Historical Quotes

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

*bump*


No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
-George S. Patton


Newspaper editors are men who separate the wheat from the chaff, and then print the chaff.
-Adlai E. Stevenson

 

[Icaria909]

!. it is sweet and fitting to die for one's Fatherland

2. Where there is bread, there is my fatherland!

-both roman writers-

 

[Atticus]

Not really historical, but related to history:
Terrorism is the war of the poor and war is the terrorism of the rich.
-Peter Ustinov

 

[holy king]

!. it is sweet and fitting to die for one's Fatherland

ah, dulce e decorum est pro patria mori.

latin is so... pompous.





btw. is it horatio?

 

[Dachs]

btw. is it horatio?

Yes, it was Horace.

 

[Godwynn]

"It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to keep it." - Willy Brandt

Fitting for CFC as well.

 

[Sharwood]

My new signature:

"If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." - George Orwell, Animal Farm

 

[Godwynn]

“We do not have to visit a madhouse to find disordered minds; our planet is the mental institution of the universe.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

 

[Dachs]

"You are sinning against your fathers, you degenerates - the men who conquered the world with Philip and Alexander!"

-Shouted to the opposing lines at the Battle of Gabiene by Antigenes, 316 BC(E). Antigenes was commander of Alexander's veterans, while the opposing side was made up mostly of new levies.

 

[shortguy]

"Poor Mexico! So far from God, so close to the United States!"

-Porfirio Diaz

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Alexander onced travelled to meet one of the great greek minds of the time. I believe it was mentor whom was taking a bath in a tub at the time. Alexander offered him anything he wanted if it was within hes power. Mentor ask that alexander stop blocking the sun so he could wash.

Alexander's mentor was Aristotle of course, and this isn't a story about him.

To specify a bit:

The philosopher in question was Diogenes, the "cynical" philosopher, i.e. literally "the dog philosopher".

He was a bit of an early "primitivist", arguing that men should get a clue from the animals, living for the day and not worrying. Consequently Diogenes took up residence in a huge empty clay pot by the side of the road. He was known to be incredibly dirty, prone to masturbating in public etc. Or maybe that was the wagging of evil tounges? Hard to tell by now. He still impressed people as a philosopher. Plato paid him the back-hand compliment of describing him as: "Socrates, if he was mad".

And it was him Alexander sought him out where he was sitting by the roadside, offering whatever he wanted, at which point Diogenes asked him to stop shading him.

Everyone was impressed as hell, including the writer Diogenes Laertius in Roman times, who collected all these anecdotes about the philosophers of old at work and at play.

Of course, it's Alexander's answer that was even better.

After Diogenes remarked that Alexander could "stop standing in his sun," he replied "If I were not Alexander, I would be Diogenes."

Although Alexander only sought Diogenes out because he was in Athens reaffirming Athenian loyalty to the Corinthian League after he destroyed Thebes, which had risen in revolt and tried to stir up the rest of the Corinthian League into war against Macedon after Phillip II's death.

 

[say1988]

Where would be the glory in that? You don't earn a place in the history books by being efficient

I was just listening to this while reading that. Note: I am posting the link for the song, not the video clip and am not commenting on any of the people featured.

One of my favourites:

In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it

Him and Patton are a goldmine of quotes, Monty was no slouch himself either (though not near the others, and generally more serious). I wonder is Auchinlek (I know I butchered that spelling) or the other guy I can't remember have any good ones.

Recently reading a lot about the WWII Battle of Malta, and I always think upon reading:

Nothing is more well known than the siege of Malta

I had never heard of it before playing AoE3, and knew next to nothing until just the past while when the references to it got me interested.

 

[Tee Kay]

"You cannot carry out fundamental change without a certain amount of madness. In this case, it comes from nonconformity, the courage to turn your back on the old formulas, the courage to invent the future. It took the madmen of yesterday for us to be able to act with extreme clarity today."
- Thomas Sankara

"History has shown that where the Great Powers cannot colonize, they balkanize. This is what they did to the Austro-Hungarian Empire and this is what they have done and are doing in Africa. If we allow ourselves to be balkanized, we shall be re-colonized and be picked off one after the other...."
- Kwame Nkrumah

"The genius of you Americans is that you never made clear-cut stupid moves, only complicated stupid moves which makes us wonder at the possibility that there may be something to them we are missing."
- Gamel Nasser

 

[Fugitive Sisyphus]

Poor Mexico, so far from God and so close to the United States!

-Porfirio Díaz

 

[Uncle Anton]

Not sure if this one has surfaced yet, but it came up on my iGoogle...

Misquotation is, in fact, the pride and privilege of the learned. A widely- read man never quotes accurately, for the rather obvious reason that he has read too widely. - Hesketh Pearson

For military quotes, I like the writings of one of the fathers of Modern Combined Arms warfare;

"The true role of infantry is not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, not to impale itself on hostile bayonets, but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward." - General Sir John Monash GCMG KCB VD

 

[Verbose]

"The true role of infantry is not to expend itself upon heroic physical effort, not to wither away under merciless machine-gun fire, not to impale itself on hostile bayonets, but on the contrary, to advance under the maximum possible protection of the maximum possible array of mechanical resources, in the form of guns, machine-guns, tanks, mortars and aeroplanes; to advance with as little impediment as possible; to be relieved as far as possible of the obligation to fight their way forward." - General Sir John Monash GCMG KCB VD

Or the way Pétain put such an insight about the time of the 1915 spring offensives:

L'offensive, c'est le feu qui avance ; la défensive c'est le feu qui arrête (…) Le canon conquiert, l'infanterie occupe (…) Un minimum d'infanterie, un maximum d'artillerie (…) Car le feu tue.

The offensive is firepower advancing; the defensive is firepower halting (…) the cannon conquers, the infantry occupies (…) A minimum of infantry, a maximum of artillery (…) Because fire kills.

For some reason it seemed to take an infantry officer like Pétain, or an outsider without professional training like Monash, to make such observations, about an infantry war where the commanders of the armies on all sides were men come up from flashier branches than the Poor Bloody Infantry.