Quotes by British Authors - Page 155

If you only would!" He added rather diffidently: "If you would not mind remembering that I am a military court of inquiry. It makes it easier for me to report to the general if you say things dully and in the order that they happened.
Ford Madox Ford
Their notion of training was to march the men up and down in parades and reviews: these were nice to look at and gave them the impression of military discipline and precision, but as a preparation for a modern war they had no value whatsoever.
Orlando Figes
The man is a monster. The worst I have ever seen, in fact, since I last looked in the mirror. The truth? I am rotting too. I am buried alive, and already rotting. If I was not such a coward I would kill myself, but I am, and so I must content myself with killing others in the hope that one day, if I can only wade deep enough in blood, I will come out clean.
Joe Abercrombie
What’s the difference? Fill a hundred pits with dead Northmen, congratulations, have a parade! Kill one man in the same uniform as you? A crime. A murder. Worse than despicable. Are we not all men? All blood and bone and dreams?
Joe Abercrombie
The military do so love shiny new technology, there's always so many ways to abuse it.
Peter F. Hamilton
Theirs not to make reply,Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to do and die.Into the valley of DeathRode the six hundred.
Alfred Tennyson
The principle of compulsory service, embodied in the system of conscription, lias been the means by which modem dictators and military gangs have shackled their people after a coup d'état, and bound them to their own aggressive purposes. In view of the great service that conscription has rendered to tyranny and war, it is fundamentally shortsighted for any liberty-loving and peace-desiring peoples to maintain it as an imagined safeguard, lest they become the victims of the monster they have helped to preserve.
B.H. Liddell Hart
...and how is a man to know the habits of their God, whether He smites suddenly or withholds, if you mishandle the things set apart, the objects of His people He is jealous of.
David Jones
For they were unseasoned, nor inured, not knowing this to be much less than the beginning of sorrow.
David Jones
He thought it disproportionate in its violence considering the fragility of us.
David Jones
As suddenly the whole world would slip back into a mollifying, untormented dark; their aching bodies knew its calm.
David Jones
But how intolerable bright the morning is where we who are alive and remain, walk lifted up, carried forward by an effective word.
David Jones
But as much as this is a soldier's reason d'etre, it is not often that you hear a soldier explicitly talk about 'killing'. The k-word as a verb is instead often disguised and supplanted by any number of other euphemisms. In precise and technical military parlance, reflecting the ever more precise and technically removed means of killing, the 'enemy' becomes the 'target'. But for the soldiers who personally 'engage' these 'targets', these objects are colloquially 'slotted', 'dropped', 'hit', 'fragged', 'sawn in half', 'smashed' or just plain 'shot'.Then the soldier will have achieved the noun of a 'kill'. The author's supposition is that such words are used by the soldier in combat as an attempt to mentally dissociate himself from the reality of his actions, so he can continue to operate as a soldier - and perhaps, when all is finally said and done, as a human being back home.
Jake Wood
The fact is that every war suffers a kind of progressive degradation with every month that it continues, because such things as individual liberty and a truthful press are simply not compatible with military efficiency.
George Orwell
They bright whiten all this sepulchre with powdered chloride of lime. It's a perfectly sanitary war.
David Jones
After the 'war to end war' they seem to have been pretty successful in Paris at making a 'Peace to end Peace.
Archibald Wavell
Mounting tensions in Eastern Europe send shivers down the spine. Barely a quarter of a century after the end of the Cold War we seem to be sliding inexorably towards another.
Alex Morritt
We sleep peaceably in our beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on our behalf"--Opening to "My Father's Son," attributed to George Orwell
George Orwell
Like I said earlier, it sounds like I’ll need a plan B, said Porter. Because I can’t see them going for any of that bollocks. They’ve had more peace plans than I’ve had bottles of vodka, and if they wanted money, they would have asked for it by now.
Chris Ryan
Very few USA citizens realize that the USA corporate military is regarded by many to be both a domestic and international terrorist organization.
Steven Magee
Much, much later. when I am back home and being treated for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). I will be enabled to see what was going on in my mind immediately after 11 August.I am still capable of operating mechanically as a soldier in these following days. But operating mechanically as a soldier is now all I am capable of.Martin says he is worried about me. He says I have the thousand-yard stare'.Of course, I cannot see this stare. But by now we both have more than an idea what it means.So, among all the soldiers here, this is nothing to be ashamed of. But as it really does just go with the territory we find ourselves in. it is just as equally not a badge of h
Jake Wood
It was an article of faith with NCOs [noncommissioned officers] that they were better than their officers. And they were usually right. Certainly I had been happy with mine. They had done plenty of good work for me.
Lee Child
I fought to stay awake and keep the car on the road. And I thought back to texts I had read from the British Army in India, during the Raj, at the height of their empire. Young subalterns trapped in junior ranks had their own mess. They would dine together in splendid dress uniforms and talk about their chances of promotion. But they had none, unless a superior officer died. Dead men's shoes was the rule. So they would raise their crystal glasses of fine French wine and toast "bloody wars and dread diseases" because a casualty further up the chain of command was their only way to get ahead. Brutal, but that's how it's always been, in the military.
Lee Child
The plane was on descent. Reacher could feel it in his ears. And he could feel abrupt turns. The pilot was military, so he was using the rudder. Civilian pilots avoid using the rudder. Using the rudder makes the plane slew, like a car skids. Passengers don't like the feeling. So civilian pilots turn by juicing the engines on one side and backing off on the others. Then the plane comes around smoothly. But military pilots don't care about their passengers' comfort. It's not like they've bought tickets.
Lee Child
Splash or crash? Do you want special ops messing about in boats? Or special ops messing in aeroplanes?
Robert Radcliffe
My father says there are more than twenty thousand turned out for the king. It seems that most men think that we will win, that York will be captured and killed, though the king in his tender heart has said he will forgive them all if they will surrender.~Will there be another battle?~Unless York decides he cannot face the king in person. It is one sort of sin to kill your friends and cousins, quite another to order your bowmen to fire at the king's banner and him beneath it. What if the king is killed in battle? What if York brings his broadsword down on the king's sanctified head?
Philippa Gregory
The army is the only order of men sufficiently united to concur in the same sentiments, and powerful enough to impose them on the rest of their fellow-citizens; but the temper of soldiers, habituated at once to violence and to slavery, renders them very unfit guardians of a legal, or even a civil constitution.
Edward Gibbon
O it's Tommy this, and Tommy that, and Tommy 'ow's your soul/But it's thin red line of heroes when the drums begin to roll.
Rudyard Kipling
We had been hopelessly labouring to plough waste lands; to make nationality grow in a place full of the certainty of God… Among the tribes our creed could be only like the desert grass – a beautiful swift seeming of spring; which, after a day’s heat, fell dusty.
T.E. Lawrence
Mine was still the stronger side. I was beloved by the soldiery, who generally care very little what god they serve so long as they are caressed by their king. (“The Story of Prince Alasi and the Princess Firouzkah”)
William Beckford
Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die
Alfred Tennyson
The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.
Terry Pratchett
Colon has always thought that heroes had some special kind of clockwork that made them go out and die famously for god, country and apple pie, or whatever particular delicacy their mother made. It had never occurred to him that they might do it because they'd get yelled at if they didn't.
Terry Pratchett
Facebook has been spreading across the continents faster than a highly contagious Asian bird flu!
Gemini Adams
We sleep safely at night because rough men stand ready to visit violence on those who would harm us.
Winston S. Churchill
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
Winston S. Churchill
Social media is the empowerment of the individual at the expense of the system.
David Amerland
The web and its technologies are digital representations of everything we did before in a more private, bigger, faster and more empowering format than ever before.
David Amerland
You could say that Facebook is doing a far more effective job than religion at teaching us to 'love thy neighbor,' connecting us with random strangers and 'friends' from distant lands.
Gemini Adams
Social media is addictive precisely because it gives us something which the real world lacks: it gives us immediacy, direction, a sense of clarity and value as an individual.
David Amerland
We're high on the adrenaline of feeling, even though we know it's fleeting and evanescence. And we're getting worse -- checking texts and emails and Facebook every five minutes, always searching for that next hit of feeling, that next morsel of approval.
Deborah Meyler
In an age of constant live connections, the central question of self-examination is drifting from ‘Who are you?’ towards ‘What are you doing?
Tom Chatfield
When a human being becomes a set of data on a website like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility. In a way it’s a transcendent experience: we lose our bodies, our messy feelings, our desires, our fears.
Zadie Smith
The world was different before the war,' he said. 'We didn't have this instantaneous access to information that your generation has. The world was a bigger, more mysterious place - we still dreamed of secret caves in the Mountains of the Moon, and tiger hunting in the Punjab.
Ben Aaronovitch
Everything that happens now in the online world is part of a conversation.
David Amerland
I think our natural disposition as humans is to plod along until we get old and stop. But with social media, we've created a stage for constant artificial high drama.
Jon Ronson
Twitter, far from fostering debate and broadening minds, has turned us into a hive of scolds. Angry mobs wait on the sidelines to strike and then bask in the glow of their moral superiority.
Mick Hume
Did she answer my email yet?' That's the new obesity.
Tom Rachman
Eighteen pockets in one suit? I haven't the time.
A.A. Milne
Imogen sometimes wondered if people weren't letting social media dictate their entire lives. Did they choose to go to one party over another because it would look better on Instagram? Did they decide to read a store just so they could tweet about it? Have we all become so desperate to share everything that we've stopped enjoying our lives?
Lucy Sykes
This is why i hate social media. It gives a voice to people who dont (sic) deserve one.
Gary Streeter
Soon after Justine Sacco's shaming, I was talking with a friend, a journalist, who told me he had so many jokes, little observations, potentially risqué thoughts, that he wouldn't dare to post online anymore.'I suddenly feel with social media like I'm tiptoeing around an unpredictable, angry, unbalanced parent who might strike out at any moment,' he said. 'It's horrible.'He didn't want me to name him, he said, in case it sparked something off.We see ourselves as nonconformist, but I think all of this is creating a more conformist, conservative age.'Look!' we're saying. 'WE'RE normal! THIS is the average!'We are defining the boundaries of normality by tearing apart the people outside of it.
Jon Ronson
I was on the sidewalk, buffering, wondering if it was okay to follow people in real life.
Olivia Sudjic
Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and the myriad of other services resonate with the basic human urge to be social. The tools have changed, but human behaviour remains consistent.
Alfred Hermida
Sharing our ideas with others is a way of showing what is important to us. We are sending out signals about ourselves as we highlight what we value and care about.
Alfred Hermida
These days, in the world of apps and social media and … idiot friends, it is literally impossible to avoid spoilers. If a character dies, it is gonna be the number one trending topic on Twitter, it is gonna be the top trending story on Facebook — and Reddit and Tumblr just turn into a completely uncensored memorial service of memes.This happens all the time with sports results, but — I shit you not — I once got a notification from the BBC News app saying that a character in a show I was watching had just died! I thought that news notifications are supposed to be for impending natural disasters, not for just ruining my bloody afternoon.
Dan Howell
There is no shame in not knowing your history, the shame lies in not finding out.
Habeeb Akande
We are continuously challenged to discover new works of culture—and, in the process, we don’t allow any one of them to assume a weight in our minds.
Alain de Botton
Distracted from distraction by distraction
T.S Eliot
Her only shame was that she felt none.
Nicholas Evans