Top 35 Michael Shaara Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Southern women like their men religious and a little mad.”

— Michael Shaara

2. “A man who has been shot at is a new realist, and what do you say to a realist when the war is a war of ideals?”

— Michael Shaara

3. “Perhaps it was only that when you try to put it into words you cannot express it truly, it never sounds as you dream it.”

— Michael Shaara

4. “There’s nothing so much like a god on earth as a General on a battlefield.”

— Michael Shaara

5. “In a land where all slaves are servants, all servants are slaves, and thus ends democracy.”

— Michael Shaara

6. “I’ll wave no more flags for home. No tears for Mother. Nobody ever died for apple pie.”

— Michael Shaara

7. “Why do there have to be men like that, men who enjoy another man’s dying?”

— Michael Shaara

8. “The thing about the heart was that you could not coax it or force it, as you could any other disease. Will power meant nothing.”

— Michael Shaara

9. “Well, boy, if he’s an angel, he’s sure a murderin’ angel.”

— Michael Shaara

10. “If men were equal in America, all these Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigner; there were only free men and slaves.”

— Michael Shaara

11. “So it was no cause and no country he fought for, no ideal and no justice. He fought for his people, for the children and the kin, and not even the land, because not even the land was worth the war, but the people were, wrong as they were, insane even as many of them were, they were his own, he belonged with his own.”

— Michael Shaara

12. “A true gentleman has no vices, but he allows you your own.”

— Michael Shaara

13. “He had grown up believing in America and the individual and it was a stronger faith than his faith in God. This was the land where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become.”

— Michael Shaara

14. “He was one of those, like Stuart, who looked on war as God’s greatest game.”

— Michael Shaara

15. “How do you force a man to fight – for freedom? The idiocy of it jarred him.”

— Michael Shaara

16. “It wasn’t the dying. He had seen men die all his life, and death was the luck of the chance, the price you eventually paid. What was worse was the stupidity. The appalling sick stupidity that was so bad you thought sometimes you would go suddenly, violently, completely insane just having to watch it. It was a deadly thing to be thinking on. Job to be done here. And all of it turns on faith.”

— Michael Shaara

17. “It came to him in the night sometimes with a sudden appalling shock that the boys he was fighting were boys he had grown up with. The war had come as a nightmare in which you chose your nightmare side. Once chosen, you put your head down and went on to win.”

— Michael Shaara

18. “In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that enormous, unanswerable question.”

— Michael Shaara

19. “Never let them see you run.”

— Michael Shaara

20. “It rained all that night. The next day was Saturday, the Fourth of July.”

— Michael Shaara

21. “Harriet Beecher Stowe published Uncle Tom’s Cabin in 1852. It became a publishing sensation. Lincoln was later wryly to remark to her: ‘So you’re the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war.’ The South reacted with fury to her attack on slavery.”

— Michael Shaara

22. “This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here’s a place to build a home. It isn’t the land.”

— Michael Shaara

23. “If men were equal in America, all these former Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as a foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.”

— Michael Shaara

24. “The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.”

— Michael Shaara

25. “Jackson is gone – not entirely gone; Jackson was there today watching, and Ewell sees his eyes – but you cannot blame him for not being Jackson. You must make do with the tools God has given for the job.”

— Michael Shaara

26. “How can they look in the eyes of a man and make a slave of him and then quote the Bible?”

— Michael Shaara

27. “A little eccentricity is a help to a general. It helps with the newspapers. The women love it too. Southern women like their men religious and a little mad. That’s why the fall in love with preachers.”

— Michael Shaara

28. “And so it was not even patriotism but a new faith. The Frenchman may fight for France, but the American fights for mankind, for freedom; for the people, not the land.”

— Michael Shaara

29. “Then after that I asked this fella what rights he had that we were offendin’, and he said, well, he didn’t know, but he must have some rights he didn’t know nothin’ about.”

— Michael Shaara

30. “If you are not affected, if you are not hurt by what we do, then you will not do anything to stop it. The war will simply continue.”

— Michael Shaara

31. “General, you may attack’... He gave no further directions... With that word it was out of his hands. It had never really been in his hands at all. And yet his was the responsibility.”

— Michael Shaara

32. “In this place at last a man could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he wished to become.”

— Michael Shaara

33. “Kilrain saluted, grinning, and withdrew. The only professional in the regiment. The drinking would kill him. Well. He would die happy.”

— Michael Shaara

34. “This is the great battle. Tomorrow or the next day. This will determine the war. Virginia is here, all the South is here. What will you do tomorrow?”

— Michael Shaara

35. “The air was cool and wet and delicious to breathe: a slow, fine, soaking rain, a farmer’s rain, gentle on the roof.”

— Michael Shaara