Rick Riordan Quotes

It is important to understand how leaders have adapted and thought about war and warfare across their careers. 'The Autobiography of General Ulysses S. Grant: Memoirs of the Civil War' is perhaps the best war memoir ever written.

When this sad war is over we will all return to our homes, and feel that we can ask no higher honor than the proud consciousness that we belonged to the Army of the Potomac.

I shall hurl the first spear at the foe. If any man can stand at rest while Attila fights, he is a dead man.

I shall hurl the first spear at the enemy myself. If any man then does not follow, then he is a dead man.

This idle complaining, wishing, and lamenting, and boasting will answer no end. Something must be done! Must be done by you! Therefore instead of assuming the state of patriots and heroes at home, TO ARMS! and away to the field and prove your pretensions sincere. Let the thunder of this imprecation rouse you out of your ease and security...

In modern warfare the role of those who institute it is often far removed from the conflict on the ground … I could see welcoming a weapon that eliminated the decision makers while leaving the innocent unharmed.

Put the army in the face of death where they cannot escape and they will do heroic things to win.

The Congress having done me the honor of electing me brigadier-general in their service, is an event which must put an end, for a while, perhaps forever, to the quiet scheme of life I had prescribed for myself; for, though entirely unexpected and undesired by me, the will of an oppressed people, compelled to choose between liberty and slavery, must be obeyed.

I joined the army after 9/11, after the Iraq war was started. I joined in part because I wanted to go fight on the front lines.

Two armies are two bodies which meet and try to frighten each other.

Armies for the preservation of peace do not exist; they exist only for the triumphant exertion of war.

the leader of armies is the arbiter of the people's fate, the man on whom it depends whether the nation shall be in peace or in peril.

Comedy is tragedy revisited or hostility. It is mock hostility, of course, or it would be ugly; we would have a war.

I am going to Spain to fight an army without a general, and thence to the East to fight a general without an army.

The sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers.

It is war now, and armies need symbols.

The men loved jokes, though they had heard each one before. Jack's manner was persuasive; few of them had seen the old stories so well delivered. Jack himeself laughed a little, but he was able to see the effect his performance had on his audience. The noise of their laughter roared like the sea in his ears. He wanted it louder and louder; he wanted them to drown out the war with their laughter. If the could should loud enough, they might bring the world back to its senses; they might laugh loud enough to raise the dead.

I'm just a kid, Chiron," I said miserably. "What good is one lousy hero against something like Kronos?" Chiron managed a smile. '"What good is one lousy hero'? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain said something like that to me once, just before he single-handedly changed the course of your Civil War.

I hate to use this as a metaphor, but making movies is kind of like going to war. It's not - but the stamina required and what it takes to tell a story that is this big in scope, you need a general that will bring out the best in you.

Antagoras the poet was boiling a conger, and Antigonus, coming behind him as he was stirring his skillet, said, "Do you think, Antagoras, that Homer boiled congers when he wrote the deeds of Agamemnon?" Antagoras replied, "Do you think, O king, that Agamemnon, when he did such exploits, was a peeping in his army to see who boiled congers?

Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.

During the Peninsula War, I heard a Portuguese general address his troops before a battle with the words, "Remember men, you are Portuguese!"

They said we were soft, that we would not fight, that we could not win. We are not a warlike nation. We do not go to war for gain or for territory; we go to war for principles, and we produce young men like these. I think I told every one of them that I would rather have that medal, the Congressional Medal of Honor, than to be President of the United States.

Men are brave enough to go to war, but they are not brave enough to get a bikini wax.

We stepped back and looked at the king of the gods, slumped in his chair snoring, and cradling his crook like a teddy bear. I placed the war flail across his lap, hoping it might make a difference—maybe complete his powers or something. No such luck. "Sick weasels," Ra muttered. "Behold," Sadie said bitterly. "the glorious Ra.