battlefield ethics Quotes

A true warrior does not fight because he wishes to but because he has to. A man who yearns for war, a man who enjoys his killing, he is a brute and a monster. No matter how much glory he wins on the battlefield, that cannot erase the fact that he is no better than a rabid wolf who will turn on his friends and family as soon as his foes.

It's one thing to say don't commit atrocities on the battlefield. It's another thing to say don't get caught doing atrocities.

War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill?

For God's sake, take care of your men. If they fire, they die!

Sometimes the best virtue learned on the battlefield is modesty.

The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.

Aggressiveness carries with it an incalculable moral edge in any combat, offensive or defensive.

Explain to me why it is more noble to kill ten thousand men in battle than a dozen at dinner.

To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.