Quotes / General Ripper

"Every madman has his agenda."

— Russian proverb

War-Prince Alloran: <You think you can fight a clean war, Elfangor? Is that what you think? Or are you one of those who are happy enough when someone like me does the dirty work for you?>
Aristh Elfangor: <They are defenseless.>
War-Prince Alloran: <They are the enemy. Hypocrites! You're all hypocrites! We lost the Hork-Bajir war because of weak, moralizing fools like you! Because of fools like you, I am disgraced and shunned and sent off on trivial errands with nothing but arisths under my command.>
Aristh Elfangor: <War-prince Alloran, I honor you, but—>
War-Prince Alloran: <What is the difference how you destroy the enemy? What does it matter if you kill them with a tail blade or a shredder or a quantum virus?>

—Animorphs — The Andalite Chronicles

Kurtz: Did they say why, Willard? Why they want to terminate my command?
Willard: I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
Kurtz: It's no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?
Willard: They told me that you had gone totally insane and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz: Are my methods unsound?
Willard: I don't see any "method" at all, sir.

— Apocalypse Now

"He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops."

— General Corman, referring to Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now

"At one time the colonel was a member of the territorial council of Illinois, ends at the formation of the state government, was pressed to become candidate for governor, but begged to be excused. And, though he declined to give his reasons for declining, yet by those who best knew him the cause was not wholly unsurmised. In his official capacity he might be called upon to enter into friendly treaties with Indian tribes, a thing not to be thought of. And even did no such contingency arise, yet he felt there would be an impropriety in the Governor of Illinois stealing out now and then, during a recess of the legislative bodies, for a few days' shooting at human beings, within the limits of his paternal chief-magistracy. If the governorship offered large honors, from Moredock it demanded larger sacrifices. These were incompatibles. In short, he was not unaware that to be a consistent Indian-hater involves the renunciation of ambition, with its objects — the pomps and glories of the world."

— Herman Melville, The Confidence-Man

"Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war? [...] He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."

— General Jack D. Ripper, Dr. Strangelove

"We have to strike now, sir! Annihilate! KILL! KILL!"

— General Decker, Mars Attacks!

"Five years ago, I lost thirty thousand men in the blink of an eye... and the world just fuckin' watched. Tomorrow, there will be no shortage of volunteers, no shortage of patriots."

— General Shepherd, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Cap. Picard: In the Treaty of Algeron the Federation specifically agreed not to develop cloaking technology.
Adm: Pressman: And that treaty is the biggest mistake we ever made! It's kept us from exploiting a vital area of defense!
Cap. Picard: That treaty has kept us in peace for sixty years, and as a Starfleet officer, you're supposed to uphold it!

— Star Trek: The Next Generation, "The Pegasus"

B.A.: Yeah, Hannibal and this guy mixed it up once in the Doom Club.
[...]
Amy: What, he didn't like the way you sugared his coffee?
Hannibal: No, I didn't like the way he blew up Cong hospitals like it was his favorite sport.

— The A-Team and Amy about Colonel Decker, The A-Team, "When You Comin' Back, Range Rider?"

Real Life

"As the world now knows, on the evening of June 16, 1972, H.H. gave a splendid lobster dinner for the Watergate burglars and then sent Bernie Barker and his Cubans into battle to bug the offices of the Democratic Party... H.H. had also said that his own break-in of the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist was an attempt to find out whether "Ellsberg might be a controlled agent for the Sovs." One daydreams: "Dr. Fielding, I have these terrible headaches. They started just after I met my control Ivan and he said, 'Well, boychik, it's been five years now since you signed on as a controlled agent. Now I guess you know that if there's one thing we Sovs hate it's a non-producer so...'"

— Gore Vidal, The Art and Arts of E. Howard Hunt

"In the sixties, during the Cold War, most of the United States supported the making of plutonium weapons...Curtis LeMay had eighteen nukes stored on his own that he didn’t tell the NSC or President Kennedy about — because he didn’t deem them knowledgeable enough about war. That is unbelievable arrogance! So, Admiral Marcus is basically like LeMay."

— Peter Weller on Star Trek Into Darkness

Matt: Tell me if I’m getting it right here: His son has already killed his wife and he wants to get rid of the bad mutants by synthesizing the top mutant powers into one killing machine... He hates the super-powered people so much that he creates an even worse version that he almost certainly can’t control.
Chris: Well, he’s obviously not thinking clearly, or he wouldn’t have started with “let me piss off this dude who has done nothing but fight in wars for the past century and then give him indestructible bones and a bunch of knives on his hands.”

— Chris Sims and Matt Wilson on X-Men Origins: Wolverine

Puppet Senator McCain: Jon, you can't deny we have a problem. Immigrants are stealing my pills, they're making my legs twitch; they took my reading glasses and I haven't been able to seen a damn thing for three weeks!
Jon Stewart: Were your reading glasses anything like the ones who're hanging around your neck right now?
[Beat]
Puppet Senator McCain: Oh, now they're just ***ing with me! Those bastards!

— The Daily Show

"Even if we have to burn half of Russia and shed the blood of three-quarters of the population, we shall do it if that is needed to save Russia."

— Lavr Kornilov

"There are no innocent civilians. It is their government and you are fighting a people, you are not trying to fight an armed force anymore. So it doesn't bother me so much to be killing the so-called innocent bystanders."

— General Curtis "Bombs Away" LeMay, inspiration for the Trope Namer

"Killing communists is like killing vermin, killing African nationalists is as if one is killing an animal. I don't like either one or the other. My men and I have killed between 5,000 to 10,000 Congo rebels in the 20 months that I have spent in the Congo. But that's not enough. There are 20 million Congolese you know and I assume that about half of them at one time or another were rebels whilst I was down here"

—"Mad Mike" Hoare describing his fight against the Simbas in Stanleyville

"If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity-seeking."

—General William Tecumseh Sherman, in a letter to Gen. Henry Halleck, September 1864

"Attacks on cities like any other act of war are intolerable unless they are strategically justified. But they are strategically justified in so far as they tend to shorten the war and preserve the lives of Allied soldiers. To my mind we have absolutely no right to give them up unless it is certain that they will not have this effect. I do not personally regard the whole of the remaining cities of Germany as worth the bones of one British Grenadier."

— Sir Arthur "Bomber" Harris

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