67 Soldier Quotes

In the annals of history, soldiers have stood as symbols of courage, sacrifice, and unwavering dedication. Their words often reflect the profound wisdom and enduring spirit that define their journey. Whether you seek inspiration, motivation, or a deeper understanding of the soldier’s life, our curated collection of the top 67 soldier quotes serves as a testament to their valor. Join us as we explore these powerful statements, offering a glimpse into the hearts and minds of those who have faced the greatest trials with steadfast resolve.

1. “I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” - George McGovern

2. “Look now -- in all of history men have been taught that killing of men is an evil thing not to be countenanced. Any man who kills must be destroyed because this is a great sin, maybe the worst we know. And then we take a soldier and put murder in his hands and we say to him, "use it well, use it wisely." We put no checks on him. Go out and kill as many of a certain kind or classification of your brothers as you can. And we will reward you for it because it is a violation of your early training.” - John Steinbeck

3. “No soldier outlives a thousand chances. But every soldier believes in Chance and trusts his luck.” - Erich Maria Remarque

4. “We are forlorn like children, and experienced like old men, we are crude and sorrowful and superficial—I believe we are lost.” - Erich Maria Remarque

5. “We came to realise - first with astonishment, then bitterness, and finally with indifference - that intellect apparently wasn't the most important thing...not ideas, but the system; not freedom, but drill. We had joined up with enthusiasm and with good will; but they did everything to knock that out of us.” - Erich Maria Remarque

6. “Nowadays you have to be a scientist if you want to be a killer. No, no, I was neither. Ladies and gentleman of the jury, the majority of sex offenders that hanker for some throbbing, sweet-moaning, physical but not necessarily coital, relation with a girl-child, are innocuous, inadequate, passive, timid strangers who merely ask the community to allow them to pursue their practically harmless, so-called aberrant behavior, their little hot wet private acts of sexual deviation without the police and society cracking down upon them. We are not sex fiends! We do not rape as good soldiers do. We are unhappy, mild, dog-eyed gentlemen, sufficiently well integrated to control our urge in the presence of adults, but ready to give years and years of life for one chance to touch a nymphet. Emphatically, no killers are we. Poets never kill.” - Vladimir Nabokov

7. “During the few months Troy had been back home, he’d told his friends about us, and so we quickly eased into the conversation as though we’d all known each other for many years. They embarrassed us with great thanks for having served overseas. They recounted combat events Troy had told them, and we realized by the context of their stories that Troy had made us heroes for his friends because we’d been heroes to him. At this point I was the saddest I’d yet been over Troy’s passing, because the true friend from war is the friend who obliterates his own story by telling the stories of others.” - Anthony Swofford

8. “I have gone to war and now I can issue my complaint. I can sit on my porch and complain all day. And you must listen. Some of you will say to me: You signed the contract, you crying bitch, and you fought in a war because of your signature, no one held a gun to your head. This is true, but because I signed the contract and fulfilled my obligation to fight one of America’s wars, I am entitled to speak, to say, I belong to a fucked situation.” - Anthony Swofford

9. “That's a nice song," said young Sam, and Vimes remembered that he was hearing it for the first time. "It's an old soldiers' song," he said. "Really, sarge? But it's about angels." Yes, thought Vimes, and it's amazing what bits those angels cause to rise up as the song progresses. It's a real soldiers' song: sentimental, with dirty bits. "As I recall, they used to sing it after battles," he said. "I've seen old men cry when they sing it," he added. "Why? It sounds cheerful." They were remembering who they were not singing it with, thought Vimes. You'll learn. I know you will.” - Terry Pratchett

10. “Yea ! by your works are ye justified--toil unrelieved ;Manifold labours, co-ordinate each to the sending achieved ;Discipline, not of the feet but the soul, unremitting, unfeigned ;Tortures unholy by flame and by maiming, known, faced, and disdained ; Courage that sunsOnly foolhardiness ; even by these, are ye worthy of your guns.” - Gilbert Frankau

11. “The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country” - George S. Patton Jr.

12. “Within the soul of each Vietnam veteran there is probably something that says “Bad war, good soldier.” Only now are Americans beginning to separate the war from the warrior.” - Max Cleland

13. “The army consists of the first infantry division and eight million replacements.” - Sebastian Junger

14. “Every November of my boyhood, we put on red poppies and attended highly patriotic services in remembrance of those who had 'given' their lives. But on what assurance did we know that these gifts had really been made? Only the survivors—the living—could attest to it. In order to know that a person had truly laid down his life for his friends, or comrades, one would have to hear it from his own lips, or at least have heard it promised in advance. And that presented another difficulty. Many brave and now dead soldiers had nonetheless been conscripts. The known martyrs—those who actually, voluntarily sought death and rejoiced in the fact—had been the kamikaze pilots, immolating themselves to propitiate a 'divine' emperor who looked (as Orwell once phrased it) like a monkey on a stick. Their Christian predecessors had endured torture and death (as well as inflicted it) in order to set up a theocracy. Their modern equivalents would be the suicide murderers, who mostly have the same aim in mind. About people who set out to lose their lives, then, there seems to hang an air of fanaticism: a gigantic sense of self-importance unattractively fused with a masochistic tendency to self-abnegation. Not wholesome.The better and more realistic test would therefore seem to be: In what cause, or on what principle, would you risk your life?” - Christopher Hitchens

15. “The sergeants are shunted forward and they blink and stare up at Gonzo as he leans on the edge of his giant mixing bowl. MacArthur never addressed his troops from a mixing bowl--not even one made from a spare geodesic radio emplacement shell--and certainly de Gaulle never did. But Gonzo Lubitsch does, and he does it as if a whole long line of commanders were standing at his shoulder, urging him on."Gentlemen," says Gonzo softly, "holidays are over. I need an oven, and I need one in about twenty minutes, or these fine flapjacks will go to waste, and that is not happening."And something about this statement and the voice in which he says it makes it clear that this is simply true. One way or another, this thing will get done. Under a layer of grime and horror, these two are soldiers, and more, they are productive, can-do sorts of people. Rustily but with a gratitude which is not so far short of worship, they say "Yes, sir" and are about their business.” - Nick Harkaway

16. “A quick check on the platoon showed everyone more or less enjoying the flight."Whatever it is you're eating, Ressk, swallow it before we land," [said Staff Sergeant Kerr]."No problem, Staff.""More like whoever he's eating," Binti muttered beside him."You ought to count your fingers," he suggested. "You're too serley stupid to notice one missing.""Maybe you ought to gren sa talamec to.""That's enough, people."When the Confederation first started integrating the di'Taykan and the Krai into what was predominantly a human military system, xenopsychologists among the elder races expected a number of problems. For the most part, those expectations fell short. After having dealt with the Mictok and the H'san, none of the younger races - all bipedal mammals - had any difficulty with each other's appearance. Cultural differences were absorbed into the prevailing military culture and the remaining problems were dealt with in the age-old military tradition of learning to say "up yours" in the other races' languages. The "us against them" mentality of war made for strange bedfellows.” - Tanya Huff

17. “Military guys are rarely as smart as they think they are, and they've never gotten over the fact that civilians run the military.” - Maureen Dowd

18. “A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one.” - William Makepeace Thackeray

19. “Bless God, he went as soldiers,His musket on his breast—Grant God, he charge the bravestOf all the martial blest!Please God, might I behold himIn epauletted white—I should not fear the foe then—I should not fear the fight!” - Emily Dickinson

20. “My mother used to say that rain here pours like a blessing, like a thick veil that parts to reveal the bride's face. But nearly every day, when this rain parted, it revealed a long line of soldiers, like you, like death, marching toward us, and we would scatter with a practiced silence and hide.” - Mia Kirshner

21. “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

22. “Lovely was my compliment. Could you not come up with your own?""Lord Paen said compliment her, he did not say we had to be creative about it," the second man pointed out with a shrug” - Lynsay Sands

23. “They fought the enemy, we fight fat living and self-pity. Shine, o shine, unfalsifying sun, on this sick scene.” - Marianne Moore

24. “I have watched them all day and they are the same men that we are. I believe that I could walk up to the mill and knock on the door and I would be welcome except that they have orders to challenge all travelers and ask to see their papers. It is only orders that come between us. Those men are not fascists. I call them so, but they are not. They are poor men as we are. They should never be fighting against us and I do not like to think of the killing.” - Ernest Hemingway

25. “No man is a man until he has been a soldier.” - Louis de Bernières

26. “War is the greatest evil Satan has invented to corrupt our hearts and souls. We should honor our soldiers, but we should never honor war.” - Dean Hughes

27. “That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we would never have war anymore.” - Jonathan Safran Foer

28. “He had long been indifferent to which side won; he wished only that one or the other would do so decisively while he was still alive.” - Elizabeth Speller

29. “Say a king wishes to support a standing army of fifty thousand men. Under ancient or medieval conditions, feeding such a force was an enormous problem—unless they were on the march, one would need to employ almost as many men and ani­mals just to locate, acquire, and transport the necessary provisions. On the other hand, if one simply hands out coins to the soldiers and then demands that every family in the kingdom was obliged to pay one of those coins back to you, one would, in one blow, turn one's entire national economy into a vast machine for the provisioning of soldiers, since now every family, in order to get their hands on the coins, must find some way to contribute to the general effort to provide soldiers with things they want. Markets are brought into existence as a side effect.” - David Graeber

30. “Trench dirt didn't always wash out, I am sure.” - Sebastian Barry

31. “(From Danielle Raver's short story THE ENCHANTRESS)Thick chains attached to the wall hold a metal collar and belt, restraining most of the tiger's movements. Open, bloody slashes cover his face and back, but he shows no loss of strength as he pulls on the chains and tries to rip the flesh of the surrounding humans with his deadly claws. Out of his reach, I kneel down before him, and his lightning-blue eyes cross my space for a moment. “Get her out of there!” I hear from behind me.“Numnerai,” I speak urgently to the tiger. “They will kill you!” He growls and gnashes his teeth, but I sense he is responding to me. “Great white tiger, your duty is to protect the prince. But how can you do that if they sink the end of a spear into your heart?” He looks at me for a longer moment. The fighters respond to this by growing still. In their desperation, they are overlooking my foolishness for a chance to save their fellows' lives. I crouch on my feet and begin to nudge closer to him. The tiger growls a warning, but does not slash out at me. “Think of the prince, protector of the palace. Right now he prays for you to live.” - Danielle Raver

32. “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries These, in the day when heaven was falling, The hour when earth's foundations fled,Followed their mercenary callingAnd took their wages and are dead. Their shoulders held the sky suspended;They stood, and earth's foundations stay;What God abandoned, these defended,And saved the sum of things for pay.” - A.E. Housman

33. “For no matter how many battles had been won or lost, no matter how many friends and soldiers killed, every battle felt like the first. And I realized that it wasn't the training, nor the pain of seeing friends die, nor the will to win that made the men fight, but their will to survive that made them soldiers.” - Magus Guidan

34. “A soldier's life revolves around his mail. Like many others, I've been able to follow my kid's progress from the day he was born until now he is able to walk and talk a little, and although I have never seen him I know him very well.” - Bill Mauldin

35. “The music at a wedding procession always reminds me of the music of soldiers going into battle.” - Heinrich Heine

36. “How goddamn foolish it is, the war. They's no war in the worth that's worth fightin' for. I don't care where it is. They can't tell me any different. Money, money is the thing that causes it all. I wouldn't be a bit surprised that the people that start wars and promote 'em are the men that make the money, make the ammunition, make the clothing and so forth. Just think of the poor kids that are starvin' to death in Asia and so forth that could be fed with how much you make one big shell of. ~Alvin "Tommy" Bridges” - Studs Terkel

37. “We piled aboard the small chopper and after a bit of map pointing to the pilot we lifted off. "I love the RAF," said Jed."I love them too, sir," said I. After a short flight the chopper landed. We all got out and waved our thanks and farewells to the crew and Major Jenner checked his map. After a quick examination he announced that we had been dropped in the wrong place."I fucking hate the RAF," said Jed."I fucking hate them too, sir," said I.” - Ken Lukowiak

38. “Scholars don't have blood flowing in their veins," said Hamlet. "When they're wounded, they bleed logic, and when all of it is gone, their brains die, and they become ... soldiers.” - Orson Scott Card

39. “Old soldiers never die, they write novels.” - James Jones

40. “Twelve years ago, when I was 10, I played at being a soldier. I walked up the brook behind our house in Bronxville to a junglelike, overgrown field and dug trenches down to water level with my friends. Then, pretending that we were doughboys in France, we assaulted one another with clods of clay and long, dry reeds. We went to the village hall and studied the rust rifles and machine guns that the Legion post had brought home from the First World War and imagined ourselves using them to fight Germans.But we never seriously thought that we would ever have to do it. The stories we heard later; the Depression veterans with their apple stands on sleety New York street corners; the horrible photographs of dead bodies and mutilated survivors; “Johnny Got His Gun” and the shrill college cries of the Veterans of Future Wars drove the small-boy craving for war so far from our minds that when it finally happened, it seemed absolutely unbelievable. If someone had told a small boy hurling mud balls that he would be throwing hand grenades twelve years later, he would probably have been laughed at. I have always been glad that I could not look into the future.” - David Kenyon Webster

41. “It’s like a man in the trenchesagain: he doesn’t know any more why he should go on living, becauseif he escapes now he’ll only be caught later, but he goes on justthe same, and even though he has the soul of a cockroach and hasadmitted as much to himself, give him a gun or a knife or even justhis bare nails, and he’ll go on slaughtering and slaughtering, he’dslaughter a million men rather than stop and ask himself why.” - Henry Miller

42. “Richard rubbed his temples. He had a headache from lack of sleep. "Don't you understand? This isn't about conquering lands and taking things from others; this is about fighting oppression."The general rested a boot on the gilded rung of a chair and hooked a thumb behind his wide belt. "I don't see much difference. From my experience, the Master Rahl always thinks he knows best, and always wants to rule the world. You are your father's son. War is war. Reasons make no difference to us; we fight because we are told to, same as those on the other side. Reasons mean little to a man swinging his sword, trying to keep his head.” - Terry Goodkind

43. “They were mostly French, a few Arabs, and despite their uniforms they didn't look very important any more. Later I learned that if you watch men die, especially if you've known them at all, they still look important afterward no matter what you have to do with them, but I was inexperienced then.” - Douglas Woolf

44. “Charlotte was used to all the marks of war: the shabbiness of things, bad food, shop queues, posters about the war effort, people with worried faces, people dressed in black. She was used to seeing the wounded men from the hospital with their bright blue uniforms and bright red ties, the colours, she thought, if not the clothes of Arthur's soldiers. Such things did not disturb her, and the war seemed quite remote. But this disturbed her, the grotesque kind of circus that came now. It did not seem remote at all, nor did it fit with her vague ideas of war gained from those books of Arthur's she had read, with their flags and glory and brave drummer boys. How could you dare to become a soldier, knowing that you might end like this? There were men like clowns with white heads, white arms, white legs, men with crutches, slings, and bloodied bandages, and all so distressingly like men you would expect to see walking down the street, two armed, two legged, in hats instead of bandages and suits of black not battered khaki. Some came on stretchers borne by whole and ordinary men, some hobbled and leaned on whole ordinary arms. Most had mud dried thick across their clothes, and all came from the dark station's mouth with the spewings of trains behind, the clankings, thumpings, grindings, the sounds like great devils taking in breaths and blowing them out again.” - Penelope Farmer

45. “All around them were the bodies of dead Chinese soldiers. They lined the verges of the roads and floated in the canals, jammed together around the pillars of the bridges. In the trenches between the burial mounds hundreds of dead soldiers sat side by side with their heads against the torn earth, as if they had fallen asleep together in a deep dream of war.” - J.G. Ballard

46. “I thought we stopped using grunts as guinea pigs decades ago. Even the Nazis didn't run medical experiments on their own troops in combat. This book explodes like a grenade in the Pentagon's privy. Red it and weep; better yet, get mad."Col. David H. Hackworth (U.S. Army, ret.)” - Gary Matsumoto

47. “No, amusing me only, I wonder if they realize how they are used?""Not a bit. They think they are the emperors of creation.""Poor lambs.""That's not how I'd describe them.""I was thinking of animal sacrifice.""Ah. That's closer.” - Lois McMaster Bujold

48. “Finally, I wish to remember the millions of Allied servicemen and prisoners of war who lived the story of the Second World War. Many of these men never came home; many others returned bearing emotional and physical scars that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they scarified, for the good of humanity. It is to them that this book {Unbroken} is dedicated,” - Laura Hillenbrand

49. “In times of war or peace the US will gladly pay a man to fail should his heart be in it, a small shimmering proof of the American dream.” - Jonathan Culver

50. “In battle, in a war, a soldier sees only a tiny fragment of what is available to be seen. The soldier is not a photographic machine. He is not a camera. He registers, so to speak, only those few items that he is predisposed to register and not a single thing more. Do you understand this? So I am saying to you that after a battle each soldier will have different stories to tell, vastly different stories, and that when a was is ended it is as if there have been a million wars, or as many wars as there were soldiers.” - Tim O'Brien

51. “There was something terrible, but also something sad and melancholy in this long cry uttered by the Russian infantry as they staged an attack. As it crossed the cold water, it lost its fervour. Instead of valour or gallantry, you could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything that it loved, calling on its nearest and dearest to wake up, to lift their head from their pillows and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, a son or a brother...” - Vasily Grossman

52. “[Iain, addressing the Rangers at the end of the French & Indian war]"Never has the world see a war as this one, but you turned the tide of it, spillin' your blood to keep frontier families safe. Years from now, people will remember the Rangers, the sacrifices you made, the battles you fought, the victories you won. I pray that peace will follow you all your days.” - Pamela Clare

53. “If you think your scars bother me, you're wrong. In my eyes, you're a hero. Your scars are just proof of that.” - Pamela Clare

54. “When you are a soldier you do not always realize there is anything beyond the will of your commander, the will of your king. But when you're on the field of battle, when the swords clash and the colors fly above you in all their glory, there comes a time when you wonder: Why am I here? All the brilliance fades, the glory becomes meaningless; the blood spilled and comrades dead, all for nothing when you have no cause to fight for.” - Hazel B. West

55. “What kind of person would I be if I didn’t fight for them, those who God deemed most precious?” - Jessica Fortunato

56. “I see you have returned, my love; and your mood is as dark as ever. Did your soldiers not adore you to your complete satisfaction?” - Wayne Gerard Trotman

57. “I will soldier on.” - J.H. Williams III

58. “It is time we accept there’s no Cronkite moment for Afghanistan. Perhaps it's time we value the hearts and minds of our own over distant Afghan tribes.” - Tiffany Madison

59. “An army is a miniature of the society which produces it.” - C.L.R. James

60. “Among men, it seems, historically at any rate, the processes of coordination and disintegration follow each other with great regularity, and the index of the coordination is the measure of the disintegration which follows. There is no mob like a group of well-drilled soldiers when they have thrown off their discipline. And there is no lostness like that which comes to a man when a perfect and certain pattern has dissolved about him. There is no hater like one who has greatly loved.” - John Steinbeck

61. “Dear Beloved woman,Time… so much time has passed since my love wrote his last words for me.And yet I remember it as if it were yesterday. I remember writing back and for the first time since I had left home I told my love what kind of darkness surrounded me here. I forgot all the sweet things my father had said to my mother when he was away. I forgot how they got her through all those long and lonely nights.” - Talon P.S.

62. “I was a soldier. It is like a dream. When even the bones is gone in the desert the dreams is talk to you, you don't wake up forever.” - Cormac McCarthy

63. “Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.” - Paul Fussell

64. “poor boy! I never knew you, Yet I think I could not refuse this moment to die for you, if that would save you” - Walt Whitman

65. “This revolutionary idea of Western citizenship—replete with ever more rights and responsibilities—would provide superb manpower for growing legions and a legal framework that would guarantee that the men who fought felt that they themselves in a formal and contractual sense had ratified the conditions of their own battle service. The ancient Western world would soon come to define itself by culture rather than by race, skin color, or language. That idea alone would eventually bring enormous advantages to its armies on the battlefield. (p. 122)” - Victor Davis Hanson

66. “Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting” - Enrich Maria Remarque

67. “The soldiers in my life had raised the bar for bad guys.” - Susan Abulhawa