That's the big mistake a lot of people make when they wonder how soldiers can put their lives on the line day after day or how they can fight for something they may not believe in. Not everyone does. I've worked with soldiers on all sides of the political spectrum; I've met some who hated the army and others who wanted to make it a career. I've met geniuses and idiots, but when all is said and done,we do what we do for one another. For friendship. Not for country, not for patriotism, not because we're programmed killing machines, but because of the guy next to you. You fight for your friend, to keep him alive, and he fights for you, and everything about the army is built on this simple premise.

Joining the army is not a sacrament, it's a pagan allegiance.

One of the chief reasons for the maintenance of an army is the advantage of the military system as a method of education. The most fiery and headstrong, who are often also the most gifted and generous of your youths, have always a tendency both in the lower and upper classes to offer themselves for your soldiers: others, weak and unserviceable in the civil capacity, are tempted or entrapped into the army in a fortunate hour for them: out of this fiery or uncouth material, it is only soldier's discipline which can bring the full value and power. Even at present, by mere force of order and authority, the army is the salvation of myriads; and men who, under other circumstances, would have sunk into lethargy or dissipation, are redeemed into noble life by a service which at once summons and directs their energies.

“Si, a lot of men make far greater sacrifices than he will. For the good of the country.”
“But he wouldn’t even be consulted about it!”
“Neither are they; they’re drafted into the army.”
“Well, maybe they should be asked, too.”
He genuinely didn’t understand. “What do you mean?”
“Maybe it’s wrong to force a man to join an army and kill other people against his own wishes.”
They just looked at me. What I was saying was really incomprehensible to them.

An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!

When you (Military personnel) serve in uniform, you serve your country, not your mataqali, yavusa or particular vanua. You serve the larger vanua that encompasses all of us.

The U.S. Army is the biggest joke the world has to laugh at. It is the army of liars, backstabbers, fools, and bullies. The few good sergeants are getting out as soon as they can, and they are telling us privates to do the same.

The current use of the National Guard is wrong... These are men who did not sign up to go occupy foreign nations.

Let me start by saying I wish no country had the need for an army. But in Israel, serving is part of being an Israeli. You've got to give back to the state. You give two or three years, and it's not about you. You give your freedom away. You learn discipline and respect.

An Army is a team. It lives sleeps eats and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit

no army is a charitable institution, armies are established to kill, and this is in the charge of the U.S. Army.

Our army, if it exists for honorable purposes only, will draw to it honorable men. It will call to it the best men of our race- men of skill and culture. It will not be recruited as so many modern nations are, from those who are industrially useless.

The nationality of an army is that of its political leadership, not of its common soldiers or its officer corps.

“You’re actually a soldier,” he said to me, “and you go along with this foolishness?”
“I didn’t ask to be a soldier. And I can’t imagine a peace as foolish as this war we’re in.”