All true men are soldiers in the same army, to do battle against the same enemy--the empire of darkness and wrong.
This is the genius of the system: even if you manage to avoid the draft, you, your mother, and your family become part of the network of bribes and fears and simulations; you learn to become an actor playing out his different roles in his relationship with the state, knowing already that the state is the great colonizer you fear and want to avoid or cheat or buy off. Already you are semilegal, a transgressor. And that’s fine for the system: as long as you’re a simulator you will never do anything real, you will always look for your compromise with the state, which in turn makes you feel just the right amount of discomfort. Whichever way, you’re hooked. Indeed, it could be said that if a year in the army is the overt process that molds young Russians, a far more powerful bond with the system is created by the rituals of avoiding military service.
The strength of aquatic animals is the waters; of those who dwell in towns, a castle; of footsoldiers, their own ground; of princes, an obedient army.
I have always believed that success would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place.
The body is a machine of the nature of an army..... Of this army each cell is a soldier, an organ a brigade, the central nervous system headquarters and field telegraph, the alimentary and circulatory system the commissariat Losses are made good by recruits born in camp, and the life of the individual is a campaign, conducted successfully for a number of years, but with certain defeat in the long run.
Peace with them! You know what they’d do? They would take my crown, they’d cut off your head, they would take over the city of Jericho.” “They may do that anyway, sire.” “Get out—get out—get out!” King Jokab screamed. “You’re the commander in chief of my armies. I want every man given a sword. Every man or boy who can walk. We have the strongest city in the world. No army can breach our walls. Now, do your job, Zanoah, or I’ll have your head for it.” Zanoah stared at the king, then nodded and started to speak, but seeing the insane rage on King Jokab’s face, he shrugged his burly shoulders, turned,
The army is a good book to open to study human life.
And with C?sar to take in his hand the army, the empire, and Cleopatra, and say, "All these will I relinquish if you will show me the fountain of the Nile."
Stormy Llewellyn, a woman of unconventional views, believes instead that our passage through this world is intended to toughen us for the next life. She says that our honesty, integrity, courage, and determined resistance to evil are evaluated at the end of our days here, and that if we come up to muster, we will be conscripted into an army of souls engaged in some great mission in the next world. Those who fail the test simply cease to exist.
Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?" Antagoras replied, "Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers?"
But it could have been worse. He did have a pass to shop for food at the Army–Air Force Exchange Service—otherwise known as the PX at nearby Greenham Commons Air Base—so at least they’d have proper hot dogs, and brands that resembled the ones he bought at the Giant at home in Maryland.
Ubi summus imperator non adest ad exercitum, / Citius quod non facto 'st usus fit, quam quod facto 'st opus=--When the commander-in-chief is not with the army, that is sooner done which need not to be done than that which requires to be done.
Write as the wind blows and command all words like an army!
An army to a king is like wings to a bird.
Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach.
It is better to have a lion at the head of an army of sheep than a sheep at the head of an army of lions.
No gun, no sword, no army or king will ever be more powerful than a sentence. Swords may cut and kill, but words will stab and stay
From camp to camp, through the foul womb of night, / The hum of either army stilly sounds, / That the fix'd sentinels almost receive / The secret whispers of each other's watch; / Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames / Each battle sees the other's umber'd face; / Steed threatens steed in high and boastful neighs, / Piercing the night's dull ear, and from the tents / The armourers, accomplishing the knights, / With busy hammers closing rivets up, / Give dreadful note of preparation.
Tete d'armee!=--Head of the army!
A group of frogs is called an army.
When he spoke, the voice was quiet and yet struck Joshua with a force almost like the blow from a sword. “As the commander of the army of the Lord I have now come.” Instantly Joshua knew he was standing in the presence of one of the servants of the most high God, an angel, perhaps, and a high-ranking one at that! Dropping his sword, Joshua fell on his face and struggled to speak, for great fear had come over him. “What message does my Lord have for His servant?” “Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy.” The man waited until Joshua had taken off his sandals and then began to speak,
What have the masses been clamoring for? Jobs and welfare, and they got ‘em. They’ve also got unions and managements like two armies converting the whole economy into a battleground with the customers as victims, except that the victims are also in the army. They think in battle terms by day and like customers at night.
Critics are sentinels in the grand army of letters, stationed at the corners of newspapers and reviews to challenge every new author.
Formidabilior cervorum exercitus, duce leone, quam leonum cervo=--An army of stags would be more formidable commanded by a lion, than one of lions commanded by a stag.
He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all the ranks. [ The Art of War, translated by Lionel Giles, Luzac & Co., London, 1910, p. 23-4.]
"But out of a branch of her roots"--Ptolemy Euergetes was the son of the same father as Berenice--"shall one stand up in his estate, who shall come with an army into the land of the king of the north, and shall put all under subjection, and carry captives into Egypt their gods, their princes, their gold, their silver, and all their precious spoils, and shall continue many years when the king of the North can do nought against him."--If he had not been called into Egypt by domestic reasons, says Justin, he would have entirely ruined Seleucus.
Tout soldat francais porte dans sa giberne le baton de marechal de France=--Every private in the French army carries a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack.
They made and recorded a sort of institute and digest of anarchy, called the Rights of Man.
exchanging practically all the British infantry and artillery in India for Territorial batteries and battalions, and the formation of the 27th, 28th and 29th Divisions of regular troops. The New Zealand contingent must be escorted to Australia and there, with 25,000 Australians, await convoys to Europe. Meanwhile the leading troops of the Canadian Army, about 25,000 strong, had to be brought across the Atlantic. All this was of course additional to the main situation in the North Sea and to the continued flow of drafts, reinforcements and supplies across the Channel. Meanwhile the enemy’s Fleet remained intact, waiting, as we might think, its moment to strike; and his cruisers continued to prey upon the seas. To strengthen our cruiser forces we had already armed and commissioned twenty-four liners as auxiliary cruisers, and had armed defensively fifty-four merchantmen. Another forty suitable vessels were in preparation. In order to lighten the strain in the Indian Ocean and to liberate our light cruisers for their proper work of hunting down the enemy, I proposed the employment of our old battleships (Canopus class) as escorts to convoys. Besides employing these old battleships on convoy, we had also at the end of August sent three others abroad as rallying points for our cruisers in case a German heavy cruiser should break out: thus the Glory was sent to Halifax, the Albion to
Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out Neither side is glorious On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing Not to lie under the earth but to walk upon it without crutches
The hum of either army stilly sounds, That the fixed sentinels almost receive The secret whispers of each other's watch; Fire answers fire, and through their paly flames Each battle sees the other's umbered face; Steed threatens steed, in high and boastful neighs Piercing the night's dull ear, and from the tents The armourers, accomplishing the knights, With busy hammers closing rivets up, Give dreadful note of preparation.
God bless the King,--I mean the faith's defender! God bless--no harm in blessing--the Pretender! But who pretender is, or who is king,-- God bless us all!--that 's quite another thing.
The words of eloquent men are like a mighty army, and their writings like glittering swords.
Diversion.--When I have set myself now and then to consider the various distractions of men, the toils and dangers to which they expose themselves in the court or the camp, whence arise so many quarrels and passions, such daring and often such evil exploits, etc., I have discovered that all the misfortunes of men arise from one thing only, that they are unable to stay quietly in their own chamber. A man who has enough to live on, if he knew how to dwell with pleasure in his own home, would not leave it for sea-faring or to besiege a city. An office in the army would not be bought so dearly but that it seems insupportable not to stir from the town, and people only seek conversation and amusing games because they cannot remain with pleasure in their own homes.
You may depend upon it, religion is, in its essence, the most gentlemanly thing in the world. It will alone gentilise, if unmixed with cant; and I know nothing else that will, alone; certainly not the army, which is thought to be the grand embellisher of manners.
If you're a leader, you don't push wet spaghetti, you pull it. The U.S. Army still has to learn that. The British understand it. Patton understood it. I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes.
The social leaders who refuse to allow politics into society are as foreseeing as the soldiers who refuse to allow politics to permeate the army. Society is like the sexual appetite; one does not know at what forms of perversion it may not arrive, once we have allowed our choice to be dictated by aesthetic considerations.
Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.
I am not … a "good man"! … And I'm not a bad man. … I am not a "hero" — and I'm definitely not a President — and no — I'm not an officer! … You know what I am? … I AM … an IDIOT! … with a box — and a screwdriver — passing through, helping out, learning. I don't need an army, I never have. …because love, it's not an emotion — Love is a promise!
The army is a school in which the niggardly become generous and the generous prodigal.
Few men are brave by nature, but good discipline and experience make many so. Good order and discipline in an army are more to be depended upon than ferocity.
He sees that this great roundabout The world, with all its motley rout, Church, army, physic, law, Its customs and its businesses, Is no concern at all of his, And says--what says he?--Caw.
~Moderation.~--Till men have been some time free, they know not how to use their freedom. The natives of wine countries are generally sober. In climates where wine is a rarity intemperance abounds. A newly liberated people may be compared to a Northern army encamped on the Rhine or the Xeres. It is said that, when soldiers in such a situation first find themselves able to indulge without restraint in such a rare and expensive luxury, nothing is to be seen but intoxication. Soon, however, plenty teaches discretion; and after wine has been for a few months their daily fare, they become more temperate than they had ever been in their own country. In the same manner, the final and permanent fruits of liberty are wisdom, moderation, and mercy.--_Macaulay._
The rapid increase of natural knowledge, which is the chief characteristic of our age, is effected in various ways. The main army of science moves to the conquest of new worlds slowly and surely, nor ever cedes an inch of the territory gained. But the advance is covered and facilitated by the ceaseless activity of clouds of light troops provided with a weapon--always efficient, if not always an arm of precision--the scientific imagination. It is the business of these _enfants perdus_ of science to make raids into the realm of ignorance wherever they see, or think they see, a chance; and cheerfully to accept defeat, or it may be annihilation, as the reward of error. Unfortunately the public, which watches the progress of the campaign, too often mistakes a dashing incursion of the Uhlans for a forward movement of the main body; fondly imagining that the strategic movement to the rear, which occasionally follows, indicates a battle lost by science. And it must be confessed that the error is too often justified by the effects of the irrepressible tendency which men of science share with all other sorts of men known to me, to be impatient of that most wholesome state of mind--suspended judgment; to assume the objective truth of speculations which, from the nature of the evidence in their favour, can have no claim to be more than working hypotheses.
It is perfectly clear that people, given no alternative, will choose tyranny over anarchy, because anarchy is the worst tyranny of all…. The special nature of liberties is that they can be defended only as long as we still have them. So the very first signs of their erosion must be resisted, whether the issue be domestic surveillance by the Army, so-called preventive detention, or the freedom of corporate television, or that of a campus newspaper…. It is an eternal error to believe that a cause considered righteous sanctifies unrighteous methods…. It is eternally true that both successful and unsuccessful revolutions increase the power of the state, not that of the individual…. We are learning that affluence without simplicity is a giant trap; that poverty itself is endurable, but not poverty side by side with affluence. Our political leaders are learning that Sophocles was right: nothing that is vast enters into the affairs of mortals without a curse, and that vast American power has now produced its curse…. What counts most in the long haul of adult life is not brilliance, or charisma, or derring-do, but rather the quality that the Romans called “gravitas” — patience, stamina, and weight of judgment…. The prime virtue is courage, because it makes all other virtues possible. [Highlights from the speech made by Eric Sevareid, CBS chief Washington correspondent, at the 80th Annual Stanford University Commencement, June 13, 1971.]
Take one famous example: arguments about property destruction after Seattle. Most of these, I think, were really arguments about capitalism. Those who decried window-breaking did so mainly because they wished to appeal to middle-class consumers to move towards global exchange-style green consumerism, and to ally with labor bureaucracies and social democrats abroad. This was not a path designed to provoke a direct confrontation with capitalism, and most of those who urged us to take this route were at least skeptical about the possibility that capitalism could ever really be defeated. Many were in fact in favor of capitalism, if in a significantly humanized form. Those who did break windows, on the other hand, didn't care if they offended suburban homeowners, because they did not figure that suburban homeowners were likely to ever become a significant element in any future revolutionary anticapitalist coalition. They were trying, in effect, to hijack the media to send a message that the system was vulnerable -- hoping to inspire similar insurrectionary acts on the part of those who might be considering entering a genuinely revolutionary alliance; alienated teenagers, oppressed people of color, undocumented workers, rank-and-file laborers impatient with union bureaucrats, the homeless, the unemployed, the criminalized, the radically discontent. If a militant anticapitalist movement was to begin, in America, it would have to start with people like these: people who don't need to be convinced that the system is rotten, only, that there's something they can do about it. And at any rate, even if it were possible to have an anticapitalist revolution without gun-battles in the streets -- which most of us are hoping it is, since let's face it, if we come up against the US army, we will lose -- there's no possible way we could have an anticapitalist revolution while at the same time scrupulously respecting property rights. Yes, that will probably mean the suburban middle class will be the last to come on board. But they would probably be the last to come on board anyway.
The wall was indeed falling. Down it came with a thunderous crash, the roar of it almost drowning out the screams of the archers on the wall as they fell and were crushed by the huge blocks. The houses that were on the wall fell too, and Othniel grasped Ardon’s arm. “God is destroying the walls!” he cried. “But not that part. Look!” Othniel saw that part of the wall was still standing and that from one of the houses the scarlet rope on which they had escaped from Jericho was dangling. “Come on. We’ll get them out.” Othniel drew his sword along with the other soldiers. They were all screaming and running straight for the wall. The cries of the dying who had been crushed by the wall were soon joined by the shouts of the remaining soldiers who were met by the flashing swords of Joshua’s army.
"And their army shall come and overthrow all, whereat the king of the South being moved with choler, shall come forth and fight with him and conquer,"--Ptolemy Philopator against Antiochus the Great at Raphia--"and his troops shall become insolent, and his heart shall be lifted up,"--this Ptolemy desecrated the temple--Josephus--"and he shall cast down many ten thousands, but he shall not be strengthened by it.
The noble army of martyrs.
An army, like a serpent, goes on its belly.
Terrible as an army with banners.
Buzz off, Banana Nose; Relieve mine eyes Of hateful soreness, purge mine ears of corn; Less dear than army ants in apple pies Art thou, old prune-face, with thy chestnuts worn, Dropt from thy peeling lips like lousy fruit; Like honeybees upon the perfum'd rose They suck, and like the double-breasted suit Are out of date; therefore, Banana Nose, Go fly a kite, thy welcome's overstayed; And stem the produce of thy waspish wits: Thy logick, like thy locks, is disarrayed; Thy cheer, like thy complexion, is the pits. Be off, I say; go bug somebody new, Scram, beat it, get thee hence, and nuts to you.
Join the army, see the world, meet interesting, exciting people, and kill them.
"Remember, if it's being done correctly, here or abroad, it's ___not the U.S.
-- Good Morning VietNam
The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe. -- Bill Murray
All I can think of is a platter of organic PRUNE CRISPS being trampled by an army of swarthy, Italian LOUNGE SINGERS ...
Marriage is a lot like the army, everyone complains, but you'd be surprised at the large number that re-enlist. -- James Garner
<Coderjoe> gib, perl? <gib> methinks perl is the programmer's Swiss Army Chainsaw
History has much to say on following the proper procedures. From a history of the Mexican revolution: "Hidalgo was later defeated at Guadalajara. The rebel army was captured on its way through the mountains. All were courtmartialed and shot, except Hidalgo, because he was a priest. He was handed over to the bishop of Durango who excommunicated him and returned him to the
If God had meant for us to be in the Army, we would have been born with green, baggy skin.
Our congratulations go to a Burlington Vermont civilian employee of the local Army National Guard base. He recently received a substational cash award from our government for inventing a device for optical scanning. His device reportedly will save the government more than $6 million a year by replacing a more expensive helicopter maintenance tool with his own, home-made, hand-held model. Not suprisingly, we also have a couple of money-saving ideas that we submit to the Pentagon free of charge: (a) Don't kill anybody. (b) Don't build things that do. (c) And don't pay other people to kill anybody. We expect annual savings to be in the billions. -- Sojourners
"It follows that any commander in chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forth his reasons, insist of the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall." -- Napoleon, "Military Maxims and Thought"
A reader reports that when the patient died, the attending doctor recorded the following on the patient's chart: "Patient failed to fulfill his wellness potential." Another doctor reports that in a recent issue of the *American Journal of Family Practice* fleas were called "hematophagous arthropod vectors." A reader reports that the Army calls them "vertically deployed anti- personnel devices." You probably call them bombs. At McClellan Air Force base in Sacramento, California, civilian mechanics were placed on "non-duty, non-pay status." That is, they were fired. After taking the trip of a lifetime, our reader sent his twelve rolls of film to Kodak for developing (or "processing," as Kodak likes to call it) only to receive the following notice: "We must report that during the handling of your twelve 35mm Kodachrome slide orders, the films were involved in an unusual laboratory experience." The use of the passive is a particularly nice touch, don't you think? Nobody did anything to the films; they just had a bad experience. Of course our reader can always go back to Tibet and take his pictures all over again, using the twelve replacement rolls Kodak so generously sent him. -- Quarterly Review of Doublespeak (NCTE)
It took a while to surface, but it appears that a long-distance credit card may have saved a U.S. Army unit from heavy casualties during the Grenada military rescue/invasion. Major General David Nichols, Air Force ... said the Army unit was in a house surrounded by Cuban forces. One soldier found a telephone and, using his credit card, called Ft. Bragg, N.C., telling Army</p> officiers there of the perilous situation. The officers in turn called the Air Force, which sent in gunships to scatter the Cubans and relieve the unit. -- Aviation Week and Space Technology