Jack Cady Quotes

So what use are we? Burnside hopes to die exhausted in a cathouse, with the sweet-sweet taste of bourbon on his tongue. My own ambition is less raunchy. I want, at age ninety, to be gunned down while storming the Congress.

No one recalls the names of dog soldiers who fought beside Leonidas at Thermopylae, or with Charles Martel at the battle of Tours; but how they fought, and what they fought for, lives through centuries. Without those forgotten men western civilization could not have come into being. They put it all on the line, because there are times in history when universal evil crawls from its cave of darkness.
When those battles happened, though, what did anyone know? The dog soldier only knew that some fool Persian had it in his head to whip the world, or a Moorish chieftain was on the prod.
And the dog soldier stood. He stood between the enemy and home, standing before a way of life that was particularly his. If in his home he was boss during peace, then during war he paid for the honor. The male of the species defends his land and home. It will always be that way. At least that is true of the Infantry.

The rules would seem to indicate," I told him, "that if you start a war you really can't complain when people drop bombs on you.

I saw old-fashioned cities, quiet streets, small shops, colorful flags and ornaments and decorations—life before machine guns, before communism and capitalism and the ambitions of generals.

Evil uses Hell as a parking lot, and you don’t have to die to park. Evil sets people in the middle of war, famine, excess prosperity, or other of Hell’s appurtenances, then stands back as people freeze or sizzle; and screw themselves. The main interest of Evil is destruction of faith in gods and ethics, knowledge and honor. When faith is destroyed people create their own hells, and a sign stretches across the universe writ large for all to see. It reads: The Future Is Canceled.

Absolute Evil exists. As kids we geriatrics learned all about it, and no damn social worker had better come along and blame “evil” on “conditions.” Evil is a force in the universe, a force using any weakness it finds to do its dirt; and with Evil, Hell is just a sideline.

Either ghosts are a metaphor for history, or history is a metaphor for ghosts.

Courage, combined with stupidity, does not make successful soldiers.

The reason to understand history is not to avoid the mistakes of history—because some fool will make those mistakes for you. Some maniac will start a war, and some other maniac will drop an atom bomb, and you'll be the poor bastard who gets to drop the bomb or be hit by it.
No, you understand history so you can understand yourself.

A lot of preachers will be glad this man is gone, and that’s one good thing you can say for him. He drove nice people crazy. This man was a hellion, pure and simple; but what folks don’t understand is, hellions have their place. They put everything on the line over nothing very much. Most guys worry so much about dying, they never do any living. Jesse was so alive with living, he never gave dying any thought.

Men build all kinds of worlds in order to defeat fear and loneliness.

Her eyes held that long-distance prairie look, a look knowing wind and fire and hard times, stuff that either breaks people or leaves them wise.

It’s no big job to fool yourself.

The world was changing, and it wouldn’t change back.

Snowy owls come floating in from northward, while folks go to church on Sunday against the time when there’s some better amusement. Men hang around town, because home is either empty or crowded, depending on if you’re married. Folks sit before television, watching the funny, goofy, unreal world where everybody plays at being sexy and naked, even when they’re not.