Battle Experience Quotes

They are children, Sansa thought. They are silly little girls, even Elinor. They’ve never seen a battle, they’ve never seen a man die, they know nothing. Their dreams were full of songs and stories, the way hers had been before Joffrey cut her fathers head off. Sansa pitied them. Sansa envied them.

Scars are medals branded on the flesh, and your enemies will be frightened by them because they are proof of your long experience of battle.

You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

Say what you will, nothing can make a complete soldier except battle experience.

I'm from a generation of Iraq and Afghanistan. Our battleground was where we learned. It's not like the old generation where they used to train and train and train, and then suddenly an operation would come up, and they'd go on it.

That was not the biggest battle that ever was, but for me it always typified one thing; the dash, the ingenuity, the readiness at the first opportunity that characterizes the American soldier.

I'm a damned sight smarter than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does; but I'll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight but it scares me like hell.

I was scared before every battle. That old instinct of self-preservation is a pretty basic thing, but while the action was going on some part of my mind shut off and my training and discipline took over. I did what I had to do.

Defeat exists but not suffering. A true warrior knows that when he loses a battle, he is improving the skill with which he wields a sword. He will be able to fight more skilfullly next time.

Actual combat experience is the only teacher. You never come out of a skirmish without having picked up a couple of new tricks; without having learned more about your enemy...Total involvement with the war was the only thing that kept me alive and pushing.

Think you a little din can daunt mine ears? Have I not in my time heard lions roar? Have I not heard the sea, puffed up with winds, Rage like an angry boar chafed with sweat? Have I not heard great ordinance in the field, And Heaven's artillery thunder in the skies? Have I not in a pitched battle heard Loud 'larums, neighing steeds, and trumpets' clang? And do you tell me of a woman's tongue, That gives not half so great a blow to hear As will a chestnut in a farmer's fire? Tush! tush! fear boys with bugs. Grumio: For he fears none.

It is sometimes tougher to fight my superiors than the French.

I keep thinking of Robert Stone making the distinction between the word sublime and the word beautiful. He described being in a battle as sublime. Because even though people were dying, it was such a huge sensory experience that it became sublime.

I think a lot of people, including me, clammed up when a civilian asked about battle, about war. It was fashionable. One of the most impressive ways to tell your war story is to refuse to tell it, you know. Civilians would then have to imagine all kinds of deeds of derring-do.

Gore will not win a popularity contest, he will not win a personality contest, but he can win an idealogical battle, and he can win a battle of experience.

A soldier's longing to talk about his experiences of battle is a wound that never heals.

Former soldiers will almost always gravitate to the anti-war party. This happens for obvious reasons. The men who have been in battle tend not to romanticize it and tend not to take it flippantly.

All life battles teach us something, even those we lose

You heard it from the heart, you saw it in their eyes. Then I got used to the fact that I couldn't feel my fingers and my feet. That for me was the essence of the battle.

When I myself had twice or thrice made a resolute resistance unto anger, the like befell me that did the Thebans; who, having once foiled the Lacedaemonians (who before that time had held themselves invincible), never after lost so much as one battle which they fought against them.

All life's battles teach us something, even those we lose. When you grow up, you'll discover that you have defended lies, deceived yourself, or suffered foolishness. If you're a good warrior you will not blame yourself for this, but neither will you allow your mistakes to repeat themselves.

All battles have some use, including those in which we were defeated.

My skill didn't lie in planning battles, only in fighting them.

For more than a quarter of a century on active duty, my house has been my tent, and my home the battlefield.

My book 'Ali Pasha' tells the true story of a young sailor Henry Friston, who, in the hell-fire of battle, forms an unusual friendship.