Military Duty Quotes

#1. Traditional Albanian society was based on a clan system and was further divided into brotherhoods and bajraks. The bajrak system identified a local leader, called a bajrakar, who could be counted on to provide a certain number of men for military duty.

Sebastian Junger

#2. I was the only person in the world who thought it was a military duty to appear to be in a good mood.

Pat Conroy

#3. We live in a world that has walls and those walls need to be guarded by men with guns.

Aaron Sorkin

#4. I give extraordinary attention to military active duty, reserve and National Guard, and their families.

Sanford Bishop

#5. A true military officer is in one particular like a true monk. Not with more self-abnegation will the latter keep his vows of monastic obedience than the former his vows of allegiance to martial duty.

Herman Melville

#6. Through the skill and devotion to duty of their armed forces of all branches in the Midway area our citizens can now rejoice that a momentous victory is in the making.

Chester W. Nimitz

#7. Our military leaders don't seize power in coups; our soldiers and sailors don't go on strike for higher pay or benefits; our armed forces don't weigh in on the political process. In return, Americans have a sacred duty to treat them honorably.

Kathleen Troia McFarland

#8. At the end of October 4 in 1957, when I was coming back from sea duty in the South Pacific, Sputnik went up. I realized that humans would be right behind robot aircraft or spacecraft even though I really had no plans of being in aviation or a professional aviator and certainly not in the military.

Edgar Mitchell

#9. I thought that because my father was military, I was, too ... I'd treated my life there ... like a tour of duty, and ... the only reason I was leaving was that my year was up.

Leah Stewart

#10. The first duty of the sovereign [is] that of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies, [which] can be performed only by means of a military force

Adam Smith

#11. My husband is a former Air Force pilot and my son is an active duty Army surgeon, recently returned from Iraq, so my pride in our military is passionate ... and personal.

Robyn Carr

#12. In some ways, I had a traditional 'old South' upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty.

E. O. Wilson

#13. Churches were never meant to be mental hospitals. They were supposed to be military outposts under orders to storm the gates of hell. Every believer is on active duty and called to serve a higher purpose with the rank of their blessings and talents.

Shannon L. Alder

#14. And like the old soldier in that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the sight to see that duty.

Douglas MacArthur

#15. The one thing I never want to see again is a military parade. When I resigned from the army and went to a farm I was happy. When the rebellion came, I returned to the service because it was a duty. I had no thought of rank; all I did was try and make.

Ulysses S. Grant

#16. When duty whispers low, Thou must, The youth replies, I can.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#17. The last officer named was Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island; a man of limited education and military experience limited to two years of peacetime militia duty, he nevertheless was destined to be the best of the lot.27

John Ferling

#18. When Carlo turned sixteen, he was obliged by Italian law to serve two years of reserve military training. The bishop told Carlo that if he entered seminary he would be exempt from this duty. Carlo told the priest that he planned to enter seminary but that first he needed to understand evil.

Dan Brown

#19. We must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.

Thomas Jefferson

#20. As in 1914, the government mounted an extraordinary campaign to help. Winegrowers were granted delays in being called to active duty, military labor detachments were sent to the vineyards and farm horses of small growers were not to be requisitioned until the harvest was completed.

Don Kladstrup

#21. The ideal of the military hero is clearly echoed in other contexts, and it includes those who routinely risk their health and lives in the line of duty, such as police officers, firefighters, and paramedics.

Philip G. Zimbardo

#22. The roll of honor consists of the names of meant who have squared their conduct by ideals of duty.

Woodrow Wilson

#23. The thing about a marine is that they can be the nicest men and women you will ever meet, but when it comes to their duty there are none fiercer.

Joshua Mcnutt

#24. Personal prudence, even when dictated by quite other than selfish considerations, surely is no special virtue in a military man; while an excessive love of glory, impassioning a less burning impulse, the honest sense of duty, is the first.

Herman Melville

#25. I consider it an indispensible duty to close this last solemn act of my official life by commending the interests of our dearest country to the protection of Almighty God and those who have the superintendence of them into his Holy keeping.

George Washington

#26. Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.

Douglas MacArthur

#27. Our military is overextended. Nine out of 10 active-duty Army divisions are either in Iraq, going to Iraq or have come back from Iraq. One way or the other, they're wrapped up in it.

John F. Kerry

#28. Let us never forget the duty, which we have taken upon us

Adolf Hitler

#29. A military leader often faces a situation he has to deal with, but because it is his duty, no court can try him.

Albert Kesselring

#30. No phase of life, whether public or private, can be free from duty.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

#31. The one word you use in military flying is duty. It's your duty. You have no control over outcome, no control over pick-and-choose. It's duty.

Chuck Yeager

#32. I went on inactive duty in August 1945, and since I had stayed in such good shape and had played ball on military teams, I was ready to start for the Indians just two days later, against the Tigers.

Bob Feller

#33. It is absurd to believe that soldiers who cannot be made to wear the proper uniform can be induced to move forward in battle. Officers who fail to perform their duty by correcting small violations and in enforcing proper conduct are incapable of leading.

George S. Patton

#34. It is the duty of our men to enroll themselves in the national services. We need all our manpower for defence. For the military and ... we need a quarter of a million men.

Eamon De Valera

#35. I have made no secret, either privately or publicly, of any sense of outrage over officially enforced military and war service. I regard it as a duty of conscience to fight against such barbarous enslavement of the individual with every means available.

Albert Einstein

#36. [A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience.

Edward Gibbon