Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks.
Albert PikeRead
War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.
Interpretation
War involves significant hardships and struggles that can ultimately lead to a win.
The quote by Albert Pike reflects the paradoxical nature of war, suggesting that victory is not achieved easily. Instead, it is the result of enduring and overcoming a multitude of disasters and challenges that arise during conflict. War is thus portrayed as a tumultuous process where the final achievement of victory is steeped in loss and adversity.
In practice
This quote could be used in a military briefing to highlight the resilience required in conflict.
Less glory is more liberty. When the drum is silent, reason sometimes speaks.
He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river lashed into angry waves by the winds. Often they roar over his head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield to the stress of the current... Only here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on toward ultimate success.
Let us drink together, fellows, as we did in days of yore. And still enjoy the golden hours that Fortune has in store; The absent friends remembered be, in all that’s sung or said, And Love immortal consecrate the memory of the dead.
Two forms of government are favorable to the prevalence of falsehood and deceit. Under a Despotism, men are false, treacherous, and deceitful through fear, like slaves dreading the lash. Under a Democracy they are so as a means of attaining popularity and office, and because of the greed for wealth.
What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.
Philosophy is a kind of journey, ever learning yet never arriving at the ideal perfection of truth.
This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.
A war doesn’t merely kill off a few thousand or a few hundred thousand young men. It kills off something in a people that can never be brought back. And if a people goes through enough wars, pretty soon all that’s left is the brute, the creature that we—you and I and others like us—have brought up from the slime.
He once told Allie and I that if he'd had to shoot anybody, he wouldn't've known which direction to shoot in. He said the Army was practically as full of bastards as the Nazis were.
The wars don't end when you sign peace treaties or when the years go by. They will echo on until I'm gone and all the widows and orphans are gone.
Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.
Air Power is, above all, a psychological weapon - and only short-sighted soldiers, too battle-minded, underrate the importance of psychological factors in war.
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