25 Best Quotes from American Soldiers.....

On this strange election Tuesday, juxtapositioned between yesterday's faux Memorial Day (that is to say - a Congressionally Declared Monday Bank Holiday for the last Monday each May) and the real Memorial Day tomorrow, the 30th Day of May every year... it seems like a great day to share John Hawkins' compilation of the greatest soldier quotes in American history...... I'll wager your favorite is in this list somewhere.

The 25 Best Quotes From American Soldiers

By John Hawkins 5/29/2012

25) "Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!" -- William Prescott at the Battle Of Bunker Hill

24) "To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace." -- George Washington

23) "When this war is over, the Japanese language will be spoken only in hell!" -- Admiral Bill Halsey on December 7, 1941

22) "Nuts." -- The response of General Anthony MacAuliffe, when asked to surrender during the Battle of the Bulge, 1944

21) "I tremble for my country when I hear of confidence expressed in me. I know too well my weakness, that our only hope is in God." -- Robert E. Lee

20) "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." -- Gen William T. Sherman

19) "Of the Marines on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue." -- Chester W. Nimitz

18) "They've got us surrounded again, the poor b@stards." -- Creighton W. Abrams, Battle of the Bulge

17) "Don't fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here" -- Captain John Parker, 1775

16) "We have gone forth from our shores repeatedly over the last hundred years and we’ve done this as recently as the last year in Afghanistan and put wonderful young men and women at risk, many of whom have lost their lives, and we have asked for nothing except enough ground to bury them in, and otherwise we have returned home to seek our own lives in peace." -- Colin Powell

15) "We have met the enemy and they are ours!" -- Oliver Hazard Perry

14) "It is the soldier, not the reporter, who has given us freedom of the press. It is the soldier, not the poet, who has given us freedom of speech. It is the soldier, not the campus organizer, who has given us the freedom to demonstrate. It is the soldier, who salutes the flag, who serves beneath the flag, and whose coffin is draped by the flag, who allows the protester to burn the flag." -- Father Dennis Edward O'Brien, USMC

13) "I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way." -- John Paul Jones

12) "Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!" -- Admiral David Glasgow Farragut

11) "I have only two men out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." -- Clifton B. Cates, Belleau Wood, July 1918

10) "Yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and tenpence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow!" -- John Stark at the Battle of Bennington in 1777

9) "Godd@m it, you'll never get the Purple Heart hiding in a foxhole! Follow me!" -- Henry P. Crowe

8) "Victory was never in doubt. Its cost was...What was in doubt, in all our minds, was whether there would be any of us left to dedicate our cemetery at the end, or whether the last Marine would die knocking out the last Japanese gun and gunner." -- Major General Graves B. Erskin in reference to the Battle Of Iwo Jima

7) "Come on, you sons of b!tches! Do you want to live forever?" -- Dan Daly, WWI

6) "Don't you forget that you're First Marines! Not all the communists in Hell can overrun you!" -- Lieutenant General Lewis "Chesty" Puller when surrounded by eight enemy divisions

5) "Get there first with the most." -- Nathan Bedford Forrest

4) "It is fatal to enter a war without the will to win it." -- Douglas MacArthur

3) "I am besieged by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained a continued bombardment for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man. The enemy have demanded a surrender... otherwise the garrison is to be put to the sword if the place is taken. I have answered the summons with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat." -- William B. Travis, Alamo

2) “If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.” -- Curtis LeMay

1) "No b@stard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb b@stard die for his country." -- George Patton

More from John Hawkins? check out his blog at Right Wing News.