Yquotes.com

 

It was a small victory, for I had learned that I was in two wars, one against the foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home.
--
On his 1944 acquittal from a court-martial for refusing to go the back of a military bus upon boarding it near Fort Hood, TX on July 6, 1944. Quoted in "The Court-Martial of Jackie Robinson" by Jules Tygiel in American Heritage magazine Vol. 35, Issue 5 ( August/September 1984)

 

Jackie Robinson

» Jackie Robinson - all quotes »

Similar quotes

 

Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men. ... Even if you kill an enemy, if it is not based on what you have learned it is not the true Way.

 

Miyamoto Musashi

 

Killing an enemy in a modern war is a very expensive operation... It is obvious that modern war is not good business from a financial point of view. Although we won both the world wars, we should now be much richer if they had not occured. If men were actuated by self-interest, which they are not — except in the case of a few saints — the whole human race would cooperate. There would be no more wars, no more armies, no more navies, no more atom bombs. There would not be armies of propagandists employed in poisoning the minds of Nation A against Nation B, and reciprocally of Nation B against Nation A. There would not be armies of officials at frontiers to prevent the entry of foreign books and foreign ideas, however excellent in themselves. There would not be customs barriers to ensure the existence of many small enterprises where one big enterprise would be more economic. All this would happen very quickly if men desired their own happiness as ardently as they desired the misery of their neighbors. But, you will tell me, what is the use of these utopian dreams? Moralists will see to it that we do not become wholly selfish, and until we do the millennium will be impossible.

 

Bertrand Russell

 

It is just as impossible to help reform by conciliating prejudice as it is by buying votes. Prejudice is the enemy. Whoever is not for you is against you.

 

John Jay Chapman

 

Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken, and can then be destroyed by half their number. The other rule is, never fight against heavy odds, if by any possible maneuvering you can hurl your own force on only a part, and that the weakest part, of your enemy and crush it. Such tactics will win every time, and a small army may thus destroy a large one in detail, and repeated victory will make it invincible.

 

Thomas Stonewall Jackson

 

Wars, both civil and foreign, I undertook throughout the world, on sea and land, and when victorious I spared all citizens who sued for pardon. The foreign nations which could with safety be pardoned I preferred to save rather than to destroy.

 

Augustus