Duty Honor Country Quotes

A real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.

On my honor, I will do my best To do my duty To God and my country

Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he s not he s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some it takes an hour. For some it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor his sense of duty to his country and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

The meaning of life has not much to do with good and evil, right and wrong, duty, honor, country, or any of that. It has to do with cutting the right deal.

The WWII generation shares so many common values: duty, honor, country, personal responsibility and the marriage vow " For better or for worse--it was the last generation in which, broadly speaking, marriage was a commitment and divorce was not an option

It is your duty,' he said, 'to recover your country not by gold but by the sword. You will be fighting with all you love before your eyes: the temples of the gods, your wives and children, the soil of your native land scarred with the ravages of war, and everything which honor and truth call upon you to defend, or recover, or avenge.

Do your duty. Love your country. Live with honor. Suck it up.

To begin with, this case should never have come to trial. The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place... It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses, whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. Now, there is circumstantial evidence to indicate that Mayella Ewel was beaten - savagely, by someone who led exclusively with his left. And Tom Robinson now sits before you having taken the oath with the only good hand he possesses... his RIGHT. I have nothing but pity in my heart for the chief witness for the State. She is the victim of cruel poverty and ignorance. But my pity does not extend so far as to her putting a man's life at stake, which she has done in an effort to get rid of her own guilt. Now I say "guilt," gentlemen, because it was guilt that motivated her. She's committed no crime - she has merely broken a rigid and time-honored code of our society, a code so severe that whoever breaks it is hounded from our midst as unfit to live with. She must destroy the evidence of her offense. But what was the evidence of her offense? Tom Robinson, a human being. She must put Tom Robinson away from her. Tom Robinson was to her a daily reminder of what she did. Now, what did she do? She tempted a *****. She was white, and she tempted a *****. She did something that, in our society, is unspeakable. She kissed a black man. Not an old uncle, but a strong, young ***** man. No code mattered to her before she broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards. The witnesses for the State, with the exception of the sheriff of Maycomb County have presented themselves to you gentlemen, to this court in the cynical confidence that their testimony would not be doubted, confident that you gentlemen would go along with them on the assumption... the evil assumption that all Negroes lie, all Negroes are basically immoral beings, all ***** men are not to be trusted around our women. An assumption that one associates with minds of their caliber, and which is, in itself, gentlemen, a lie, which I do not need to point out to you. And so, a quiet, humble, respectable *****, who has had the unmitigated TEMERITY to feel sorry for a white woman, has had to put his word against TWO white people's! The defendant is not guilty - but somebody in this courtroom is. Now, gentlemen, in this country, our courts are the great levelers. In our courts, all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and of our jury system - that's no ideal to me. That is a living, working reality! Now I am confident that you gentlemen will review, without passion, the evidence that you have heard, come to a decision and restore this man to his family. In the name of GOD, do your duty. In the name of God, believe... Tom Robinson

On my honor I will do my best to do my duty to god and my country but it might not be the same god as the god of the church and I might not be digging on the message of the president because the windmills of his mind are cracked on a lot of subjects concerning people.

One more thing, gentlemen, before I quit. Thomas Jefferson once said that all men are created equal, a phrase that the Yankees and the distaff side of the Executive branch in Washington are fond of hurling at us. There is a tendency in this year of grace, 1935, for certain people to use this phrase out of context, to satisfy all conditions. The most ridiculous example I can think of is that the people who run public education promote the stupid and idle along with the industrious — because all men are created equal, educators will gravely tell you, the children left behind suffer terrible feelings of inferiority. We know all men are not created equal in the sense some people would have us believe — some people are smarter than others, some people have more opportunity because they’re born with it, some men make more money than others, some ladies make better cakes than others — some people are born gifted beyond the normal scope of most men. But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I'm no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty. In the name of God, believe him.

What an insult, to fight for your country—to be willing to give your life, a life surrendered to duty and honor—and after all the sacrifices, your world was you alone with your possessions only piling up high enough to rest your head on.

Never, do you hear me? I will give up my friends, my country, my duty, and even my honor—but never you.

Honor, duty, country. Those verities, together with a driving ambition and an abiding competitive spirit, had shaped his life and his understanding of the nation.

Duty, Honor, Country" — those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn...

Honor, justice and humanity call upon us to hold and to transmit to our posterity, that liberty, which we received from our ancestors. It is not our duty to leave wealth to our children; but it is our duty to leave liberty to them. No infamy, iniquity, or cruelty can exceed our own if we, born and educated in a country of freedom, entitled to its blessings and knowing their value, pusillanimously deserting the post assigned us by Divine Providence, surrender succeeding generations to a condition of wretchedness from which no human efforts, in all probability, will be sufficient to extricate them; the experience of all states mournfully demonstrating to us that when arbitrary power has been established over them, even the wisest and bravest nations that ever flourished have, in a few years, degenerated into abject and wretched vassals.

You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it,' said I. 'I will try on my side to be no less honest. I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oaths of the high office which you hold. But for me, who am just a plain man--or scarce a man yet--the plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It's the way I am made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if this is wilful blindness, that He may enlighten me before too late.

Power may justly be compared to a great river which, while kept within its due bounds is both beautiful and useful; but when it overflows its banks, it is then too impetuous to be stemmed, it bears down on all before it and brings destruction and desolation wherever it comes. If this then is the nature of power, let us at least do our duty and like wise men use our utmost care to support liberty, the only bulwark against lawless power...and I make no doubt but your upright conduct, this day will not only entitle you to the love and esteem of your fellow-citizens, but every man, who prefers freedom to a life of slavery, will bless and honor you, as men who have baffled the attempt of tyranny; and, by an impartial verdict, have laid a notable foundation for securing to ourselves, our posterity, and our neighbors, that to which nature and the laws of our country have given us a right--the liberty--both of exposing and opposing arbitrary power in these parts of the world at least, by speaking and writing the truth." - - Andrew Hamilton

Duty, honor, country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Two days later, in another diary entry, the defeated president said: “I still feel that there is a disconnect…honor, duty, and country—it’s just passé. The values are different now, the lifestyles, the accepted vulgarity, the manners, the view of what’s patriotic and what’s not, the concept of service. All these are in the hands of a new generation now, and I feel I have the comfort of knowing that I have upheld these values and I live and stand by them. I have the discomfort of knowing that they might be a little out of date.

On my honor, I will do my best To do my duty To God and my country and to obey the Scout law; To help people at all times; To keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

Duty—honor—country,’” he said in the voice of an old white man who’d been battered by war. “‘Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.

But duties, my friend, are not sentiments. To do what we ought is by no means to do what we like. A man who would give his life enthusiastically for a woman must be ready to die coldly for his country.

But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and ajury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.

The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some, it takes an hour. For some, it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.

When Anthony graduated from his preclinical training with first-class honors and a university medal, it was Mr. Llewellyn he invited to sit beside Eleanor and his parents to watch him receive his degree. As the vice chancellor delivered his rousing speech about manhood and duty—“If a man cannot be useful to his country, he is better dead”—Mr.

The war was a factory that cranked out casualties with all the frightful efficiency of the modern assembly line. That had become its real purpose, she knew, regardless of all the patriotic blather about duty, honor, and country or putting paid to the depradations of the Hun. Those were excuses, delusions, lies. Men had begun the war, but it had long since escaped them, acquiring its own implacable momentum. And as long as fresh recruits kept coming, as long as hospitals like this one patched up the wounded and sent them back, it seemed likely to go on producing its horrors. The very scale of the slaughter ensured its continuance, for to stop in the face of such appalling losses would be to acknowledge that the dead had perished in vain. The war was its own thing now, a machine for grinding up people's lives. Or no, she thought, not a machine at all: it was alive, a bloated creature as red and raw as a shell wound, a battlefield birth of splintered bone, hot shrapnel, and glutinous mud, suckled on blood, with a hunger that increased the more it was fed.

Mary was proud of her husband, not merely because he was a musician, but because he was a blacksmith. For, with the true taste of a right woman, she honored the manhood that could do hard work. The day will come, and may I do something to help it hither, when the youth of our country will recognize that, taken in itself, it is a more manly, and therefore in the old true sense a more _gentle_ thing, to follow a good handicraft, if it make the hands black as a coal, than to spend the day in keeping books, and making up accounts, though therein the hands should remain white--or red, as the case may be. Not but that, from a higher point of view still, all work, set by God, and done divinely, is of equal honor; but, where there is a choice, I would gladly see boy of mine choose rather to be a blacksmith, or a watchmaker, or a bookbinder, than a clerk. Production, making, is a higher thing in the scale of reality, than any mere transmission, such as buying and selling. It is, besides, easier to do honest work than to buy and sell honestly. The more honor, of course, to those who are honest under the greater difficulty! But the man who knows how needful the prayer, "Lead us not into temptation," knows that he must not be tempted into temptation even by the glory of duty under difficulty. In humility we must choose the easiest, as we must hold our faces unflinchingly to the hardest, even to the seeming impossible, when it is given us to do.

The old refrain is that there are no atheists in foxholes. That's nonsense. They are there by the millions. There is little in combat that will lead one to look upon the Creator with favor. What can't be there, instead, is the individualist, the selfish, the self-consumed, the self-centered, the aloof loner. Such a man cannot long survive. The terror of combat cannot be described by fear of death. There are worse things. The world can suddenly become a very cold place...He needs warmth, a fire, to survive: His discipline, his training, his duty, honor and country, his family, and ultimately the very oak of his manhood are thrown into the blaze, but they are not enough to save him. At the end, he needs the warmth of his comrades. Otherwise, all he will have with which to face the cold dark will be his own spent soul.

On our way down, we passed a two-story villa, hidden in a thicket of Chinese parasol trees, magnolia, and pines. It looked almost like a random pile of stones against the background of the rocks. It struck me as an unusually lovely place, and I snapped my last shot. Suddenly a man materialized out of nowhere and asked me in a low but commanding voice to hand over my camera. He wore civilian clothes, but I noticed he had a pistol. He opened the camera and exposed my entire roll of film. Then he disappeared, as if into the earth. Some tourists standing next to me whispered that this was one of Mao's summer villas. I felt another pang of revulsion toward Mao, not so much for his privilege, but for the hypocrisy of allowing himself luxury while telling his people that even comfort was bad for them. After we were safely out of earshot of the invisible guard, and I was bemoaning the loss of my thirty-six pictures, Jin-ming gave me a grin: "See where goggling at holy places gets you!" We left Lushan by bus. Like every bus in China, it was packed, and we had to crane our necks desperately trying to breathe. Virtually no new buses had been built since the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, during which time the urban population had increased by several tens of millions. After a few minutes, we suddenly stopped. The front door was forced open, and an authoritative-looking man in plainclothes squeezed in. "Get down! Get down!" he barked. "Some American guests are coming this way. It is harmful to the prestige of our motherland for them to see all these messy heads!" We tried to crouch down, but the bus was too crowded. The man shouted, "It is the duty of everyone to safeguard the honor of our motherland! We must present an orderly and dignified appearance! Get down! Bend your knees!" Suddenly I heard Jin-ming's booming voice: "Doesn'T Chairman Mao instruct us never to bend our knees to American imperialists?" This was asking for trouble. Humor was not appreciated. The man shot a stern glance in our direction, but said nothing. He gave the bus another quick scan, and hurried off. He did not want the "American guests' to witness a scene. Any sign of discord had to be hidden from foreigners. Wherever we went as we traveled down the Yangtze we saw the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution: temples smashed, statues toppled, and old towns wrecked. Litfie evidence remained of China's ancient civilization. But the loss went even deeper than this. Not only had China destroyed most of its beautiful things, it had lost its appreciation of them, and was unable to make new ones. Except for the much-scarred but still stunning landscape, China had become an ugly country.

This: one thing prevented me from seeing any other; a good action, seen too near, concealed a hundred criminal actions from my eyes; on one side an old man, on the other, children, all this came between me and duty. I forgot the villages burned, the fields ravaged, the prisoners massacred, the wounded murdered, the women shot. I forgot France betrayed to England; I liberated the murderer of his country. I am guilty. In speaking thus, I seem to speak against myself; it is a mistake. I am speaking for myself. When the guilty person confesses his fault, he saves the only thing worth the trouble of saving—honor.

No, Sir. There is no qualification for government but virtue and wisdom, actual or presumptive. Wherever they are actually found, they have, in whatever state, condition, profession, or trade, the passport of Heaven to human place and honor. Woe to the country which would madly and impiously reject the service of the talents and virtues, civil, military, or religious, that are given to grace and to serve it; and would condemn to obscurity everything formed to diffuse lustre and glory around a state! Woe to that country, too, that, passing into the opposite extreme, considers a low education, a mean, contracted view of things, a sordid, mercenary occupation, as a preferable title to command! Everything ought to be open,—but not indifferently to every man. No rotation, no appointment by lot, no mode of election operating in the spirit of sortition or rotation, can be generally good in a government conversant in extensive objects; because they have no tendency, direct or indirect, to select the man with a view to the duty, or to accommodate the one to the other. I do not hesitate to say that the road to eminence and power, from obscure condition, ought not to be made too easy, nor a thing too much of course. If rare merit be the rarest of all rare things, it ought to pass through some sort of probation.

I can’t help thinking,” she confided when he finished answering her questions about women in India who covered their faces and hair in public, “that it is grossly unfair that I was born a female and so must never know such adventures, or see but a few of those places. Even if I were to journey there, I’d only be allowed to go where everything was as civilized as-as London!” “There does seem to be a case of extreme disparity between the privileges accorded the sexes,” Ian agreed. “Still, we each have our duty to perform,” she informed him with sham solemnity. “And there’s said to be great satisfaction in that.” “How do you view your-er-duty?” he countered, responding to her teasing tone with a lazy white smile. “That’s easy. It is a female’s duty to be a wife who is an asset to her husband in every way. It is a male’s duty to do whatever he wishes, whenever he wishes, so long as he is prepared to defend his country should the occasion demand it in his lifetime-which it very likely won’t. Men,” she informed him, “gain honor by sacrificing themselves on the field of battle while we sacrifice ourselves on the altar of matrimony.” He laughed aloud then, and Elizabeth smiled back at him, enjoying herself hugely. “Which, when one considers it, only proves that our sacrifice is by far the greater and more noble.” “How is that?” he asked, still chuckling. “It’s perfectly obvious-battles last mere days or weeks, months at the very most. While matrimony lasts a lifetime! Which brings to mind something else I’ve often wondered about,” she continued gaily, giving full rein to her innermost thoughts. “And that is?” he prompted, grinning, watching her as if he never wanted to stop. “Why do you suppose, after all that, they call us the weaker sex?” Their laughing gazes held, and then Elizabeth realized how outrageous he must be finding some of her remarks. “I don’t usually go off on such tangents,” she said ruefully. “You must think I’m dreadfully ill-bred.” “I think,” he softly said, “that you are magnificent.” The husky sincerity in his deep voice snatched her breath away. She opened her mouth, thinking frantically for some light reply that could restore the easy camaraderie of a minute before, but instead of speaking she could only draw a long, shaky breath. “And,” he continued quietly, “I think you know it.” This was not, not the sort of foolish, flirtatious repartee she was accustomed to from her London beaux, and it terrified her as much as the sensual look in those golden eyes. Pressing imperceptibly back against the arm of the sofa, she told herself she was only overacting to what was nothing more than empty flattery. “I think,” she managed with a light laugh that stuck in her throat, “that you must find whatever female you’re with ‘magnificent.’” “Why would you say a thing like that?” Elizabeth shrugged. “Last night at supper, for one thing.” When he frowned at her as if she were speaking in a foreign language, she prodded, “You remember Lady Charise Dumont, our hostess, the same lovely brunette on whose every word you were hanging at supper last night?” His frown became a grin. “Jealous?” Elizabeth lifted her elegant little chin and shook her head. “No more than you were of Lord Howard.” She felt a small bit of satisfaction as his amusement vanished. “The fellow who couldn’t seem to talk to you without touching your arm?” he inquired in a silky-soft voice. “That Lord Howard? As a matter of fact, my love, I spent most of my meal trying to decide whether I wanted to shove his nose under his right ear or his left.” Startled, musical laughter erupted from her before she could stop it. “You did nothing of the sort,” she chuckled. “Besides, if you wouldn’t duel with Lord Everly when he called you a cheat, you certainly wouldn’t harm poor Lord Howard merely for touching my arm.” “Wouldn’t I?” he asked softly. “Those are two very different issues.

The Unknown Soldier A tale to tell in bloody rhyme, A story to last ’til the dawn of end’s time. Of a loving boy who left dear home, To bear his countries burdens; her honor to sow. –A common boy, I say, who left kith and kin, To battle der Kaiser and all that was therein. The Arsenal of Democracy was his kind, –To make the world safe–was their call and chime. Trained he thus in the far army camps, Drilled he often in the march and stamp. Laughed he did with new found friends, Lived they together for the noble end. Greyish mottled images clipp’ed and hack´ed– Black and white broke drum Ʀ…ɧ..λ..t…ʮ..m..ȿ —marching armies off to ’ttack. Images scratched, chopped, theatrical exaggerate, Confetti parades, shouts of high praise To where hell would sup and partake with all bon hope as the transport do them take Faded icons board the ship– To steel them away collaged together –joined in spirit and hip. Timeworn humanity of once what was To broker peace in eagles and doves. Mortal clay in the earth but to grapple and smite As warbirds ironed soar in heaven’s light. All called all forward to divinities’ kept date, Heroes all–all aces and fates. Paris–Used to sing and play at some cards, A common Joe everybody knew from own heart. He could have been called ‘the kid’ by the ‘old man,’ But a common private now taking orders to stand. Receiving letters from his shy sweet one, Read them over and over until they faded to none. Trained like hell with his Commander-in-Arms, –To avoid the dangers of a most bloody harm. Aye, this boy was mortal, true enough said, He could be one of thousands alive but now surely dead. How he sang and cried and ate the gruel of rations, And grumbled as soldiers do at war’s great contagions. Out–out to the battle this young did go, To become a man; the world to show. (An ocean away his mother cried so– To return her boy safe as far as the heavens go). Lay he down in trenched hole, With balls bursting overhead upon the knoll. Listened hardnfast to the “Sarge” bearing the news, —“We’re going over soon—” was all he knew. The whistle blew; up and over they went, Charging the Hun, his life to be spent (“Avoid the gas boys that’ll blister yer arse!!”). Running through wires razored and deadened trees, Fell he into a gouge to find in shelter of need (They say he bayoneted one just as he–, face to face in War’s Dance of trialed humanity). A nameless sonnuvabitch shell then did untimely RiiiiiiiP the field asunder in burrrstzʑ–and he tripped. And on the field of battle’s blood did he die, Faceless in a puddle as blurrs of ghosting men shrieked as they were fleeing by–. Perished he alone in the no man’s land, Surrounded by an army of his brother’s teeming bands . . . And a world away a mother sighed, Listened to the rain and lay down and cried. . . . Today lays the grave somber and white, Guarded decades long in both the dark and the light. Silent sentinels watch o’er and with him do walk, Speak they neither; their duty talks. Lone, stark sentries perform the unsmiling task, –Guarding this one dead–at the nation’s bequest. Cared over day and night in both rain or sun, Present changing of the guard and their duty is done (The changing of the guard ’tis poetry motioned A Nation defining itself–telling of rifles twirl-clicking under the intensest of devotions). This poem–of The Unknown, taken thus, Is rend eternal by Divinity’s Iron Trust. How he, a common soldier, gained the estate Of bearing his countries glory unto his unknown fate. Here rests in honored glory a warrior known but to God, Now rests he in peace from the conflict path he trod. He is our friend, our family, brother, our mother’s son –belongs he to us all, For he has stood in our place–heeding God’s final call.

At Sanford’s 1998 funeral in Duke Chapel, childhood friend Dickson Philips eulogized this Eagle from Troop 20 in the town of Laurinburg. To the assembled crowd, he eloquently said, “[Terry Sanford] took an oath when he was twelve years old and kept it. It started out, ‘On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country,’ and included such things as ‘help other people at all times.’ He believed it: He was the eternal Boy Scout.

Call it Westhusing’s Theorem: In a democracy, the health of the military professional ethic is inversely proportional to the presence of hired auxiliaries on the battlefield. The pursuit of mammon and the values to which military professionals profess devotion are fundamentally incompatible and irreconcilable. Where profit-and-loss statements govern, devotion to duty, honor, and country inevitably takes a hit.

Broadly speaking, there seem to be two methods for developing combat forces-for successfully cajoling or coercing collections of men into engaging in the violent, profane, sacrificial, uncertain, masochistic, and essentially absurd enterprise known as war. The two methods lead to two kinds of warfare, and the distinction can be an important one. Intuitively, it might seem that the easiest (and cheapest) method for recruiting combatants would be to...enlist those who revel in violence and routinely seek it our or who regularly employ it to enrich themselves, or both. We have in civilian life a name for such people-criminals...Violent conflicts in which people like that dominate can be called criminal warfare, a form in which combatants are induced to wreak violence primarily for the fun and material profit they derive from the experience. Criminal armies seem to arise from a couple of processes. Sometimes criminals-robbers, brigands, freebooters, highwaymen, hooligans, thugs, bandits, pirates, gangsters, outlaws-organize or join together in gangs or bands or mafias. When such organizations become big enough, they can look and act a lot like full-blown armies. Or criminal armies can be formed when a ruler needs combatants to prosecute a war and concludes that the employment or impressment of criminals and thugs is the most sensible and direct method for accomplishing this. In this case, criminals and thugs essentially act as mercenaries. It happens, however, that criminals and thugs tend to be undesirable warriors....To begin with, they are often difficult to control. They can be troublemakers: unruly, disobedient, and mutinous, often committing unauthorized crimes while on (or off) duty that can be detrimental or even destructive of military enterprise.... Most importantly, criminals can be disinclined to stand and fight when things become dangerous, and they often simply desert when whim and opportunity coincide. Ordinary crime, after all, preys on the weak-on little old ladies rather than on husky athletes-and criminals often make willing and able executioners of defenseless people. However, if the cops show up they are given to flight. The motto for the criminal, after all, is not a variation of "Semper fi," "All for one and one for all," "Duty, honor, country," "Banzai," or "Remember Pearl Harbor," but "Take the money and run."... These problems with the employment of criminals as combatants have historically led to efforts to recruit ordinary men as combatants-people who, unlike criminals and thugs, commit violence at no other time in their lives.... The result has been the development of disciplined warfare in which men primarily inflict violence not for fun and profit but because their training and indoctrination have instilled in them a need to follow orders; to observe a carefully contrived and tendentious code of honer; to seek glory and reputation in combat; to love, honor, or fear their officers; to believe in a cause; to fear the shame, humiliation, or costs of surrender; or, in particular, to be loyal to, and to deserve the loyalty of, their fellow combatants.

I would beg a second dance with you, Miss Charming,” said the colonel. “You do live up to your name!” “Oh, go on,” said Miss Charming. The way Miss Charming was blushing now--real, honest blushing, not faking--it seemed she’d made her choice, and her choice wasn’t Mr. Nobley. And so Jane was left neatly on the sidelines again. She didn’t mind. Seriously she didn’t. Okay, maybe just a little. After all, tonight was the most fun she’d had since she’d come. “Miss Erstwhile?” Mr. Nobley was beside her suddenly. “It would seem my gentlemanly duty to ask you to dance.” She glanced at his hand. “You’re still holding your book, Mr. Nobley.” Het set it on a table, put one arm behind his back, and held the other out to her. She sighed. “I’m sorry I pestered you back there, but I’d rather not dance for duty.” His hand extended toward her. “But it would be my honor.” She rolled her eyes but took his hand. The first time he touched her waist, she started. There was nothing passive in his touch, nothing wasted. She was aware of his hands the way she was often conscious of his gaze seeking her out. It was, to say the least, surprising. With only three couples, they kept in fairly constant motion. As a general rule, conversation is more intimate in a crowd, but among only six people, every word, and silence, became public. Colonel Andrews: “What a lovely gown, Miss Charming! You wear it well, or should I say, it wears you?” Miss Charming: “Oh, you rascal!” Miss Erstwhile: “Do you know the name of this tune, Mr. Nobley?” Mr. Nobley: “I do not. It is a country tune.” Captain East: … Miss Heartwright: … Colonel Andrews: “I beg your pardon, Miss Charming. I seem to have stuck my foot under yours yet again.” Miss Charming: “Spit spot!” Miss Erstwhile: “It is such a relief, Mr. Nobley, to already know that you find this exercise vulgar and your partner unworthy. It saves us the idle chitchat.” Mr. Nobley: “And yet you chat away.” Aunt Saffronia: “Lovely dance! Shall I play another?” Miss Erstwhile: “What say you, Mr. Nobley? Ready to be done with me?” “I think…” He bowed. “I think I will retire early. I bid you a good evening.” “And so ends the fun,” Colonel Andrews said. “Wait, I don’t feel right…all that dancing…” Miss Charming put a hand to her forehead and fainted dead into his arms. He was forced to carry her to her chamber. Clever girl, thought Jane, saluting her with two fingers. Touché, Miss Charming.

Old men keep sending young men off to kill or be killed in foreign lands while they spew their platitudes about duty and honor and freedom and loyalty, and all the while the gap between the rich and the poor in our own country continues to widen and jobs get shipped overseas and education continues to falter and it seems to me that all of this killing and being killed comes down to one thing. Greed.

The 3 Lessons of War [10w] Country teaches honor, brotherhood teaches duty, and death teaches freedom.

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

Duty, Honor, Country.

World War I and World War II, we needed to be there, I suppose. But all these little wars in between: Korea, Vietnam, twice in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, even Grenada. Were those places we really needed to be? Old men keep sending young men off to kill or be killed in foreign lands while they spew their platitudes about duty and honor and freedom and loyalty, and all the while the gap between the rich and the poor in our own country continues to widen and jobs get shipped overseas and education continues to falter and it seems to me that all of this killing and being killed comes down to one thing. Greed. It’s all about greed. It’s ultimately meaningless for everyone except the ones who make money off the bloodshed.” She turned her head and looked at me, a slight smile forming at the corners of her mouth. “Did you lubricate your jaw before you came in here?” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you say that many words without stopping in my entire life.

get rid of religion, if there is nothing above yourself that is worth fighting for … then duty, honor, country mean duty to your own concern, honored by an op-ed page in the New York Times, and what country? You’re now an intellectual! An internationalist! All head, no heart, and only the groin for company.

his lifetime NRA membership in a blistering letter. It’s worth reading the whole text to get a sense of the totality of Bush’s fury: I was outraged when, even in the wake of the Oklahoma City tragedy, Mr. Wayne LaPierre, executive vice president of N.R.A., defended his attack on federal agents as “jack-booted thugs.” To attack Secret Service agents or A.T.F. people or any government law enforcement people as “wearing Nazi bucket helmets and black storm trooper uniforms” wanting to “attack law abiding citizens” is a vicious slander on good people. Al Whicher, who served on my [U.S. Secret Service] detail when I was Vice President and President, was killed in Oklahoma City. He was no Nazi. He was a kind man, a loving parent, a man dedicated to serving his country—and serve it well he did. In 1993, I attended the wake for A.T.F. agent Steve Willis, another dedicated officer who did his duty. I can assure you that this honorable man, killed by weird cultists, was no Nazi. John Magaw, who used to head the U.S.S.S. and now heads A.T.F., is one of the most principled, decent men I have ever known. He would be the last to condone the kind of illegal behavior your ugly letter charges. The same is true for the F.B.I.’s able Director Louis Freeh. I appointed Mr. Freeh to the Federal Bench. His integrity and honor are beyond question. Both John Magaw and Judge Freeh were in office when I was President. They both now serve in the current administration. They both have badges. Neither of them would ever give the government’s “go ahead to harass, intimidate, even murder law abiding citizens.” (Your words) I am a gun owner and an avid hunter. Over the years I have agreed with most of N.R.A.’s objectives, particularly your educational and training efforts, and your fundamental stance in favor of owning guns. However, your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us. You have not repudiated Mr. LaPierre’s unwarranted attack. Therefore, I resign as a Life Member of N.R.A., said resignation to be effective upon your receipt of this letter. Please remove my name from your membership list. Sincerely, [signed] George Bush

York City, the river narrows and makes a sharp bend to the west. The craggy highland on the left bank is called West Point and was first fortified to keep the American colonies united during the Revolutionary War.

To keep the officer corps from becoming filled with sycophants who would support a particular party or person over the country, in 1802 he ordered the establishment of an Academy to train a professional cadre of officers that would draw its cadets from across the country and across the strata of society.

Cadets would swear an oath—the very first law the First Congress enacted, an indication of its importance to the young country—to defend the Constitution, not any party or individual.

Lee had married the great-step-daughter of General Washington and had thus become part of this noble place.

Personal honor is imposed from within. The honor code is imposed from without.

Civic duty? Perhaps it would be a little naive to try to coerce me into voting. I assure you my basic standards of healthy living are very different from yours, which is the reason I do not vote. You should note that, as nonsensical a scenario, if forced to choose I would most definitely rather live in a failing, Christ-honoring, God-fearing nation than a flourishing one that mocks said Creator. Beware of my personal ambitions.

Whose idea was it,” Val groused as Nick knotted his cravat for him, “to leave this benighted place the day after the local version of a party?” “Some duke’s son devised the notion,” Nick replied. “An otherwise fairly steady fellow, but one must make allowances. He’s dealing with a lot at present. Stickpin?” Val produced the requisite finishing accessory, and Nick frowned in concentration as he shoved gold through linen and lace. He patted the knot approvingly. “You’ll do.” When Val merely grimaced, Nick offered him a crooked smile. “Dare and I will get you drunk, and there will be all manner of eager little heifers panting to take a spin with the duke’s son. Shoulders back, chin up, duty and honor call, and all that. Darius is also waiting for us in the library, guarding the decanter.” “Suppose we must relieve him.” Val sighed, and met Nick’s eyes. “Heifers don’t pant.” Nick’s smile was mischievous. “Maybe not after a duke’s youngest son. After a fine new earl like yours truly, turned out in his country finest and sadly lacking his dear countess at his side, they will be panting, or my name isn’t Wee Nick.” They

Duty, honor, country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying point to build courage when courage seems to fail, to regain faith where there seems to be little cause for faith, to create hope when hope becomes forlorn.

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country, to obey the Scout Law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight, except in instances where my morals are corrupted by unusually attractive medical bots willing me toward the Florence Nightingale effect, after which time I shall be rendered utterly inept.

Perhaps the magnetic pull of West Point ultimately wasn’t rational but emotional. The history-laden rhythm of a military parade reverberated like the incense-scented rituals of Catholic mass. Walking around West Point, I was swept up in its call to “Duty, Honor, Country.” Self-sacrifice, integrity, and leadership echoed between the larger-than-life statues of Eisenhower and MacArthur. Cadets discussed courage and duty without a note of irony. They spoke without slouching, oozing confidence, projecting their chins, eyes fixed straight ahead. Around them my own spine stiffened with resolve. Whatever they had, I wanted. West Point offered more than an academic education. It offered an almost religious quest for perfection. I wanted to graduate a better man.

You utter fool,” Darius snarled in a tone that sounded menacing even to his own ears. “You are a soldier of the Niotan Army. Your first duty, always, is the protection of every man, woman, child and beast of this country. The fact that you would put your own pride above a young woman’s life is beyond appalling.

I believe that we shocked each other by how swiftly we went from being the people who knew each other best in the world to being a pair of the most mutually incomprehensible strangers who ever lived. But it was vital to my survival to have a one bedroom of my own i saw the aprtment almost as a sanatorium a hospice clinci for my own recovery I painted the walls in the warmest colors i could find and bought myself flowers every week as if i were visiting myself in the hospital is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty why are you studying Italian so that just in case Italy ever invades Ethiopia again and is actually successful this time? ciao comes from if you must know it's an abbreviation of a phrase used by medieval venetians as an intimate salutation Sono il Suo Schiavo meaning i am your slave. om Naamah Shivaya meaning I honor the divinity that resides whin me. I wanted to experience both , I wanted worldly enjoyment and divine transcendence the dual glories of a human life I wanted what the Greeks called kalos kai agathos the singular balance of the good and he beautiful I'd been missing both during these last hard years because both pleasure and devotion require a stress free space in which to flourish and I'd been living in a giant trash compactor of nonstop anxiety , As for how to balance the urge for pleasure against the longing for devotion. four feet on the ground a head full of foliage looking at the world through the heart. it was more than I wanted to toughly explore one aspect of myself set against the backdrop of each country in a place that has traditionally done that one thing very well. same guatemalan musicians are always playing id rather be a sparrow than a snail on their bamboo windpipes oh how i want italian to open itself up to me i havent felt so starved for comprehension since then dal centro della mia vita venne una grande fontanana dolce sitl nuovo Dante wrote his divine comedy in terza rima triple rhyme a chain of rhymes with each rhyme repeating here times every five lines. lamor che move il sole e laltre stelle we are the masters of bel far niente larte darrangiarsi The reply in italy to you deserve a break today would probably be yeah no duh that's why I'm planning on taking a break at noon to go over to your house and sleep with your wife, I walked home to my apartment and soft-boiled a pair of fresh brown eggs for my lunch i peeled the eggs and arranged them on a plate beside the seven stalks of the asparagus (which were so slim and snappy they didn't need to be cooked at all,)I put some olives on the plate too and the four knobs of goat cheese I'd picked up yesterday from the fromagerie down the street tend two slices of pink oily salmon for dessert a lovely peach which the woman at the market had given to me for free and which was still warm form the roman sunlight for the longest time I couldn't even touch this food because it was such a masterpiece of lunch a true expression of the art of making something out of nothing finally when i had fully absorbed the prettiness of my meal i went and sat in apatch of sunbeam on my clean wooden floor and ate every bit of it with my fingers while reading my daily newspaper article in Italian happiness inhabited my every molecule. I am inspired by the regal self assurance of this town so grounded and rounded so amused and monumental knowing that she is held securely in the palm of history i would like to be like rome when i am an old lady. I linger over my food and wine for many hours because nobody in

there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal—there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. [justice of the peace] court in the land, or this honorable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levelers, and in our courts all men are created equal. I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system—that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up. I am confident that you gentlemen will review without passion the evidence you have heard, come to a decision, and restore this defendant to his family. In the name of God, do your duty.

You have reached the blind alley of the treason you committed when you agreed that you had no right to exist. Once, you believed it was ‘only a compromise’: you conceded it was evil to live for yourself, but moral to live for the sake of your children. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your children, but moral to live for your community. Then you conceded that it was selfish to live for your community, but moral to live for your country. Now, you are letting this greatest of countries be devoured by any scum from any corner of the earth, while you concede that it is selfish to live for your country and that your moral duty is to live for the globe. A man who has no right to life, has no right to values and will not keep them. “At the end of your road of successive betrayals, stripped of weapons, of certainty, of honor, you commit your final act of treason and sign your petition of intellectual bankruptcy: while the muscle-mystics of the People’s States proclaim that they’re the champions of reason and science, you agree and hasten to proclaim that faith is your cardinal principle, that reason is on the side of your destroyers, but yours is the side of faith. To the struggling remnants of rational honesty in the twisted, bewildered minds of your children, you declare that you can offer no rational argument to support the ideas that created this country, that there is no rational justification for freedom, for property, for justice, for rights, that they rest on a mystical insight and can be accepted only on faith, that in reason and logic the enemy is right, but faith is superior to reason. You declare to your children that it is rational to loot, to torture, to enslave, to expropriate, to murder, but that they must resist the temptations of logic and stick to the discipline of remaining irrational—that skyscrapers, factories, radios, airplanes were the products of faith and mystic intuition, while famines, concentration camps, and firing squads are the products of a reasonable manner of existence—that the industrial revolution was the revolt of the men of faith against that era of reason and logic which is known as the Middle Ages.

When it comes to you, to how much I love you, Josh, I have no morals. No honor. I would lie, cheat, murder, steal, dishonor everything I hold dear if it meant spending my life with you. No measure of duty, or God, or country could ever make up for losing you.

The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished tone and tint; they have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory, always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes Duty—Honor—Country. Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know that when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps. I bid you farewell.

World War I and World War II, we needed to be there, I suppose. But all these little wars in between: Korea, Vietnam, twice in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, even Grenada. Were those places we really needed to be? Old men keep sending young men off to kill or be killed in foreign lands while they spew their platitudes about duty and honor and freedom and loyalty, and all the while the gap between the rich and the poor in our own country continues to widen and jobs get shipped overseas and education continues to falter and it seems to me that all of this killing and being killed comes down to one thing. Greed. It’s all about greed. It’s ultimately meaningless for everyone except the ones who make money off the bloodshed.

Here, then, is the utopian life-span. Twenty-one years of nurture and education, that is, conditioning: three years of forced labor at the more disagreeable tasks and services: twenty years at a favored profession or vocation, as and where indicated by the national government; and finally, compulsory retirement after forty-five, with the remaining years of life devoted to leisure undiluted by any other duty than public work. Since there are no gradations of income in this society, the chief rewards for outstanding service are honors, status, authority, power. By taking the constitution of the United States as a model, the President of the Country became commander-in-chief of the industrial army; and since this army is in constant being, the political system is plainly that of a dictatorship: in effect, this mode of economic organization committed the country to a perpetual Cold War.

I still feel that there is a disconnect…honor, duty, and country—it’s just passé. The values are different now, the lifestyles, the accepted vulgarity, the manners, the view of what’s patriotic and what’s not, the concept of service. All these are in the hands of a new generation now, and I feel I have the comfort of knowing that I have upheld these values and I live and stand by them. I have the discomfort of knowing that they might be a little out of date.

World War I and World War II, we needed to be there, I suppose. But all these little wars in between: Korea, Vietnam, twice in Iraq, Somalia, Bosnia, Afghanistan, even Grenada. Were those places we really needed to be? Old men keep sending young men off to kill or be killed in foreign lands while they spew their platitudes about duty and honor and freedom and loyalty, and all the while the gap between the rich and the poor in our own country continues to widen and jobs get shipped overseas and education continues to falter and it seems to me that all of this killing and being killed comes down to one thing. Greed.

Old men keep sending young men off to kill or be killed in foreign lands while they spew their platitudes about duty and honor and freedom and loyalty, and all the while the gap between the rich and the poor in our own country continues to widen and jobs get shipped overseas and education continues to falter and it seems to me that all of this killing and being killed comes down to one thing. Greed. It’s all about greed. It’s ultimately meaningless for everyone except the ones who make money off the bloodshed.