Top 52 Bayonets Quotes & Sayings

A Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets has no charm for me. If the Union is dissolved and government disrupted, I shall return to my native state and share the miseries of my people, and save in defense will draw my sword on none.

You can do everything with bayonets, but you are not able to sit on them

You can build a throne with bayonets, but it's difficult to sit on it.

Brethren, do something; do something, do something! While societies and unions make constitutions, let us win souls. I pray you, be men of action all of you. Get to work and quit yourselves like men. Old Suvarov's idea of war is mine: `Forward and strike! No theory! Attack! Form a column! Charge bayonets! Plunge into the center of the enemy! Our one aim is to win souls; and this we are not to talk about, but do in the power of God!'

They opposed brute force to reason and philosophy, and battalions of foreign mercenaries to ideas. As if ideas were to be impaled on bayonets!

A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

Not peace at any price! Chains are worse than bayonets.

You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long.

History has witnessed the failure of many endeavors to impose peace by war, cooperation by coercion, unanimity by slaughtering dissidents.... A lasting order cannot be established by bayonets.

Great revolutions are the work rather of principles than of bayonets, and are achieved first in the moral, and afterwards in the material sphere.

You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them

You mention the Navy, for example, and the fact that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.

The miners lost because they had only the constitution. The other side had bayonets. In the end, bayonets always win.

Yet optimism is in order, because day by day democracy is proving itself to be a not-at-all-fragile flower. From Stettin on the Baltic to Varna on the Black Sea, the regimes planted by totalitarianism have had more than 30 years to establish their legitimacy. But none - not one regime - has yet been able to risk free elections. Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.

The other American divisions on our flanks managed to pull out: We were obliged to stay and fight. Bayonets aren't much good against tanks.

We hope never to live in a Republic where one section is pinned to the other section by bayonets.

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he can't sit on it.

Seventeen's not so young. A hundred years ago people got married when they were practically our age." "Yeah, that was before electricity and the Internet. A hundred years ago eighteen-year-old guys were out there fighting wars with bayonets and holding a man's life in their hands! They lived a lot of life by the time they were our age. What do kids our age know about love and life?

Light has spread, and even bayonets think.

Few men are killed by the bayonet, many are scared by it. Bayonets should be fixed when the fire fight starts

Practically all we know is that thousands of native Haitians have been killed by American Marines, and that many of our own gallant men have sacrificed their lives at the behest of an Executive department in order to establish laws drafted by the Assistant Secretary of the Navy. ... I will not empower an Assistant Secretary of the Navy to draft a constitution for helpless neighbors in the West Indies and jam it down their throats at the point of bayonets borne by U.S. Marines.

Men must have somewhat altered the course of nature; for they were not born wolves, yet they have become wolves. God did not give them twenty-four-pounders or bayonets, yet they have made themselves bayonets and guns to destroy each other. In the same category I place not only bankruptcies, but the law which carries off the bankrupts’ effects, so as to defraud their creditors.

When I went through Marine boot camp in Paris Island, South Carolina, we actually did have bayonets that we trained with.

We are free today substantially, but the day will come when our Republic will be an impossibility. It will be an impossibility because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few. A Republic cannot stand upon bayonets, and when the day comes when the wealth of the nation will be in the hands of a few, then we must rely upon the wisdom of the best elements in the country to readjust the laws of the nations to the changed conditions.

A journalist is a grumbler, a censurer, a giver of advice, a regent of sovereigns, a tutor of nations. Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets.

By push of bayonets, no firing until you see the whites in their eyes!

The war is for the family. The battle for their children's education and their grandchildren's freedom is as real to them as if they could witness the clangs of bayonets on the field or hear the blasts of mortars in the harbor.

He, who loves the bristle of bayonets, only sees in their glitter what beforehand he feels in his hand.

All the bayonets of the Army cannot force the Negro into our homes, into our schools, our churches and our places of recreation and amusement.

A revolution is an idea which has found its bayonets.

All the hideously calculated hypocrisy of men when they commit a murder in the name of justice. Then it's the time of death on a grander scale, the hour of the great offenses ... fix your bayonets boys ...gentlemen, synchronize your watches ... in ten seconds time the barrage starts ... a thousand men are destined to die in order to capture a farmhouse no one has lived in for years...

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root... Our military strength is a prerequisite to peace, but let it be clear we maintain this strength in the hope it will never be used, for the ultimate determinant in the struggle that's now going on in the world will not be bombs and rockets but a test of wills and ideas, a trial of spiritual resolve, the values we hold, the beliefs we cherish, the ideals to which we are dedicated.

You see these dictators on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police ... yet in their hearts there is unspoken fear. They are afraid of words and thoughts: words spoken abroad, thoughts stirring at home -- all the more powerful because forbidden -- terrify them. A little mouse of thought appears in the room, and even the mightiest potentates are thrown into panic.

The onset of bayonets in the hands of the valiant is irresistible.

In reality, at the end of World War II, America imposed democracy at the point of a bayonet on Japan and Germany, and it has proved a resounding success in both countries. The problem with liberals is that they never give bayonets a chance.

If humankind - from humble farmers in the fields and toiling workers in the cities to teachers, people of independent means, those who have reached the pinnacle of fame or fortune, even the most frivolous of society women - if they knew what profound inner pleasure awaits those who gaze at the heavens, then France, nay, the whole of Europe, would be covered with telescopes instead of bayonets, thereby promoting universal happiness and peace.

Bombs are probably more merciful than bayonets

Let's keep our boots polished, bayonets sharpened, and present a picture of force and strength to the Red Army. This is the only language they understand and respect.

A man may build himself a throne of bayonets, but he cannot sit on it.

He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in the glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses.

Four hostile newspapers are more to be feared than a thousand bayonets.

You mentioned the Navy, for example, and that we have fewer ships than we did in 1916. Well, Governor, we also have fewer horses and bayonets because the nature of our military has changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater, nuclear submarines.

I fear three newspapers more than a hundred thousand bayonets.

The Soviet Union tried for 70 years to plant Marxism with bayonets in Eastern Europe. Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe.

A Union that can only be maintained by swords and bayonets, and in which strife and civil war are to take the place of brotherly love and kindness, has no charm for me.

Most bayonets throughout history have probably not been used because soldiers just can't do it, something holds them back... the same goes for shooting the enemy. We've got this fascinating evidence from the Second World War, and also from other wars, that most soldiers couldn't do it.

Regimes planted by bayonets do not take root.

The laurels of victory are at the point of the enemy bayonets. They must be plucked there; they must be carried by a hand-to-hand fight if one really means to conquer.

You see these dictators up on their pedestals, surrounded by the bayonets of their soldiers and the truncheons of their police. They're afraid of words and thought. ... They make frantic efforts to bar our thoughts and words. ... A state of society where men may not speak their mind - where children denounce their parents to the police - where a businessman or small shopkeeper ruins his competitor by telling tales about his private opinion. Such a state of society cannot long endure if it is continually in contact with the healthy outside world.

All bayonets are bad.