48 Quotes by Ernie Pyle

Say what you will, nothing can make a complete soldier except battle experience.

I try not to take any foolish chances, but there's just no way to play it completely safe and still do your job.

For a lifetime I had bathed with becoming regularity, and thought the world would come to an end unless I changed my socks every day. But in Africa I sometimes went without a bath for two months, and I went two weeks at a time without even changing my socks. Oddly enough, it didn't seem to make much difference.

For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.

If you go long enough without a bath, even the fleas will let you alone.

Some day I'd like to cover a war in a country as ugly as war itself.

Thoughts are wonderful things, that they can bring two people, so far apart, into harmony and understanding for even a little while.

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.

Marines have a cynical approach to war. They believe in three things; liberty, payday and that when two Marines are together in a fight, one is being wasted. Being a minority group militarily, they are proud and sensitive in their dealings with other military organizations. A Marine's concept of a perfect battle is to have other Marines on the right and left flanks, Marine aircraft overhead and Marine artillery and naval gunfire backing them up.