I'm making a list of some good quotes, what are some of Arfcom's favorites?

One of mine is "The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his." ~ General Patton

"We The People...."

First post wins again.

Tops the charts!

Ask not what your country can do for you

It takes more courage in the soviet army to retreat than it does to advance

A radical Muslim is dropping mortar rounds on your head. A moderate Muslim is just calling in the co-ordinates.

Going to war without the French is like going deer hunting without an accordion player.

"I come in peace. I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: If you fuck with me, I'll kill you all"-Mattis

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself."
-John Stuart Mill

"Never give in! Never give in! Never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
-Sir Winston Churchill

"Americans need never fear their government because of the advantage of being armed, which the Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation."
-James Madison

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
-Benjamin Franklin

"Those who would give up essential Liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither Liberty nor safety."-Benjamin Franklin

"I call upon all who love freedom to stand with us. Keep you faith staunch. Our arms are resolute. Together we shall achieve victory"
- Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, June 6th 1944

..."If you are going through Hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill

"It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived."
-General George S. Patton, Jr

"I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." - Abraham Lincoln

"We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm."
-George Orwell

"You're never beaten until you admit it."
-Gen. George S. Patton

'Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.' - General MacArthur

"Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote." -Benjamin Franklin

DUDE! You owe me a new keyboard!  

Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -H. L. Menken

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." -R. Heinlein, Beyond This Horizon

“What country can preserve its liberties if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms.” – Thomas Jefferson to William Stephens Smith, 1787. ME 6:373, Papers 12:356

"To secure peace is to prepare for war" -Carl von Clausewitz

"When you disarm your subjects, you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you. " -Machiavelli

"MOLON LABE" (ΜΟΛΩΝ ΛΑΒΕ)

We will remember every rescuer who died in honor. We will remember every family that lives in grief. We will remember the fire and ash, the last phone calls, the funerals of the children.

Our enemies have made the mistake that America’s enemies always make. They saw liberty and thought they saw weakness. And now, they see defeat.

- George W. Bush

See Sig.  First is from Grant/Sherman.  Second is from Hal Moore.

Nuts

Closely followed by; Seek Out, Locate, Close with, and Destroy.  The basic Marine Corps mission

ETA: No we don't "roll caissons" or "up we go" of "anchors away", "We Fight our Country's Battles"

"Welcome to the Infantry. This is our day, our job. It sucks, and we hate it, but we endure for two reasons. First, there is nobility and purpose in our lives. We are America's warrior class. We protect; we avenge. Second, every moment in the Infantry is a test. If we measure up to the worst days, it proves we stand a breed apart from all other men." -SSG David Bellavia (ret)

be polite, but have a plan to kill everyone you meet.

I will go along with this one.

You can kill ten of my men for every one I kill of yours, but even at those odds, you will lose and I will win.
––Ho Chi Minh to the French, late 1940s

But courage which goes against military expediency is stupidity, or, if it is insisted upon by a commander, irresponsibility.
Erwin Rommel

Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning.
Erwin Rommel

Sweat saves blood.
Erwin Rommel

Gentlemen, when the enemy is committed to a mistake we must not interrupt him too soon.
Horatio Nelson

No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.
Horatio Nelson

It is well that war is so terrible –– lest we should grow too fond of it.
Robert E. Lee

Join the Army, see the world, meet interesting people - and kill them.
Some dirty footed hippie that though he was being ironic

"At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it? Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thousand years. At what point, then, is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide. ––––––––Abraham Lincoln, Address Before the Young Men's Lyceum of Springfield, Illinois (January 27, 1838)

"Let's roll!"

"They're on our right; they're on our left. They're in front of us; they're behind us...They can't get away this time."

~ Col. Lewis "Chesty" Puller upon being surrounded by Chinese forces during the Korean War.

Remember, we were winning when the Democrats pulled the rug out from under the South Viet Nan.

'The German today is like the June Bride; he knows he is going to get it, but he doesn't know how big it is going to be.' - Gen. Richard "Windy" Gale, 6th Airborne Division Commander

I will not argue the rights and wrongs of any particular war with you.  I merely ask you to think what your definition of victory is in any given conflict and think how long you want to keep your soldier's boots on someone else's ground.  As a republic we are no where near Roman or Hun or Mongol enough to kill enough of "them" to force them to be us forever and in the long game neither were the Romans or the Huns or the Mongols.

And no I'm not some pacifist pussy.  I just believe in thinking honestly and clearly about why we are killing "them" before we start killing them in the most effective way possible.

Incorrect attribution.
"We sleep soundly in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm" - Winston Churchill

"Take her down" - Howard Gilmore

"If there is only one plane left to make a final run-in, I want that man to go in and get a hit."
LCDR John C. Waldron, USN

"Stand your ground; don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here."
- Capt. John Parker, April 19, 1775, Lexington, MA

"Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy will not be caught napping."

- Frank Knox, US Secretary of the Navy, 4 December, 1941

The real problem was being able to stick it out, to sit in an office under the orders of a wee man in a dark gray suit and look out of the window and recall the bush country, the waving palms, the smell of sweat and cordite, the grunts of the men hauling jeeps over the river crossings, the copper-tasting fears just before the attack, and the wild, cruel joy of being alive afterward. To remember, and then go back to the ledgers and the commuter train, that was impossible. He knew he would eat his heart out if it ever came to that.
- The Dogs of War, by Frederick Forsyth

There is a time for peace and talk and reason; and then, at long last, and only with sadness of heart and mournful admission that all your wisdom and words have failed, you must go kill you some motherfuckers and set some of their shit on fire.
- Unknown

If you have no ammunition, you are to go in with the bayonet. It's better that the whole battalion dies in Crater to rescue one Jock than that any one of us come out alive.
- Lt Col ‘Mad Mitch’ Mitchell, Argyle & Sutherland Highlanders, Aden 1967

Gentlemen, when this war is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in Hell.
- Admiral Bull Halsey

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.
- Napoleon Bonaparte

After the train had been captured by 150 Boers, the last four men, though completely surrounded and with no cover, continued to fire until three were killed, the fourth wounded. On the Boers asking the survivor the reason why they had not surrendered, he replied, 'Why, man, we are the Gordon Highlanders.'
- Lord Kitchener, telegram from Pretoria to Edward VII

Go and tell the Spartans, stranger passing by,
That here, obedient to their laws, we lie.
- Inscription on the monument at Thermopylae

I don’t know what affect these men will have upon the enemy but, by God, they frighten me.
- Lord Wellesley, before the battle of Waterloo

Like it or not, a new type of soldier has arisen: an organized adventurer. He must have the qualities of a guerrilla, a man of science, an inventor, of a scholar and psychologist. He can emerge from the water or fall from the sky, can walk peaceably along the streets of the enemy's capital or issue him false orders. In reality, war for him is an anachronism. In vain the traditional generals view him with understandable suspicion. He exists and can no longer disappear from the battlefield.
- My Commando Operations, by Otto Skorzeny

The essence of life is struggle, and its goal is domination. There are higher goals and deeper meanings, but they exist only within the mind of man. The reality of life is war.
- Lovret

I've been in awe of the people on Flight 93 since that day they made their stand and refused to go like sheep to the slaughter.

"Almost two centuries ago a group of disturbed men met in the small Pennsylvania State House.  They gathered to decide on a course of action. Behind the locked and guarded doors they debated for hours whether or not to sign the Declaration which had been presented for their consideration. For hours the talk was treason and its price the headsman's axe, the gallows and noose. The talk went on and decision was not forthcoming.

Then, Jefferson writes, a voice was heard coming from the balcony:

'They may stretch our necks on all the gibbets in the land. They may turn every tree into a gallows, every home into a grave, and yet the words of that parchment  can never die. They may pour our blood on a thousand scaffolds and yet from every drop that dyes the axe a new champion of freedom will spring into birth. The words of this declaration will live long after our bones are dust.

To the mechanic in his workshop they will speak hope; to the slave in the mines,  freedom; but to the coward rulers, these words will speak in tones of warning they cannot help but hear.

Sign that parchment!  Sign if the next moment the noose is around your neck. Sign if the next minute this hall rings with the clash of falling axes! Sign by all  your hopes in life or death, not only for yourselves but for all ages, for that  parchment will be the textbook of freedom the bible of the rights of man forever.

Were my soul trembling on the verge of eternity, my hand freezing in death, I would still implore you to remember this truth: God has given America to be free!'

As he finished, the speaker sank back in his seat exhausted. Inspired by his eloquence the delegates rushed forward to sign the Declaration of Independence. When they turned to thank the speaker for his timely words he couldn't be found and to this day no one knows who he was or how he entered or left the guarded room."

–– Ronald Reagan

Artillery brings dignity to what would otherwise be simply a brawl.


No one said ya had to like. They just said you had to do it, Whistle Dick!

GySgt "Action" Jack Landrum

When in doubt.....shoot it.....if it keeps coming.....shoot it again.

My reading of history convinces me
that most bad government results from too much
government.
Thomas Jefferson

 
"Si vis pacem, para bellum!!"
 
 
 




 

FUCK OBAMA?

"Live free or die.  Death is not the worst of evils."  - BG John Stark

My sig line, in full, was:



If you love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom, then go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen - Samuel Adams



Another quote from Adams, all too often overlooked by those who advocate libertine in place of libertarian, by a man who understood that liberty could not be maintained in a religionless vacuum, is:



He therefore is the truest friend to the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue, and who, so far as his power and influence extend, will not suffer a man to be chosen into any office of power and trust who is not a wise and virtuous man. We must not conclude merely upon a man's haranguing upon liberty, and using the charming sound, that he is fit to be trusted with the liberties of his country. It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, — to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves. It is not, I say, unfrequent to see such instances, though at the same time I esteem it a justice due to my country to say that it is not without shining examples of the contrary kind; — examples of men of a distinguished attachment to this same liberty I have been describing; whom no hopes could draw, no terrors could drive, from steadily pursuing, in their sphere, the true interests of their country; whose fidelity has been tried in the nicest and tenderest manner, and has been ever firm and unshaken.

The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy this gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people.



One of my other favorites is from Lord Nelson, and would be considered in my opinion most appropriate to our current engagements around the world:



Never break the neutrality of a port or place, but never consider as neutral any place from whence an attack is allowed to be made.

Commodore Stephen Decatur:

"Our country!  In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right;  but our country, right or wrong”

The Mission of the Field Artillery:  To Destroy, Suppress, and Neutralize the enemy by means of Cannon, Rocket, and Missile Fire.

My favorite quote, as well as an awesome print (IMO):

Ask what you can do for your country.

"To have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. Now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all!...Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder."
–– Winston Churchill


"They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards."
Gen Creighton Abrahms, US Army
Battle of the Ardennes, December, 1944

"Land of the free, home of the brave".