2nd Soldier: Do you mean that, as a General, you're not the tiniest bit ambitious for our military future? General: I prefer our military past. The harm's done and there it is. As for being a General, well, at the age of four with paper hats and wooden swords, we're all Generals. Only some of us never grow out of it.

It's war that makes generals

Get this in mind early: We never grow up.

When you’re four, forever and ever can mean yesterday.

Ne ressemblons-nous pas presque tous à ce vieux général de quatre-vingt-dix ans, qui, ayant rencontré de jeunes officiers qui faisaient un peu de désordre avec des filles, leur dit tout en colère: "Messieurs, est-ce là l'exemple que je vous donne?"

Generals and Majors ah ah They're never too far away from men who made the grade out in a world of their own They'll never come down until the battle's lost or made

We poor tellers of tales have our moments too, it seems. Like great generals sitting upon horses upon the tops of hills and throwing troops into the arena, we throw the little soldier words into our battles.

We are all old children, more or less serious, more or less filled with ourselves.

Every so often there's a generation likes us, Ian. Our only raison d'être to be blown to pieces in a war we imagine we believe in ideologically.

We are all geniuses up to the age of ten.

Em geral, nós outros, os Portugueses, só começamos a ser idiotas – quando chegamos à idade da razão. Em pequenos temos todos uma pontinha de génio.

We thought we were running away from the grownups, and now we are the grownups.

My vision for this book and the others in the series is to let people know what kind of commanders we have. You don't pick generals off park benches. … They are experts at what they do and lot of thinking goes into it. And I want to get across to people the intellectual dimension of command, to let people know that it's hard to be a general. And the people we have with general stars on their shoulders are pretty smart and pretty good guys.

no matter how hard we try to be mature, we will always be a kid when we all get hurt and cry