The Warriors Quotes

“Nietzsche was “surely right” when he wrote: “ ‘Rather perish than hate and fear, and twice rather perish than make oneself hated and feared.’” And the second lesson was that no ism, not nationalism and not even patriotism, no emotion in which men can be indoctrinated and then manipulated, but only comradeship, the “loyalty to the group is the essence of fighting morale.”
― Jesse Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle

“The insights of one hour are blotted out by the events of the next, and few of us can hold on to our real selves long enough to discover the momentous truths about ourselves and this whirling earth to which we cling. This is especially true of men at war. The great god Mars tries to blind us when we enter his realm, and when we leave he gives us a generous cup of the waters of Lethe to drink.”
― Jesse Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle

“But I find courage and strength from somewhere. I shall go on. Plato wrote of the wise man caught in an evil time who refuses to take part in the crimes of his fellow citizens and takes refuge behind a wall until the storm is past. Plato understood.”
― Jesse Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle

“They will hardly comprehend a decision made by Socrates many hundred years ago to suffer injustice in preference to committing it because the former did less harm to the soul. The reason”
― J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle

“(for “war compresses the greatest opposites into the smallest space and the shortest time,” that is its greatest fascination),”
― J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle

“Few men ever reach superlatives in the realm of destruction; most of us remain, as in the domain of creation, moderately capable.”
― J. Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle

“How often I wrote in my war journals that unless that day had some positive significance for my future life, it could not possibly be worth the pain it cost.”
― Jesse Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle