Looking for Famous Quotes

[Tango12345]

EDIT-quotes completed, see here. Thanks to all who helped.

Hey folks,

As you've probably already guessed, we'll be updating the quotes in this mod to go better with the period, and I thought you might want to lend a hand, so if you know of any good quotes dated between the end of the American Civil War and the Great War (NOT including those two wars ), please write them up here.

Requirements:

• Must be from between 1865 and 1914. The exceptions to this are generalised military/philsophical quotes like Clausewitz or Sun Tzu.
  
• Must be military related, political quotes should only be included if they refer to the military and/or war, or diplomacy.
• Lines from poetry etc are also good.
• Preferably not too long.

PS. If you know of a REALLY good fictional quote which satisfies the above feel free to write it here, but only if it is spectacular.

[Benstar55]

"Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war".
― Otto von Bismark

“God created war so that Americans would learn geography.”
― Mark Twain

"Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace".
― Theodore Roosevelt

"The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on".
― Ulysses S. Grant

“The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.”
― G.K. Chesterton

[Litany of fury]

"If I am asked what we are fighting for, I can reply in two sentences. In the first place, to fulfil a solemn international obligation . . . an obligation of honor which no self-respecting man could possibly have repudiated. I say, secondly, we are fighting to vindicate the principle that small nationalities are not to be crushed in defiance of international good faith at the arbitrary will of a strong and overmastering Power." - Hebert Henry Asquith (1914)

"We are not interested in the possibilities of defeat. They do not exist." - Queen Victoria

"Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world." - Kaiser Wilhelm I

"The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood." - Otto von Bismarck

[Arbitrary Crusader]

"Hard pressed on my right; center is yielding; impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent, I shall attack!" - Ferdinand Foch

[Tango12345]

He said that at the Marne during WW1 so it doesn't count I'm afraid. The same for the Asquith comment.

Thank you for the rest of these however.

[nokmirt]

"The secret of politics? Make a good treaty with Russia."
-Otto Von Bismarck

This next one gets to the point.

"You can do everything with bayonets, but you are not able to sit on them"
-Otto Von Bismarck

You shall judge a man by his foes as well as by his friends.
- Joseph Conrad

"An Army is still a crowd, though a highly organized one. It is governed by the same laws, and under the stress of war is ever tending to revert to its crowd form. Our object in peace is so to train it that the reversion will become very slow"
- Major-General J.F.C Fuller, "Training soldiers for war" 1914

"Those who have not yet realized danger are generally the bravest soldiers."
-Colmar von der Goltz, German field marshal, World War I

"He who stays on the defensive does not make war, he endures it"
- Field Marshal Colmar Baron von der Goltz, 1883

"War will cease when men refuse to fight."
- Fridtjof Hansen

"The highest generalship is to compel the enemy to disperse his army, and then to concentrate superior force against each fraction in turn."
- Col. Henderson, George Francis Robert (1854-1903),
British soldier and military writer

"The rules of strategy are few and simple. They may be learned in a week. They may be taught by familiar illustrations or a dozen diagrams. But such knowledge will no more teach a man to lead an army like Napoleon than a knowledge of grammar will teach him to write like Gibbon."
- Col. Henderson, George Francis Robert

"As is well know, I, ah..regard myself as a religious man, yet I belong to no church. I'm an able soldier yet I abhor armies. I can even add that I've been introduced to hundreds of women but never married. In other words no one's ever talked me into anything."

- Charlton Heston as General Gordon

"A war put off is not a war avoided."
- Charlton Heston Consider using this In honor of a great man.

"Come on, Lakotas! It's a good day to die!"
- Crazy Horse, June 1876.
When he rallied the Lakota warriors to defend their camp on
the Little Big Horn River against Custer's attack.

I must follow them. I am their leader.
- Andrew Bonar Law, 1858-1923



“All military history records the triumphs of discipline and courage far more frequently than numbers and resources.”
- General Robert E. Lee, February 1865

Here are a few quotes. I can't wait for your mod to come out. That is one of my favorite time periods. What makes it interesting is that technology improves so vastly in a very short amount of time. Whereas political theory finds a new way to justify war, through Imperialism and expansion. Prestige is the order of the day, as nations compete to be number one in the world.

[Pazu the Kitsune]

"I should have never surrendered. I should have fought until I was the last man alive."

-Geronimo, his last words

"I wish it to be remembered that I was the last man of my tribe to surrender my rifle."

-Sitting Bull

"When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?"

-Sitting Bull

"Rome est tombeé." (Rome has fallen.)

-Louis Riel

"Revolutions are the locomotives of history."

-Karl Marx

[jan_boruta]

Perhaps the most famous one here:

"I have always been fond of the West African proverb "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." - Theodore Roosevelt

[Lachlanoko]

I Have a burden on my soul. During all my long life, I did not make anyone happy, neither my friends, nor family, nor even myself. I have done many evil things... I was the cause of the beginning of three big wars. About 800,000 people were killed because of me on the battlefields, and their mothers, brothers, and widows cried for them. And now this stands between me and God.
- Otto Von Bismarck

[Pazu the Kitsune]

"An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but (it is) innate instinct (that) leads to self-preservation and life."

"The vote is a trust more delicate than any other, for it involves not just the interests of the voter, but his life, honor and future as well."

-Jose Marti

"A battle lost or won is easily described, understood, and appreciated, but the moral growth of a great nation requires reflection, as well as observation, to appreciate it."

"Without a struggle, there can be no progress."

-Frederick Douglass

[Dean3000]

I know this is late, but I thought I'd help add some quotes

"We are not amused."
Queen Victoria, Queen of Britain and Empress of India.

"I will be good."
Queen Victoria at 11 years of age, 1830. After being told by her governess that she will one day be Queen.

[ErgoSumm]

"The better you dress a soldier, the more highly he will be thought of by women, and consequently by himself."
Sir Garnet Wolseley, quoted in "How Not To Do It"; A Short Sermon On The Canadian Militia, 1881

‘I am the very model of a modern major-general'
Gilbert & Sulivan, "Pirates of Penzance", song caricature of Sir Garnet Wolsely

[SirEyeball]

only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun
Indian Saying about the British army and colonists later adopted into a song by Noel Coward in 1931.

[Commander 'Ace' Rimmer]

"We have no intention of hauling down our flag and we do not believe you would open fire on us"
Khalid bin Bargash, refusing to surrender, 30 minutes before the Anglo-Zanzibar war. 30 minutes later, the British opened fire. 40 minutes after that, Khalid surrendered, ending the shortest war in history.

[Commander 'Ace' Rimmer]

The Anglo-Zanzibar war was on the 27 August 1896.

[tayroc122]

First of all, Queen Victoria never actually said, 'We are not amused'. Secondly I am shocked at the lack of Churchill quotes here, since the man did fight in the Second Boer war. 'However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results' and 'Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result'. The first one he said in reflection on the Boer War and the second he said during.

[El Chupanibre]

I can't believe this one wasn't posted yet:

"War is all Hell." -- W.T. Sherman

[NameInProgress]

oooo I wanna contribute!

"I would rather lose in a cause that will some day win, than win in a cause that will some day lose."
~Woodrow Wilson

"I became insane, with long intervals of horrible sanity"
~Edgar Allan Poe (Not really affiliated with war or politics, but it'd be a cool quote to add, total war always has those "off quotes")

"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"
~Edgar Allan Poe

"I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude during war."

~Georges Clemenceau

[NameInProgress]

So, I just realized I had a brainfart. I forgot Edgar Allan Poe died in like, 1849. My bad.

[Cataphractoi]

I thought i'd go for a little of the relationship between natives (in service) and colonials, a little from the soldiers themselves, and a little from the officers.

"Tho' I've belted you and flayed you,
By the livin' Gawd that made you,
You're a better man than I am, Gunga Din!"

Rudyard Kipling, 1892, Gunga-Din (Poem) in 'Barrack-Room Ballards'

An' 'e didn't seem to know the use o' fear.
If we charged or broke or cut,
You could bet your bloomin' nut,
'E'd be waitin' fifty paces right flank rear.

(same)

So I'll meet 'im later on
At the place where 'e is gone
Where it's always double drill and no canteen.
'E'll be squattin' on the coals
Givin' drink to poor damned souls,
An' I'll get a swig in hell from Gunga Din!

(same)


"I am a younger son of Mars, and spend my time in carving
A thousand different ways and means to keep myself from starving;
For how with servants wages, Airs, and clothes can I contrive
To rent a house and feed myself on scanty ninety-five?"

(Uncredited - It was a popular chant in British-Indian barrack-rooms) - See Saristha De, Marginal Europeans (Kolkata, 1992) p.78: theres another 5 stanzas)

"What does he want? - his tent, his bed, a canteen, a second pair of breeches, a second pair of shoes, half a dozen shirts, a second flannel waistcoat, a couple of towels, and a piece of soap; all beyond is mere luxury, and not fit for a campaign." - Sir Charles Napiers letter to Sir J. Hobhouse.

(re. the typical officer)

Hope they help!