Quotes / Armchair Military

Anime and Manga

You scum sit back and safely watch the battlefield as if it were some kind of spectator sport. You don't know anything about sacrifice and yet you're the first to talk about its necessity!

— Major General Olivier Mira Armstrong, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood

Film — Live-Action

"The war was being run by a bunch of four-star clowns who were gonna end up giving the whole circus away."

— Willard, Apocalypse Now

"The Rebs have decided that bridge is the key to this whole area. Stupid, useless bridge! Flyspeck on Headquarters' maps. Headquarters has declared we must take that ridiculous flyspeck. Even if all of us are killed. Otherwise the key'll get rusty and just be a spot on the wall."

— Union Captain, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Col. Pluskat: (at Normandy) The invasion's come! There must be five thousand ships out there!
Lt. Col. Ocker: (miles away, sipping coffee) Don't be ridiculous, Pluskat: the Allies don't have half that many.
Pluskat: Well, damn it! Come and look for yourself!
Ocker: (laughing) Pluskat, just where are those ships heading?
Pluskat: STRAIGHT FOR ME!

— The Longest Day

Literature

"You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well."

— Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

"Portly gentlemen whose service has been long in the land of swivel chairs..."

— The Marines' Magazine

Live-Action TV

Travers: We're not in the business of "fair," Miss Summers; we're fighting a war.
Giles: You're waging a war. She's fighting it. There is a difference.

—Buffy the Vampire Slayer

Gen. Lefcourt: We understand that fully a third of their population is dedicated to warfare.
Londo Mollari: They have a warrior caste! Not exactly the same thing, hm?
Lefcourt: Semantics. We need to know all we can about them.
Londo: Then send one ship. One ship only. Anything more could perceived as a threat. And if that were to happen, well, I assure you: they would never return home.
Lefcourt: My people can handle themselves. We took care of the Dilgar, we can take care of the Minbari!
Londo: Ah, arrogance and stupidity all in the same package. How efficient of you.

— Babylon 5, "In the Beginning"

Worf: He says that you struck his name from an officers list because his family comes from the Ketha lowlands.
Kor: Did I? I don't recall. Of course, there were so many officer lists. I suppose it's possible.
Worf: It is an unworthy reason to bar a man from serving the Empire.
Kor: Worf, you've been living among this democratic rabble for too long.

— Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, "Once More Into the Breach"

Music

They tell us that the Admiral
Is as nice as he can be
But we never see the Admiral
Because the Admiral has never been to sea

— Irving Berlin, "We Saw the Sea"

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build all the bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know
I can see through your masks

— Bob Dylan, "Masters of War"

How is it that the only ones responsible for making this mess
Got their sorry asses stapled to a goddamn desk?

— Tom Waits, "Hell Broke Luce"

Forward he cried, from the rear
And the front rank died
And General sat and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side

— Pink Floyd, "Us and Them"

Tabletop Games

"A war waged by committee is a war already lost."

— Ecclesiarch Sebastian Thor, Warhammer 40,000

Theatre

"How did you get in the Navy? How did you get on our side? You ignorant, arrogant, ambitious—! Keeping sixty-two men in prison 'cause you got a palm tree for the work they did. I don't know which I hate worse, you or that other malignant growth that stands outside the door."

— Doug Roberts, Mister Roberts (1955)

Video Games

Otacon: That ship's been transmitting a live video feed via military satellite uplink for a while now.
Snake: So there's some brass out there, smacking their lips over this little home movie... Wherever it is, it must be a warm, dry office with hot coffee on tap.
Otacon: A far cry from that tanker, huh? That's what happens when the battlefield has a Revolution in Military Affairs.

— Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

This leader commands from the rear, preferably as far away from the frontlines as possible to avoid exposure to 'unnecessary dangers'.

—Flavor text for Armchair Commander, Stellaris

Web Original

The Neocon’s idea of war is like the virgin's idea of sex. Neocons are utterly, totally, and completely ignorant of war and the military. No Neocon has ever served in the military, and veterans are categorically excluded from being called a Neocon. Neocons used their wealth and privilege to avoid their generation's war, yet feel they are qualified experts on the subject.

— Urban Dictionary

Real Life

I confess, without shame, I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands and fathers...'tis only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated...that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

— General William Tecumseh Sherman

His light blue, slightly watery eyes which I see before me give no hint that this man once stood next to a telephone, with maps, sketches, pencils and aide-de-camps before him, and shouted an order into the mouthpiece with an excited voice. "Will you see to it...!" the voice said. Then he hung up. The following morning 8,472 men fell on our side. They got their mass grave. The general got a decoration.

— Kurt Tucholsky, Der General im Salon (1924)

Every new publication makes the image of this weakling, coward, domineering brute and braggart, this posing dunce who plunged Germany into misfortune even more repugnant. There is not a single trait in him that could arouse sympathy or pity; he is entirely contemptible.

—Harry Graf Kessler on Kaiser Wilhelm II

Comrade Merklov, you can send your "source" from the headquarters of the German air force to his fucking mother. He is not a source, but a dis-informant.

—Joseph Stalin responding to a dispatch from the front warning that the Germans were going to invade

"I fired him because he wouldn't respect the authority of the president. That's the answer to that. I didn't fire him because he was a dumb son of a bitch, although he was, but that's not against the law for generals. If it was, half to three-quarters of them would be in jail."

—Harry S. Truman on Douglas MacArthur

"We were damned lucky we didn't blow up the world — and no thanks to the political or military leadership of this country."

— Maj. Don Clawson, B-52 pilot during the Cuban Missile Crisis

"It's not the generals, it's the civilians who authorize and organize the worst war crimes."

— Noam Chomsky

"Odd," said a fellow veteran of World War II, "that Bush and Cheney are so delighted to put us to war when, during Vietnam, they were what we both used to call draft dodgers." But then we agreed that in our politics the sissies are always cheerleading the real guys to go give their lives. Real soldiers like Colin Powell are less gung-ho.

— Gore Vidal, Dreaming War

The president liked generals. The more fruit salad they wore, the better....What the president did not like was listening to generals, who, for the most part, were skilled in the new Army jargon of PowerPoint, data dumps, McKinsey-like presentations. One of the things that endeared Flynn to the president was the fact that Flynn, quite the conspiracist and drama queen, had good storytelling sense.

—Michael Wolffe on Donald Trump and Michael Flynn, Fire and Fury

All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

—George Orwell, Diaries, 1938-1942

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