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Quotes from Southern Victory — Harry Turtledove

born 1949 United States

← All quotes by Harry Turtledove

243 quotes

“You make me wonder about my own country, Spartacus, not just yours.”
“Good,” the black man rumbled. “Wonderin’s good. Ain’t nothin’ gonna change till you wonder if it oughta.”

Southern Victory (1997)

We must deal with life as it is, not with life as we wish it were or as it may be ten years or fifty years from now.

Southern Victory (1997)

Soldiers don’t make policy. We only carry it out, and get blamed when it goes wrong.

Southern Victory (1997)

Anyone who forces something on someone and then says he will be better for it—you will, I hope, understand me when I say this is difficult to appreciate.

Southern Victory (1997)

“He lies. How can you trust a man who lies? You cannot. And any man who comes on the wireless and says, ‘I am going to tell you the truth’—well, what else can he be except a liar?”

Southern Victory (1997)

A rocket can’t be that accurate…can it? But that’s only a wild-ass guess—excuse the technical term.

Southern Victory (1997)

He rode forward at the gallop, brave but stupid. A moment later, he was brave and stupid and dead.

Southern Victory (1997)

You volunteered for this, Cincinnatus reminded himself. Were you born stupid, or did you have to study?

Southern Victory (1997)

Morrell laughed out loud. There went one cliché, shot down like a dive bomber with a fighter on its tail.

Southern Victory (1997)

Peacetime, though, felt like summertime. Even as you enjoyed it, you knew it wouldn’t last.

Southern Victory (1997)

She was willing to give her life for her country. She wasn’t willing to throw it away.

Southern Victory (1997)

He trusted Mormons no farther than he could throw them. They were as sneaky a bunch of bastards as you could imagine.

Southern Victory (1997)

A wise husband didn’t quarrel even when he was right. Quarreling when you knew you were wrong was a recipe for disaster.

Southern Victory (1997)

Maybe not thinking about the price of failure was what marked a hero. On the other hand, maybe it just marked a damn fool.

Southern Victory (1997)

He realized, belatedly, that he had been less than diplomatic. That did not bother him, either: he was less than diplomatic.

Southern Victory (1997)

You have to understand what you’re fighting for. Otherwise, you were an animal—a brave animal, maybe, but an animal all the same.

Southern Victory (1997)

The exec usually did Captain Stein's dirty work for him. The skipper got the credit, the exec got the blame: an ancient Navy rule.

Southern Victory (1997)

Was that savage cynicism or sage common sense? When it came to gauging the chances of peace and war, how much difference was there?

Southern Victory (1997)

Anne saw his attention focus on her. It still wasn’t the look a man gave an attractive woman: more like the look a sniper gave a target.

Southern Victory (1997)

Second Lieutenant Don Griffiths was typical of the breed. He was young, he didn’t know much, and one of the things he didn’t know was how much he didn’t know.

Southern Victory (1997)

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Harry Turtledove (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.