Military Philosophy Quotes

#1. I lived in the world of poetry and ideas. I thought life was all about art and philosophy. In the military, I suddenly found out about the real world.

Shahin Najafi

#2. Foreknowledge cannot be gotten from ghosts and spirits, cannot be had by analogy, cannot be found out by calculation. It must be obtained from people, people who know the conditions of the enemy.

Sun Tzu

#3. It's hard to win a war with a front at your back.

Gregory S. Close

#4. Don't stop aspiring. Just learn to duck. . .

Leif Herrgesell

#5. I don't train to be in a gunfight; I'd much rather be in a shooting - there's a difference. A gunfight means he's shooting back at me. In a shooting, I'm doing all the work.

Jamie Smith

#6. Military service is not just a vocation. It is a way of life, an attitude that you carry in your heart even after you are discharged.

Carlos Wallace

#7. Very few people in the USA realize that a nuclear war was waged with nature in the southwest by their own military.

Steven Magee

#8. Nothing but sunrise and sunsetting
Men fighting the things that are-
Birthgiving and bloodletting
And a drunk god snoring afar.

Dan Levin

#9. In mindfulness, acceptance always comes first, change comes after.

Shamash Alidina

#10. something: scenario x is responded to by action y. Everyone learns it and then practices it until responses are almost instinctive. It's all part of the "train hard, fight easy" philosophy that's central to military life - though veterans of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan smile

Nick Pope

#11. As the demands of the positions differed, and as I grew in age and experience, I found that I had changed as a leader. I learned to ask myself two questions: First, what must the organization I command do and be? And second, how can I best command to achieve that?

Stanley McChrystal

#12. Ronald Reagan was a president of strength. His philosophy was a philosophy of strength - a strong military, a strong economy and strong families.

Mitt Romney

#13. I wanted that future officer to weigh decisions with a supple mind and to be comfortable with nuance and uncertainty.

Craig M. Mullaney

#14. There are no second-place finishers - you don't take silver, you simply lose gold. Second place is nothing but the best loser - nobody lost better than the guy in second place. But on the battlefield that guy usually winds up dead.

Jamie Smith

#15. Question the answers, I repeated every class. Reevaluate your conclusions when the evidence changes.

Craig M. Mullaney

#16. He knew what the Beats know and what the great tennis player knows, son: learn to do nothing, with your whole head and body, and everything will be done by what's around you.

David Foster Wallace

#17. War makes persons special, peoples cheap.

Brian Spellman

#18. The path not taken, was not taken. No point wondering.

Philip Palmer

#19. O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible, and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.

Sun Tzu

#20. Maybe I trust you to be a man and handle the gray reality of truth better than all these kids who still think in black-and-white."

Commander Zeke Waters from The Only Way Out Is In

Lyn Gala

#21. Number three is always fortunate.

Tobias Smollett

#22. Interestingly, when they are on our side, we usually refer to them as guerrillas or partisans or freedom fighters. When they, the men in the hills, oppose a government we support, we call them insurgents.

Dick Couch

#23. Those girls are trifling," DeNice said.

Rainbow Rowell

#24. To cast in it with Hyde was to die a thousand interests and aspirations.

Robert Louis Stevenson

#25. Zombies don't bother me, sir," Faith said, dimpling cutely. "They're insane, hungry, angry animals. They won't kill me from professional courtesy, sir.

John Ringo

#26. The biggest advice is being true to what you want to do. Don't worry if other people understand it or don't understand it. If what you're doing has merit, it will find its way.

Dean Koontz