Sergeants Quotes

• Because I am hard, you will not like me. But the more you hate me, the more you will learn. I am hard but I am fair.

  R. Lee Ermey

  Hate, Drill Sergeant, Jackets

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• Battles are sometimes won by generals; wars are nearly always won by sergeants and privates.

  F. E. Adcock

  Military, War, Army

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• Any officer can get by on his sergeants. To be a sergeant you have to know your stuff. I'd rather be an outstanding sergeant than just another officer.

  Daniel Daly

  Marine, Stuff, Outstanding

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• The sergeant is the Army.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Military, Army

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  We have good corporals and good sergeants and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals.

  William Tecumseh Sherman

  Important, Captains, Lieutenants

  William Tecumseh Sherman, Brooks D. Simpson, Jean Vance Berlin (1999). “Sherman's Civil War: selected correspondence of William T. Sherman, 1860-1865”, The University of North Carolina Press

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• Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants - the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class brawl.

  Terry Pratchett

  Running, Army, Class

  Terry Pratchett (2009). “The Carpet People”, p.148, Random House

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• All writing is discipline, but screenwriting is a drill sergeant.

  Robert McKee

  Writing, Discipline, Drill Sergeant

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• The trust, confidence, and support given to us by our chain of command, and the tenacity of the great noncommissioned officers of the past, have laid the foundation and developed our quality corporals and sergeants.

  Julius W. Gates

  Army, Past, Support

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• Right now I've got just two rules to live by. Rule one: don't taunt elephants. Rule two: don't stand next to anybody who taunts elephants. -Sergeant Schlock

  Howard Tayler

  Elephants, Two, Rules To Live By

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• My heroes are the non-commissioned officers. If I had another life thats what Id be - a regimental sergeant major or a similar rank. Thats where the spirit of the armed forces is.

  Bob Ainsworth

  Hero, Spirit, Another Life

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• This fell sergeant, Death, Is strict in his arrest.

  William Shakespeare

  Death, Hamlet Death, Strict

  William Shakespeare (1809). “The plays of William Shakspeare, with the corrections and illustr. of various commentators, to which are added notes by S. Johnson and G. Steevens, revised and augmented by I. Reed, with a glossarial index”, p.283

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• I am still confused as to why they chose to lie and tried to make me a legend when the real heroics of my fellow soldiers that day were, in fact, legendary. People like Lori Piestewa and First Sergeant Dowdy who picked up fellow soldiers in harm's way. Or people like Patrick Miller and Sergeant Donald Walters who actually fought until the very end. The bottom line is the American people are capable of determining their own ideals of heroes and they don't need to be told elaborate tales.

  Jessica Lynch

  Confused, Real, Lying

  "Rambo image was based on lie, says US war hero Jessica Lynch" by Ewen MacAskill, www.theguardian.com. April 24, 2007.

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• Sergeant first class Cory Remsburg never gives up and he does not quit.

  Barack Obama

  Giving Up, Class, Doe

  Fifth Presidential State of the Union, delivered 28 January 2014

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• Jimi Hendrix played loud and free, Sergeant Pepper was real to me.

  Al Stewart

  Real, Peppers, Hendrix

  Song: Post World War Two Blues, Album: Past, Present and Future, 1973

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• Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army. If we retrench the wages of the schoolmaster, we must raise those of the recruiting sergeant.

  Edward Everett

  Education, Army, Liberty

  "The Common School Journal and Educational Reformer" edited by William B. Fowle, 1852.

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• Were you proposing to shoot these people in cold blood, sergeant?" "Nossir. Just a warning shot inna head, sir.

  Terry Pratchett

  Blood, People, Warning

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• Ready when you are, Sergeant Pempbry.

  Thomas Harris

  Ready

  "Fictional character: Dr. Hannibal Lecter". "The Silence of the Lambs", www.imdb.com. 1991.

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• But if you didn't have more urgent things to do after supper [in boot camp], you could write a letter, loaf, gossip, discuss the myriad mental shortcomings of sergeants and, dearest of all, talk about the female of the species (we became convinced that there was no such creatures, just mythology created by inflamed imaginations - one boy in our company claimed to have seen a girl, over at regimental headquarters; he was unanimously judged a liar and a braggart).

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Girl, Liars, Writing

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• My own military background is wholly un-distinguished. I was a sergeant.

  W. E. B. Griffin

  Military, Backgrounds, Distinguished

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• It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.

  E. M. Forster

  Self Confidence, History, Office

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• There's no doubt that I really have a feeling for the theater. These past few days it has occurred to me to do a comedy whose chief characters are photographic enlargements. Those people we see in doorways. Newlyweds, sergeants, dead girls, an anonymous crowd full of mustaches and wrinkles. It should be terrible. If I focus it well, it will possess pathos without consolation. In the midst of those people I will place an authentic fairy.

  Federico Garcia Lorca

  Girl, Character, Past

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• I think managing shortened my playing career, but I was a better manager when I was playing, when I could lead like a platoon sergeant in the field rather than as a general sitting back on his duff in a command post.

  Frankie Frisch

  Thinking, Careers, Sitting

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• You know, I was a regular on the Friday afternoon drill squad. Um, which... The year after I left school, I went back and thanked the sergeant major because I was so fit.

  John Newcombe

  Friday, School, Years

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• Pansy," Murphy sneered. Thomas leered at her. "You make my stamen tingle when you talk like that, Sergeant.

  Jim Butcher

  Pansies, Murphy, Thomas Raith

  Jim Butcher (2010). “Changes: A Novel of the Dresden Files”, p.292, Penguin

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• The behavior of the minority ... warranted the sergeant at arms being called.

  Jim McCrery

  Minorities, Arms, Behavior

  "Police called during House meeting" by Steve Turnham, www.cnn.com. July 21, 2003.

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