The Code of the Warrior Quotes

“Legendary strategist Maj Gen Carl von Clausewitz cuts to the chase with characteristic brutal clarity: “The soldier trade, if it is to mean anything at all, has to be anchored to an unshakable code of honor. Otherwise, those of us who follow the drums become nothing more than a bunch of hired assassins walking around in gaudy clothes . . . a disgrace to God and mankind.”6”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“Live out your days in untroubled serenity, refusing to be coerced though the whole world deafen you with its demands, and though wild beasts rend piecemeal this poor envelope of clay.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past & Present

“When my Naval Academy students had finished reading the Iliad, I often asked them to tell me which of Homer’s characters they admired the most, and why. A popular reply was Hector, prince of Troy, and the reasons they gave most concerned their sense of why he fought. It may surprise some to learn that many of these highly competitive young American students favored a character who champions the losing side of the battle. But it is Hector’s humanity and nobility of character, not his unhappy fate, to which they were drawn. Homer’s Prince Hector is a man who fights with tremendous ferocity on the battlefield but who is not driven by rage or bloodlust. Although he relishes his moments of small-scale victory, we are given the impression that Hector fights not because he wants to but because he has a duty to his people. He would rather be at home with his wife and young son, Astynax, but he is the greatest warrior that the Trojans have. If he does not defend the city, it will certainly fall to the Greeks. His exceptional physical prowess and martial skills, combined with his standing in the community as a respected member of the royal family, create special responsibilities for him. By rights, his brother Paris (the cause of the crisis) should have offered himself up for the protection of Troy. However, since Paris chooses not to live up to his obligations, the burden shifts to Hector’s more capable (and unshirking) shoulders. The defense of the city is placed in his hands and all the hopes of the Trojan people are pinned on his performance as a fighter and a leader.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“Why do warriors fight? What is worth dying for? How should a warrior define words like “nobility,” “honor,” “courage,” or “sacrifice?” What are the duties and obligations of a warrior and to whom are they owed? How can you measure a warrior’s commitment? What should bring a warrior honor, and what should bring a warrior shame?”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“Though my selections do have some breadth—ranging from the Romans to Native Americans to Chinese warrior monks to Islamic warriors—this is by no means an exhaustive survey. Even restricting myself to the historical rather than the current, I found the number of significant warrior cultures available for study absolutely staggering. In the end, my selections were dictated by several considerations.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“A warrior’s code of the type advocated by Osiel cannot be reduced to a list of rules. “Marines don’t do that” is not merely shorthand for “Marines don’t shoot unarmed civilians; Marines don’t rape women; Marines don’t leave Marines behind; Marines don’t despoil corpses, etc,” even though those firm injunctions and many others are part of what we might call the marines’ code. What marines internalize when they are indoctrinated into the culture of the corps is an amalgam of specific regulations, general concepts (e.g., of honor, courage, commitment, discipline, loyalty, and teamwork), history, and tradition that adds up to a coherent sense of what it is to be a Marine. To remain “Semper Fidelis,” or forever faithful to the code of the Marine Corps, is never to behave in a way that cannot be reconciled with that image of “what it is to be a Marine.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“He connects it to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, which stresses the importance of positive habituation and the development of certain critical virtues, such as courage, justice, benevolence, and honor, over the rote memorization of specific rules of conduct. Simply staying within the bounds of a rulebook, as Osiel observes, can often be less demanding than consistently upholding high standards of character and nobility:”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“Sharing a code, along with the sheer force of shared experience, is what binds warriors together in the crucible of combat. That is why authentic warriors’ codes come from within the warrior culture itself; they are not imposed upon it by some external source (such as a fearful civilian population). Of course, there are many rules that govern the lives of modern warriors that were put in place by the societies that they serve. Some of these exist to protect against abuses of military power. Others are to make sure a given nation’s warriors do not violate international standards of conduct. In the United States, specific Rules of Engagement (ROE) and the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) spell out much of what is expected of our warriors. But a warrior’s code is much more than just rules of this type.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“I have argued that it can be damaging for warriors to view their enemies as subhuman by imagining them like beasts in a jungle. In the same way, modern warriors who dehumanize their enemies by equating them with green blips or infrared blobs on a screen may find the sense that they are part of an honorable undertaking too fragile to sustain. Just as societies have an obligation to treat their warriors as ends in themselves, it is important for warriors to show a similar kind of respect for the inherent worth and dignity of their opponents. Even long-distance warriors can achieve this by acknowledging that some of the targets they annihilate are in fact human beings, not demons or vermin or avatars or empty statistics.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“Of course warriors are the means by which the nation is defended. To treat them as mere means, however, would be to fail to recognize that they are also citizens of the nation and human beings whose value is not limited to their utility as warriors. Although they may enjoy fewer liberties than their civilian counterparts, warriors retain their inalienable rights and deserve to be granted a full measure of dignity and respect.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“Restoring honor to the enemy is an essential step in recovery from combat PTSD. While other things are obviously needed as well, the veteran’s self-respect never fully recovers so long as he is unable to see the enemy as worthy. In the words of one of our patients, a war against subhuman vermin “has no honor.” This is true even in victory; in defeat, the dishonoring absence of human themis [shared values, a common sense of “what’s right”] linking enemy to enemy makes life unendurable.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“In his searing work Less Than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, philosopher David Livingstone Smith explains how this occurs: We are innately biased against outsiders. This bias is seized upon and manipulated by indoctrination and propaganda to motivate men and women to slaughter one another. This is done by inducing men to regard their enemies as subhuman creatures, which overrides their natural, biological inhibitions against killing. So dehumanization has the specific function of unleashing aggression in war. This is a cultural process, not a biological one, but it has to ride piggyback on biological adaptations in order to be effective.9,10”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“In a sense, the nature of the warrior’s profession puts him or her at a higher risk for moral corruption than most other occupations because it involves exerting power in matters of life and death. Warriors exercise the power to take or save lives, order others to take or save lives, and lead or send others to their deaths. If they take this awesome responsibility too lightly—if they lose sight of the moral significance of their actions—they risk losing their humanity and their ability to flourish in human society.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“Warriors, however, are not sociopaths. They respect the values of the society in which they were raised and which they are prepared to die to protect. Therefore, it is important for them to conduct themselves in such a way that they will be honored and esteemed by their communities, not reviled and rejected by them. They want to be seen as proud defenders and representatives of what is best about their culture: as heroes, not “baby-killers.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“But why do warriors need a code that ties their hands and limits their options? Why should a warrior culture want to restrict the actions of its members and require them to commit to lofty ideals? Might not such restraints cripple their effectiveness as warriors? What’s wrong with, “All’s fair in love and war?” Isn’t winning all that matters? Why could any warrior be burdened with concerns about honor and shame?”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“In many cases, this code of honor seems to hold the warrior to a higher ethical standard than that required for an ordinary citizen within the general population of the society the warrior serves. The code is not imposed from the outside. The warriors themselves police strict adherence to these standards; with violators being shamed, ostracized, or even killed by their peers.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“When they are trained for war, warriors are given a mandate by their society to take lives. But they must learn to take only certain lives in certain ways, at certain times, and for certain reasons. Otherwise, they become indistinguishable from murderers and will find themselves condemned by the very societies they were created to serve.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present

“The words I offered my students for their consideration as possible synonyms for “warrior” were “murderer,” “killer,” “fighter,” “victor,” and “conqueror.” Over and over again, I found that most students rejected all five. The reasons they gave to account for why they dismissed each of these options as synonyms for “warrior” consistently stressed the idea that a true warrior has to be morally superior in some way to those who might qualify for the other suggested epithets.”
― Shannon E. French, The Code of the Warrior: Exploring Warrior Values Past and Present