These infantry quotes will inspire you. Infantry, soldiers trained, armed, and equipped to fight on foot or soldiers marching or fighting on foot; foot soldiers collectively.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging infantry quotes, infantry sayings, and infantry proverbs.
Best Infantry Quotes
- “I love the infantry because they are the underdogs. They are the mud-rain-frost-and-wind boys. They have no comforts, and they even learn to live without the necessities. And in the end, they are the guys that wars can’t be won without.” ~ Ernie Pyle
- “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” ~ Mark Twain
- “I’m convinced that the infantry is the group in the army which gives more and gets less than anybody else.” ~ Bill Mauldin
-
“By the last returns to the Department of War, the militia force of the several States may be estimated at 800,000 men – infantry, artillery, and cavalry.” ~ James Monroe
- “Infantry must move forward to close with the enemy. It must shoot in order to move…. To halt under fire is folly. To halt under fire and not fire back is suicide. Officers must set the example” ~ George S. Patton
- “The surest way to become a pacifist is to join the infantry.” ~ Bill Mauldin
- “The tank was originally invented to clear a way for the infantry in the teeth of machine-gun fire. Now it is the infantry who will have to clear a way for the tanks.” ~ Winston Churchill
-
“I am in the infantry for 17 weeks and after that I don’t know where I am going.” ~ Eddie Slovik
- “I think of myself as Special Forces, clearing the path for the infantry.” ~ Geraldo Rivera
- “Artillery conquers and infantry occupies.” ~ J. F. C. Fuller
- “Once the mass of the defending infantry become possessed of low moral, the battle is as good as lost.” ~ Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig
-
“What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight – it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower
- “An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “When everyone’s focused on the conventional parts of war – doing infantry imbeds or chasing IEDs – you look at the thing that seems not that interesting to people, like the circumstances of logistics workers cooking the troops’ food or cleaning their latrines.” ~ Sarah Stillman
- “Some say an army of horsemen or infantry,
A fleet of ships is the fairest thing
On the face of the black earth, but I say
It’s what one loves.” ~ Sappho -
“The army consists of the first infantry division and eight million replacements.” ~ Sebastian Junger
- “The most beautiful thing in the world is, of course, the world itself.” ~ Wallace Stevens
- “Good infantry is, without doubt, the sinews of an army; but if it has to fight a long time against very superior artillery, it will become demoralized and will be destroyed.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
- “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
-
“Of course, I also attribute some of my hearing loss to being in the infantry in World War II. It’s probably a combination of heredity and noise exposure.” ~ George Kennedy
- “Infantry, Artillery, Aviation – all that we have – are yours to dispose of as you will. . . . I have come to say to you that the American people would be proud to be engaged in the greatest battle in history.” ~ John J. Pershing
- “They couldn’t hit an elephant at this dist…” ~ John Sedgwick
- “There was something terrible, but also something sad and melancholy in this long cry uttered by the Russian infantry as they staged an attack. As it crossed the cold water, it lost its fervor. Instead of valor or gallantry, you could hear the sadness of a soul parting with everything that it loved, calling on its nearest and dearest to wake up, to lift their head from their pillows and hear for the last time the voice of a father, a husband, a son or a brother…” ~ Vasily Grossman
-
“All front-line combat jobs in the infantry, special operations units, and elsewhere are now open to women.” ~ Renee Montagne
- “We live in a selectively infantilized culture where twentysomethings are children if they’re serving in the Third Infantry Division in Ramadi but grown-ups making rational choices if they drop to the broadloom in President Clinton’s Oval Office.” ~ Mark Steyn
- “As a result of the cold, the machine-guns were no longer able to fire…the result of all this was a panic…The battle worthiness of our infantry is at an end” ~ Heinz Guderian
- “My garden is the most beautiful thing in the world.” ~ Josephine de Beauharnais
-
“I’ve been in love (truly) with five women, the Spanish Republic and the 4th Infantry Division.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
- “This war proceeds along its terrible path by the slaughter of infantry…I say to myself every day. What is going on while we sit here, while we go away to dinner or home to bed? Nearly, 1000 – Englishmen, Britishers, and the other is America…Everything else is swept away.” ~ Winston Churchill
- “The Puerto Ricans forming the ranks of the gallant 65th Infantry on the battlefields of Korea … are writing a brilliant record of achievement in battle and I am proud indeed to have them in this command. I wish that we might have many more like them.” ~ Douglas MacArthur
- “Nathan Bedford Forrest … used his horsemen as a modern general would use motorized infantry. He liked horses because he liked fast movement, and his mounted men could get from here to there much faster than any infantry could; but when they reached the field they usually tied their horses to trees and fought on foot, and they were as good as the very best infantry. Not for nothing did Forrest say the essence of strategy was to git thar fust with the most men.” ~ Bruce Catton
-
“But they (the infantry) had no use for boys of twelve and thirteen, and before I had a chance in another war, the desire to kill people to whom I had not been introduced had passed away.” ~ Mark Twain
- “There are now 17,000 local American police forces that are armed with rocket launchers, bazookas, heavy machine guns, all kinds of chemical sprays, in fact some of them have tanks. You now have local police departments that are equipped beyond the standard of American heavy infantry.” ~ Paul Craig Roberts
- “Synchronize watches at oh six hundred’ says the infantry captain, and each of his huddled lieutenants finds respite from fear in the act of bringing two tiny pointers into jeweled alignment while tons of heavy artillery go fluttering overhead: the prosaic, civilian-looking dial of the watch has restored, however briefly, an illusion of personal control. Good, it counsels, looking tidily up from the hairs and veins of each terribly vulnerable wrist; fine: so far, everything’s happening right on time.” ~ Richard Yates
- “Do not touch anything unnecessarily. Beware of pretty girls in dance halls and parks who may be spies, as well as bicycles, revolvers, uniforms, arms, dead horses, and men lying on roads – they are not there accidentally. Soviet infantry manual, issued in the 1930s Only the winners decide what were war crimes.” ~ Garry Wills
-
“If we come to a minefield, our infantry attacks exactly as it were not there.” ~ Georgy Zhukov
- “Yes…how else could Demandred explain the skill of the enemy general? Only a man with the experience of an ancient was so masterly at the dance of battlefields. At their core, many battle tactics were simple. Avoid being flanked, meet heavy force with pikes, infantry with a well-trained line, channelers with other channelers. And yet, the finesse of it…the little details…these took centuries to master. No man from this Age had lived long enough to learn the details with such care.” ~ Robert Jordan
- “In the US. Infantry Manual published during World War II, the soldier was told what to do if a live grenade fell into the trench where he and others were sitting: to wrap himself around the grenade so as to at least save the others. (If no one “volunteered,” all would be killed, and there were only a few seconds to decide who would be the hero.)” ~ Anatol Rapoport
- “Being shelled is the main work of an infantry soldier, which no one talks about. Everyone has his own way of going about it. In general, it means lying face down and contracting your body into as small a space as possible.” ~ Louis Simpson
-
“As Ernest Hemingway wrote, ‘Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead…'” ~ Christopher Flynn
- “There’s a fragment that goes, “Some say the most beautiful thing in the world is a great cavalry riding down over the hill. Others say it’s a vast infantry on the march. But I say the most beautiful thing is the beloved.” How political can you get?” ~ Sam Hamill , Infantry quotes cavalry
- “At the outbreak of the war it was found very difficult to raise infantry in Texas, as no Texan walks a yard if he can help it. Many mounted regiments were therefore organized, and afterwards dismounted.” ~ Arthur Fremantle
- “I was trained in Army Intelligence but spent most of my army career in the infantry. But like many people of my generation, I was very much caught up in the Cold War, and books and movies about espionage.” ~ Nelson DeMille
-
“Marine and Army women have deployed with infantry units in Iraq and Afghanistan in what’s called female engagement teams, going into villages, talking with women, and sometimes coming under fire.” ~ Renee Montagne
- “There are no women in these ground combat jobs. Women, of course, have been flying combat missions in fighter jets, attack helicopters, for more than 20 years, but beginning this week, those ground combat jobs in infantry, artillery and armor will be open to women. Officials don’t expect a rush of women interested.” ~ Renee Montagne
- “The Marines already have started putting women through infantry training. They’ve done it for the past couple of years. And it’s tough. Roughly one-third of women have made it through that infantry training. So you’re not going to see a lot of women actually make it through this.” ~ Renee Montagne , Infantry quotes marine
- “Flattery is the infantry of negotiation.” ~ Oliver Lyttelton, 1st Viscount Chandos
-
“My father – I once asked him what was his greatest achievement. He said his greatest achievement was that he fought in five wars in the infantry, always on the front line, and never hurt anybody.” ~ Etgar Keret
- “A perfect writer would make words sing, dance, kiss, do the male and female act, bear children, weep, bleed, rage, stab, steal, fire cannon, steer ships, sack cities, charge with cavalry or infantry, or do anything that man or woman or the natural powers can do.” ~ Walt Whitman
- “I was out in the combat engineers. We would throw up bridges in advance of the infantry but mainly we would just throw up.” ~ Mel Brooks
- “Imperialism has now reached a degree of almost scientific perfection. It uses White workers to conquer the non-white workers of The Colonies. Then, it hurls the non-white workers of one colony against those of another non-white colony. Finally, it relies on the Colored workers of the colonies to rule the White workers. Recently, White French soldiers near mutiny in the occupied Ruhr of Germany were surrounded by French African soldiers, and colored native light-infantry were sent against White German strikers.” ~ Ho Chi Minh
-
“Let’s presume that a country or army has this weapon; this kind of armaments cannot be used by infantry for example or by anyone. This kind of armament should be used by specialized units, so it cannot be in the hand of anyone.” ~ Bashar al-Assad
- “You’ve got soldiers in the 3rd Infantry Division who are going every day on operations and they don’t all have what is considered to be the gold standard in armor” ~ Duncan Hunter
- “Charges of cavalry are equally useful at the beginning, the middle, and the end of a battle. They should be made always, if possible, on the flanks of the infantry, especially when the latter is engaged in front.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
- “The Dead and Those About to Die is a gripping, first-hand account of the desperate battle for Omaha Beach on D-Day by the legendary 1st Infantry Division, the Big Red One. On the 70th anniversary of that momentous event, John C. McManus’s tale of courage under fire is a vivid reminder that freedom isn’t free and that when the chips are down stalwart American soldiers will always answer the call of duty.” ~ Carlo D’Este
-
“Guarded within the old red wall’s embrace, Marshalled like soldiers in gay company, The tulips stand arrayed. Here infantry Wheels out into the sunlight.” ~ Amy Lowell
- “Artillery is more essential to cavalry than to infantry, because cavalry has no fire for its defense, but depends on the saber.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
- “We were lavish of blood in those days, and it was thought to be a grand thing to charge a battery or an earth-work lined with infantry.” ~ Daniel Harvey Hill
- “The most beautiful thing in the world is a ballpark filled with people.” ~ Bill Veeck
-
“The harder the fighting and the longer the war, the more the infantry, and in fact all the arms, lean on the gunners.” ~ Bernard Law Montgomery
- “I think you can maintain two tracks. I think you have to. That’s what this kind of filmmaking is about. If you’re not aware of the limitations of what you’re up against… it’s like a general: you have to know your artillery and you have to know your infantry. You have to know what you have. You have to marshal your forces and use them well. It comes down to the personal and the intimate, but at the same time you have to have the big picture.” ~ Oliver Stone
- “The most beautiful thing in the world is freedom of speech.” ~ Diogenes
