted to ask you a couple questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that can I ask another? My chief of staff, Leo Mcgary,insists on working on the sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself or is it ok to call the police? Here's one that's really important, cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town. Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean, Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Red Skins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? ~ Aaron Sorkin

You know how you smoke out a sniper? You send a guy out in the open, and you see if he gets shot. They thought that one up at West Point. ~ Samuel Fuller

So, Wesley Clark is running for president. Pretty amazing guy. Four star general, first in his class at West Point, supreme commander of NATO, saw combat in Vietnam, won the bronze star, silver star, the purple heart for being wounded in battle. See, I'm no political expert, but that sounds pretty good next to choking on a pretzel, falling off a scooter and dropping the dog. ~ Jay Leno

President Josiah Bartlet: Good. I like your show. I like how you call homosexuality an abomination.

Dr. Jenna Jacobs: I don't say homosexuality is an abomination, Mr. President. The Bible does.

President Josiah Bartlet: Yes, it does. Leviticus.

Dr. Jenna Jacobs: 18:22.

President Josiah Bartlet: Chapter and verse. I wanted to ask you a couple of questions while I had you here. I'm interested in selling my youngest daughter into slavery as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. She's a Georgetown sophomore, speaks fluent Italian, always cleared the table when it was her turn. What would a good price for her be? While thinking about that, can I ask another? My Chief of Staff Leo McGarry insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly says he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or is it okay to call the police? Here's one that's really important 'cause we've got a lot of sports fans in this town: Touching the skin of a dead pig makes one unclean. Leviticus 11:7. If they promise to wear gloves, can the Washington Redskins still play football? Can Notre Dame? Can West Point? Does the whole town really have to be together to stone my brother John for planting different crops side by side? Can I burn my mother in a small family gathering for wearing garments made from two different threads? Think about those questions, would you? One last thing: While you may be mistaking this for your monthly meeting of the Ignora ~ Aaron Sorkin

They'd laughed when he flunked out of West Point. They'd laughed ~ Rick Riordan

A Conspiracy Theory that took hold was introduced by Anthony "Tony" Summers, the respected author of The Kennedy Conspiracy, published in 1980 and again in 1998 as "Not in Your Lifetime." He believes that anti-Castro activists, funded by Mafia mobsters who had been ousted from Cuba, killed Kennedy. Summers believes that members of the CIA took part in this conspiracy and named the people he suspected. Summers also stated in an article published in the National Enquirer magazine, on October 25, 2013, that Lee Harvey Oswald didn't act alone. The National Enquirer stated that Herminio Diaz, born in Cuba in 1923, had, in 1948, shot Pipi Hernandez, who was a Dominican exile employed at the naval base at Guantanamo. This killing took place at the Cuban Consulate in Mexico. In 1957, he was involved with an assassination attempt against President José Figueres of Costa Rica, who incidentally was a trained Army Ranger and a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point.

According to JFKFacts published on May 27, 2014, General Fabián Escalante, the historian of Cuban State Security and Castro's former bodyguard, said that the assassin Herminio Diaz, along with Eladio del Valle and three American mobsters: Richard Gaines, Lenny Patrick, and Dave Yara, were the shooters at Dealey Plaza. ~ Hank Bracker

My dad being an Army officer, I was just born to it. I was raised in a military manner, and it was a given that Army brats went to West Point, so I went to West Point in 1941. And being in the military has been my life. ~ John Eisenhower

Palestine was the West Point and Annapolis for the world. In that little country God was training up a people out of whom, when the fullness of the time should come, His gospel cadets should emerge, fitted by all the training of all their national history for going out among the heathen and proclaiming the unsearchable riches of Christ. ~ William Mackergo Taylor

But this attitude could not persist. Under the supervision of "oldtimers" like Joseph Johnston, Robert E. Lee, Braxton Bragg, and Thomas Jackson, complaisant officers were gradually weeded out and West Point ideas of discipline were adopted in the Southern armies. Before the campaigns of 1862 Johnny Reb was for the most part a changed man. He had shed most of his surplus equipment, and, of much greater importance, he had abandoned the idea that military life was "all fun and frolic." In short, the volunteer had become a soldier. ~ Bell Irvin Wiley

A certain point came when I wanted to document growing-up adventures. ~ Suki Waterhouse

God famously doesn't afflict Job because of anything Job has done, but because he wants to prove a point to Satan. Twenty years later, I am sympathetic with my first assessment; to me, in spite of the soft radiant beauty of many of its passages, the Bible still has a mechanical quality, a refusal to brook complexity that feels brutal and violent. There has been a change, however. When I look at Revelation now, it still seems frightening and impenetrable, and it still suggests an inexorable, ridiculous order that is unknowable by us, in which our earthly concerns matter very little. However, it not longer reads to me like a chronicle of arbitrarily inflicted cruelty. It reads like a terrible abstract of how we violate ourselves and others and thus bring down endless suffering on earth. When I read And they blasphemed the God of heaven because of their pain and their sores, and did not repent of their deeds, I think of myself and others I've known or know who blaspheme life itself by failing to have the courage to be honest and kind - and how then we rage around and lash out because we hurt. When I read the word fornication, I don't read it as a description of sex outside legal marriage: I read it as sex done in a state of psychic disintegration, with no awareness of one's self or one's partner, let alone any sense of honor or even real playfulness. I still don't know what to make of much of it, but I'm inclined to read it as a writer's primitive attempt to give form to his mor ~ Mary Gaitskill

If you tell certain people that you like Kerouac, they assume that's all you read, like you don't know anything else about literature. I recognize all the things that people dislike about the way he writes - his tone and the sentimentality of it all. But those books were there for me at a very important point in my life. ~ Ben Gibbard

And what would happen if we never read the classics? There comes a point in life, it seems to me, where you have to decide whether you're a Person of Letters or merely someone who loves books, and I'm beginning to see that the book lovers have more fun. ~ Nick Hornby

A great man represents a great ganglion in the nerves of society, or to vary the figure, a strategic point in the campaign of history, and part of his greatness consists in his being there. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

The object of art is not to make salable pictures. It is to save yourself.
The fools who write articles about me think that one morning I suddenly decided to write and began to produce masterpieces.
There is no special trick about writing or painting either. I wrote constantly for 15 years before I produced anything with any solidity to it.
The thing of course, is to make yourself alive. Most people remain all of their lives in a stupor.
The point of being an artist is that you may live.
You won't arrive. It is an endless search. ~ Sherwood Anderson

Most people will reach a point where, whatever their ideology, they will relent, or conform, and that keeps them kind of in the general mass of people. And for those who find that they can't, all of sudden they leave the general mass, they find that they become exceptions, and exceptional, and often this makes them public. ~ David Bezmozgis

A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves out to achieve instead - often not recognizing fully what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming age of barbarism and darkness. ~ Alasdair MacIntyre

I look out of this window and I think this is a cosmos, this is a huge creation, this is one small corner of it. The trees and birds and everything else and I'm part of it. I didn't ask to be put here, I've been lucky in finding myself here. ~ Morris West

Oblige me by taking away that knife. I can't look at the point of it. It reminds me of Roman history. ~ James Joyce

Travel is a private pleasure, since it consists entirely of things felt and things seen ... ~ Vita Sackville-West

You either get the point of Africa or you don't. What draws me back year after year is that it's like seeing the world with the lid off. ~ A.A. Gill

If he had any kind of a clue, he wouldn't be caught dead with that stuff. See what I did there? Caught dead? I crack myself up. Eve sipped more coffee she probably, at this point, didn't need. ~ Rachel Caine

Winning the Super Bowl was obviously a great one, but the joy I felt of going to the Super Bowl, it was what I felt about the Pittsburgh Steelers and where we came from, the history of us to that point. ~ Joe Greene

Every painting has a weakness and a breaking point, where the essence of a painting lies. In my case it is never in the centre. ~ Luc Tuymans

There is a striking parallel between the spreading of germs and the spreading of ideas or propaganda. On the one hand we are dealing with a virus which can be transported and transmitted under certain conditions which favor or limit its transportation or transmission: on the other hand with ideas, religions, and doctrines, which can be described as germs, benevolent or malevolent, according to the point of view one takes up. These germs can either remain at their source and be sterile, or emerge in the spreading of infection. ~ Andre Siegfried

People say, 'What do you mean you want to help the world, but you're so concerned about fashion?' It's illegal to be naked. It is something that is extremely important. ~ Kanye West

Pions are the mediating particles of the strong nuclear interaction. The intensity of the interaction depends on the mass of the pions and that mass can, under certain specialized conditions, be altered. The Lunar physicists have developed an instrument they call the Pionizer, which can be made to do jut such a thing. Once the pion's mass is decreased, or increased for that matter, it is, effectively, part of another Universe; it becomes a gateway, a crossing point. ~ Isaac Asimov

Although I agree that wild horses are a symbol of the American West, I also believe that it is the responsibility of Congress to ensure that these animals are managed, protected, and controlled in an effective manner. ~ Jon Porter

The principles of war are the same as those of a siege. Fire must be concentrated on one point, and as soon as the breach is made, the equilibrium is broken and the rest is nothing. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

I was monoconjugal until I met you. I made it a point of honour to only have sex with a man once. ~ M.J. Lawless

It's funny because 'West Wing' is similar to 'Game of Thrones' in some ways, as it was very hard to pull off back then. ~ Alex Graves

It's not going to be easy. I'll push you to your breaking point to prepare you. ~ Lia Davis

They looked down on the landscapes of West 1, and then with that last step it was as if somebody had exploded a daisycutter bomb, scything away the greenery for miles around and replacing it with concrete, tarmac and steel, staining the shining river a turbid grey and penning it in with reinforced banks and bridges, all under a grubby, colourless sky. Joshua thought you couldn't have had a better demonstration of what humanity could do to a world, given a few centuries and a lot of oil to burn. ~ Terry Pratchett

Adam Wayne, the conqueror, with his face flung back and his mane like a lion's, stood with his great sword point upwards, the red raiment of his office flapping around him like the red wings of an archangel. And the King saw, he knew not how, something new and overwhelming. The great green trees and the great red robes swung together in the wind. The preposterous masquerade, born of his own mockery, towered over him and embraced the world. This was the normal, this was sanity, this was nature, and he himself, with his rationality, and his detachment and his black frock-coat, he was the exception and the accident - a blot of black upon a world of crimson and gold. ~ G.K. Chesterton

Someday I'm going to throw you across his back and ride off west with you ... and you'll learn to make a coffee in a tin pot over a fire, and we'll sleep underneath a wagon and look out at the stars- ~ Lisa Kleypas

In the sex education process in schools, the one thing that they teach about is how to get pregnant and how to not get pregnant. But they don't really talk about sex as a point of pleasure for women. ~ Ashton Kutcher

I point at a window to my left, and it explodes. Particles of glass rain over us. 'You'll have to do better than that,' I say. ~ Veronica Roth

IN MY SO-CALLED CAREER, I'VE OFTEN WRITTEN THINGS THAT I VAINLY THOUGHT WERE INCREDIBLY GOOD AND THAT I ENJOYED READING SO MUCH I FIGURED EVERYBODY ELSE WOULD ENJOY THEM TOO, AND MORE OFTEN THAN NOT, I HAVE BEEN TOTALLY WRONG … I never stopped being surprised that so many critics were uninterested in them, or dismissive, or even hostile. often they tried to point out the allegorical failures of the pieces, even when they were clearly as non-allegorical as they could get. and more than a couple of times, I received emails from somebody asking me what happened, why didn't I write the stories I used to write, and why did I get into all this 'animal rights' nonsense? I guess they thought I was picketing outside university research facilities. I consider all my stories and novels to be animal stories … I never understood why people took MFA degrees, or creative writing courses, and I avoided taking them myself for many years … honestly, I can't imagine why anybody would want to go through the pain and agony of having his work critiqued in an open forum - I tell my creative writing students this all the time, they are all far braver than I am! ~ Scott Bradfield

...our friendship had ripened to a point when we had already become in a way part-owners of each other.--Justine ~ Burrell Lawrence

The forgiving heart is capable of anything.
I believe that deeply.
And that's where in terms of becoming an empowered individual ...
when you get to the point where you realize you can look at someone and say
I love myself enough -
not in a schmaltzy garbage sense, Hallmark stuff,
I'm talking respect myself -
I respect my life-force enough to no longer waste it. ~ Caroline Myss

Well, that's just all kinds of creepy," Puck muttered at my side, giving the doll a look of alarm. "If you see any clowns, do me a favor and don't point them out, okay? i'd rather live without the nightmares."
I was about to snap at him for putting the thought of killer clown dolls in my head ... ~ Julie Kagawa

I HEARD YOU LIKE TO DO IT WITH THE LIGHTS ON. BUT I REALLY MAKE BABIES WHEN THE MIC'S ON. ~ Kanye West

Well, let's face it, you're not stupid. You knew there were a lot of things wrong in the relationship, you just chose to ignore them because there were so many good things you didn't want to give up. Now, you're at the point in your life where you're strong enough to give up the good stuff. You're strong enough to expect more from your life. I'm proud of you for that. Most women aren't that strong. They're so terrified of being alone that they stay with the wrong guy, rather than risk loneliness waiting for the right guy. ~ Kim Gruenenfelder

Phillip look into Ray's eyes. He saw compassion and hope. And he saw himself mirrored back, bleeding in a dirty gutter on a street where life was worth less than a dime bag.
Sick, tired, petrified, Phillip dropped his head into his hands.
"What's the point?"
"You're the point, son." Ray ran his hand over Phillip's hair. "You're the point. ~ Nora Roberts

I was twenty now, and had given up all hope of being a singer or ever getting out of Aston. PA system or no PA system, it wasn't going to happen. I'd convinced myself that there was no point in even trying, because I was just going to fail, like I had at school, at work, and at everything else I'd ever tried. 'You ain't no good as a singer,' I told myself. 'You can't even play an instrument, so what hope d'you have?' ~ Ozzy Osbourne

I know enough about the moon to know how unpleasant and inhospitable it is ... I know enough about Mars to know that you can't live there, you can't settle it. Mars and the moon are two ugly islands. So then, you say, what's the point of going to them? The point is to be able to say I've been there, I've set foot on them, and I can go further to look for beautiful islands. ~ Wally Schirra

Not often, but every once in a while, God brings us to a major turning point
a great crossroads in our life. From that point we either go more and more toward a slow, lazy, and useless Christian life, or we become more and more on fire, giving our utmost for His highest
our best for His glory. ~ Oswald Chambers

I reach out and grab her wrist. It feels impossibly tiny in my hand, like this one time I found a baby bird near goose Point, and I picked it up and it died there, taking its final gasping fluttering breaths in my palm. ~ Lauren Oliver

My father quoted everyone, from Shakespeare to Emerson, on the subject of destiny, and then he'd point out that except for the Greeks, everyone agreed: The stars do fuck-all for us; you must make your own way. ~ Amy Bloom

Insanity depended on your point of view, he always said, and if it was the view through your own underpants then everything looked fine ~ Terry Pratchett

Perfection of planned layout is achieved only by institutions on the point of collapse. ~ C. Northcote Parkinson

One kind of happiness is to know exactly at what point to be miserable. ~ Francois De La Rochefoucauld

This country is always changing. But my point about the Supreme Court is the Supreme Court didn't wait for the country to change. Five unelected lawyers overruled 320 million Americans. ~ Ted Cruz

I'm kind of like Che Guevera. I lead the revolution, but at some point I turn it over to someone else. ~ Jesse Ventura

At a certain point you have to make a decision in your life about where will you best serve, and I decided that I would best serve as a producer as opposed to a studio executive. There are many upsides to being the studio executive, but one of the downsides is that you get removed from the actual process of making the movie. ~ Adam Leipzig

I remember reading a book that was on songwriting at some point that I found in my dad's store, and just ... I did not relate at all. I've always hated structure of all kinds, it just doesn't work for me. I can never fit into the schedules of other people. It's like putting a schedule on your song, and it doesn't allow you to be moved by your own music. ~ Larkin Grimm

Sport, on the other hand, is straightforward. In badminton, if you win a rally, you get one point. In volleyball, if you win a rally, you get one point. In tennis, if you win a rally, you get 15 points for the first or second rallies you've won in that game, or 10 for the third, with an indeterminate amount assigned to the fourth rally other than the knowledge that the game is won, providing one player is two 10-point (or 15-point) segments clear of his opponent. It's clear and simple. ~ Alan Partridge