Famous quotes containing the words russian, army and/or officer:
“We are all dead men on leave.”
—Eugene Leviné, Russian Jew, friend of Rosa Luxemburg’s lover, Jogiches. quoted in Men in Dark Times, “Rosa Luxemburg: 1871-1919,” sct. 3, Hannah Arendt (1968)
“This fantastic state of mind, of a humanity that has outrun its ideas, is matched by a political scene in the grotesque style, with Salvation Army methods, hallelujahs and bell-ringing and dervishlike repetition of monotonous catchwords, until everybody foams at the mouth. Fanaticism turns into a means of salvation, enthusiasm into epileptic ecstacy, politics becomes an opiate for the masses, a proletarian eschatology; and reason veils her face.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)
“When Prince William [later King William IV] was at Cork in 1787, an old officer ... dined with him, and happened to say he had been forty years in the service. The Prince with a sneer asked what he had learnt in those forty years. The old gentleman justly offended, said, “Sir, I have learnt, when I am no longer fit to fight, to make as good a retreat as I can” —and walked out of the room.”
—Horace Walpole (1717–1797)