I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I’ve done wearing it. When the time comes, it...

My officers and men understood wishes so well that this movement was executed under fire, the right wing keeping up fire, without giving the enemy any occasion to seize or even to suspect their advantage.

Our presence in Iraq risks turning it into a country that could become the base for terrorist operations and organizations like al Qaeda.

The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

In war, you win or lose, live or die – and the difference is just an eyelash.

I, Philip Kearny, an old soldier, enter my solemn protest against this order for retreat.

It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an...

Every pioneer and musician who could carry a musket went into the ranks. Even the sick and foot-sore, who could not keep up in the march, came up as soon as they could find their...

I don’t think that the war serves U.S. interests. I think Osama bin Laden’s interests and the Iranian interests are very much served by it, and it’s becoming a huge drain on our resources both...

I therefore beg that you would indulge me with the liberty of declining the arduous trust.

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.

Just after writing those we were called up to defend a new position on the left, where the terrible storming of the bridge over the Antietam took place.

Second, recent polls over there show that the majority of Iraqis want us to leave precipitously.

There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.

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...

Oh, go in anywhere Colonel, go in anywhere. You’ll find lovely fighting all along the line.

In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.

I do not pretend to write much of a letter. You know under what circumstances I am writing.

I have never belonged to a party. I don’t have party affiliation.

If my acceptance of the office of Governor would serve my country, though my administration would be attended with the loss of personal credit and reputation, I would cheerfully undertake it.

Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.

We fought no better, perhaps, than they. We exhibited, perhaps, no higher individual qualities.

So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind.

Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.

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...

Perhaps not, Reno is keeping up the fight. He is not stampeded. You are not stampeded. That is about all sir, my God, that’s about all!

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

Let me say no danger and no hardship ever makes me wish to get back to that college life again.

I remember serving in Vietnam in that war, and many of us at the major Lieutenant Colonel, colonel level were frustrated that no one in the U.S. wanted to debate it that way.

It may not be proper for me, perhaps, to let my feelings carry me further am therefore resigned to stop here, if sir, you think my particular reasons following too free, or will give offense...

My first recollection is that of a bugle call.

The whole idea that the rescue was staged or the soldiers were shooting blanks, that’s just obvious stuff. Why would you do that in the middle of a war? It’s just crazy.

The presidents I served under don’t have anything to do with my politics.

Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

I long to be in the Field again, doing my part to keep the old flag up, with all its stars.

The Rebel bullet that can kill me has not yet been molded.

Never give an order that can’t be obeyed.

Rations were scarcely issued, and the men about preparing supper, when rumors that the enemy had been encountered that day near Gettysburg absorbed every other interest, and very soon orders came to march forthwith to...

I will make a general statement that we have not had anything like the policy of holding people in high office responsible for their acts that I think we should.

My sentiments for the American cause, from the Stamp Act downward, have never changed… I am still of opinion that it is the cause of liberty and of human nature.

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

They told me I’d never probably see the front-line area.

The whole notion of land property rights in the Arab world is different from that in Europe.

Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live.

I never could be a partisan leader – a man of one idea.

War is horrible because it strangles youth.

Being chased into the Harbor by four British Ships of War, we then sent our whole force and strained every nerve for the defense of the Town.

I’ve looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.

We know not of the future and cannot plan for it much.

I’ve decided that the political context is such that the only way reform will finally come about in the Russian military is that the deterioration goes beyond the point to which these old generals can...