“Use makes a better soldier than the most urgent considerations of duty,--familiarity with danger enabling him to estimate the danger. He sees how much is the risk, and is not afflicted with imagination; knows practically Marshal Saxe's rule, that every soldier killed costs the enemy his weight in lead.” KnowsWarUseImaginationEnemyRiskDangerDutyCostWeightSoldierConsiderationUrgentFamiliarityEnabling Book:The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude Source: The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude
“Individual versus group selection results in a mix of altruism and selfishness, of virtue and sin, among the members of a society. If one colony member devotes its life to service over marriage, the individual is of benefit to the society, even though it does not have personal offspring. A soldier going into battle will benefit his country, but he runs a higher risk of death than one who does not. An altruist benefits the group, but a layabout or coward who saves his own energy and reduces his bodily risk passes the resulting social cost to others.” IfsDoeCountryRunningIndividualEnergySocialSinResultsVirtueRiskGroupsHigherBattleCostMembersBenefitsSoldierSelfishnessCowardAltruismVersusSelectionOffspringColony Author:E. O. Wilson
“For instance, one of the costs of the war is that soldiers today get very seriously injured but stay alive, and we can keep them alive but at an enormous price.” WarTodayAliveCostSoldierEnormousInstanceInjuredStaying Alive Author:Joseph Stiglitz
“Similarly, payments for a dead soldier amount to only $500,000, which is far less than standard estimates of the lifetime economic cost of a death. This statistical value of a life in the US amounts to circa $6.5 million.” ValuesMillionsEconomicAmountCostStandardsLifetimeSoldierPaymentDead Soldiers Author:Joseph Stiglitz
“It is soldiers who pay most of the human cost. In war it is extraordinary how it all comes down to the character of one man.” MenHumansWarCharacterPayCostExtraordinarySoldierOne Man Author:Creighton W. Abrams, Jr.
“It is time to acknowledge the extraordinary sacrifice of all of our veterans. While many Massachusetts soldiers served our nation in a period technically dubbed 'peacetime,' they restored American pride in the wake of Vietnam and helped bring a successful end to the Cold War. The service of these men and women was not without cost. There are countless stories of soldiers who served with great distinction only to be denied veteran status after returning home. Every man and woman who volunteered to serve this country should be treated with the same degree of respect, gratitude and dignity.” MenShouldWarEndsCountryStoriesHomeNationsSuccessfulSacrificePrideColdPeriodsGratitudeCostDegreesMen And WomenDignityExtraordinarySoldierEvery ManTreatedAcknowledgeDistinctionVietnamDeniedCold WarVeteranMassachusettsOur VeteransReturning Home Author:Mitt Romney
“Every time we killed a thousand Bugs at a cost of one M.I. it was a net victory for the Bugs. We were learning, expensively, just how efficient a total communism can be when used by a people actually adapted to it by evolution; the Bug commisars didn't care any more about expending soldiers than we cared about expending ammo. Perhaps we could have figured this out about the Bugs by noting the grief the Chinese Hegemony gave the Russo-Anglo-American Alliance; however the trouble with 'lessons from history' is that we usually read them best after falling flat on our chins.” PeopleCareUsedFallGriefTroubleEvolutionVictoryLessonsCostThousandSoldierCommunismChineseFlatsEfficientBugsAlliancesChinsAdaptedHegemonyAmmo Author:Robert A. Heinlein
“Society can give its young men almost any job and they'll figure how to do it. They'll suffer for it and die for it and watch their friends die for it, but in the end, it will get done. That only means that society should be careful about what it asks for. ... Soldiers themselves are reluctant to evaluate the costs of war, but someone must. That evaluation, ongoing and unadulterated by politics, may be the one thing a country absolutely owes the soldiers who defend its borders.” MenGivingShouldMayMeanWarEndsCountryDoneJobsYoungSufferingDiesAsksWatchesOne ThingFiguresCostSoldierCarefulBordersYoung ManBe CarefulOngoingEvaluateReluctantEvaluationCost Of War Author:Sebastian Junger