Brigade Quotes

“And suddenly, without the slightest volition on my part, there was the most crashing discharge of wind, like the report of a mortar. My horse started; Cardigan jumped in his saddle, glaring at me ... Be Silent! snaps he, and he must have been in a highly nervous condition himself, otherwise he would never have added, in a hoarse whipser: Can you not contain yourself, you disgusting fellow?
Flashman at the start of the Charge of the Light Brigade.”

— George MacDonald Fraser

“Darling Daddy,
This is Rose.
So flames went all up the kitchen wall. Saffron called the fire brigade and the police came too to see if it was a trick and the police woman said to Saffron Here You Are Again because of when I got lost having my glasses checked. But I was with Tom whose grandmother is a witch on top of the highest place in town.
Love, Rose.”

— Hilary McKay

“Please, God,' Ruth would pray, 'don't let me be competitive. Let me realize what a privilege it is to study. Let me remember that knowledge must be pursued for its own sake and please, please stop me wanting to beat Verena Plackett in the exams.'
She prayed hard and she meant what she said. But God was busy that autumn as the International Brigade came back, defeated, from Spain, Hitler's bestialities increased, and sparrows everywhere continued to fall.”

— Eva Ibbotson

“Cono knew that all three of his tormentors would know the anthem by heart from their childhood years. They had sung it daily to belong to the elite of their country, wearing around their necks the red ties of the Communist Party Youth Brigade, which had formed their beings and all that they would be and would ever believe, even as communism became a ghost and the party a web of corruption.”

— Victor Robert Lee

“First Lord of the Admiralty, long enough to engineer what an anti-Churchillian would say was an epic and unparalleled military disaster-a feat of incompetent generalship that made the Charge of the Light Brigade look positively slick. It was an attempt to outflank the stalemate on the Western Front that not only ended in humiliation for the British armed forces; it cost the lives of so many Australians and New Zealanders that to this day their 1915 expedition to Turkey is the number-one source of pom-bashing and general anti-British feeling among Antipodeans.”

— Boris Johnson

“Odd, what a strange thing trust was. A week or so ago, she'd never have trusted Mr. Clark, not for the slightest instant. In that time, little had changed. He was still a blackmailer, still a forger. He was likely even still a liar.
But he'd saved her last night, and now they knew things of each other-things that seemed more important than such details as the name he'd been born with, or the nature of his revenge. He knew she had nightmares about the lock hospital; she knew he'd been in a fire brigade in Strasbourg.”

— Courtney Milan

“It was possibly the most circumspect advance in the history of military manoeuvres, right down at the bottom end of the scale that things like the Charge of the Light Brigade are at the top of.”

— Terry Pratchett

“If you are going to make a change, make it big and bold. Walk up to the biggest guy on the block, stand in his face and get it started. Then go around, brigade by brigade, making it make sense.”

— Eric Shinseki

“I remember my first taste of American big movies was 'Ghost Rider.' I'm in two little scenes. But for those two little scenes they had 400 extras, upside-down stunt cars, and a fire brigade.”

— Rebel Wilson

“I ended up going to college for visual arts but moved up to New York after I graduated from college in 2006 and started going gung ho to the Upright Citizens Brigade, and I realized that that was what I was really interested in and what I really wanted to do.”

— Abbi Jacobson

“I lived with Ilana Glazer of 'Broad City.' She was my roommate for a year and a half. I was living with her just as she was creating and filming 'Broad City.' Both of us, and a lot of my friends, come from the Upright Citizens Brigade theater either in New York or L.A.”

— Rachel Bloom

“Africa is a continent in flames. And deep down, if we really accepted that Africans were equal to us, we would all do more to put the fire out. We're standing around with watering cans, when what we really need is the fire brigade.”

— Bono

“The anger in the Brigade against those who fought the Republic in the rear was sharpened by reports of weapons, even tanks, being kept from the front and hidden for treacherous purposes.”

— Bill Alexander

“When I was at Upright Citizens Brigade, I would pretend to be a sad, drunk rapper.”

— Bobby Moynihan

“Then it was just the two of us. Me and Captain Hetero of the Straight Brigade.”

— T.J. Klune

“Towards four o'clock, the rebels felt strong enough to take the offensive. A brigade with a battery under Earle managed to strike the Federal right on the flank and rear and throw it into utter confusion, which spread rapidly along the whole front. Now came the disastrous end.”

— Henry Villard

“I've trained primarily in Meisner Technique, and I've done a little bit of Groundlings and Upright Citizens Brigade just to get my feet wet in the improv world because I think that's really important. But most of the teachers I've worked with, I've gotten, like, references through agents or managers, and they're sort of independent.”

— Scottie Thompson

“At Moscow's Bolshoi Ballet Academy, I studied under a brilliant and fiery teacher. This tiny, stuttering old man flew into a rage if his students' white socks failed to reach mid-calf level. Nor could he tolerate floppy hair. We wore hairnets to class - an athletic brigade of short order cooks.”

— Sascha Radetsky

“I'd draw a picture of an army of teddy bears charging out to fight these green, gloppy looking blobs. My teddy bears would be riding white horses and carrying long lances like knights of the Round Table. She started giggling at the thought of Mr. Ruggers leading a brigade of pandas, potbellies, and fuzzy-wuzzies in her defense.”

— Lurlene McDaniel

“The combat exclusion policy was adopted during the Clinton Administration in 1994 and says women can 'be assigned to all positions for which they are qualified, except that women shall be excluded from assignment to units below the brigade level whose primary mission is to engage in direct combat on the ground.'”

— Cynthia Dill

“I joined the 800th MP Brigade when they were already deployed.”

— Janis Karpinski

“The mission statement was ordered, and it sent the 800th MP Brigade, effective the first of July, up to Baghdad. I joined my brigade to take command at the end of June.”

— Janis Karpinski

“There was a military police brigade with over 3,400 soldiers getting ready to go home because their mission - prisoner-of-war operations - was finished.”

— Janis Karpinski

“I knew how many MPs I had assigned to the brigade, how many military prison operations I would be running, but we needed to evaluate how many criminal prison operations we could support.”

— Janis Karpinski

“During the whole campaign, from June 27 to July 31, there has been no shirking or hesitation, to tiring on the part of a single man so far as I have seen; the brigade commanders reported none.”

— John Buford

“I think a lot of studios today are run by women, and we are entering a time when a lot of women have evolved in Second City and Upright Citizens Brigade and wanted to become writers and comedians.”

— Judd Apatow

“Over this August district work period, like many of my colleagues, I spent a lot of time with the men and women in uniform from my home State. The 196th Field Artillery Brigade just got back from a year in Afghanistan.”

— Zach Wamp

“With slouch and swing around the ring
We trod the Fools' Parade!
We did not care: we knew we were
The Devils' Own Brigade:
And shaven head and feet of lead
Make a merry masquerade.”

— Oscar Wilde

“Liz Gorman, a fiery redhead, had been one of the founding members of the Raven Brigade.”

— Harlan Coben

“The Fire Brigade recognise only two kinds of people at a fire, victims and obstacles, and if you don't want to be either it's best to stay back.”

— Ben Aaronovitch

“If the Beatles made England swing for the young, then Bond was a travel-poster boy for the earmuff brigade. The Bond films even put a few theme songs, such as Paul McCartney's 'Live and Let Die,' on the pop charts.”

— Richard Corliss

“Who called the idiot brigade?”

— Natsuki Takaya

“But it wasn't a Primary. It was hell among the yearlings and the Charge of the Light Brigade and Saturday night in the backroom of Casey's Saloon rolled into one, and when the smoke cleared away not a picture still hung on the walls. And there wasn't any Democratic Party. There was just Willie, with his hair in his eyes, and his shirt sticking to his stomach with sweat. And he had a meat ax in his hand and was screaming for blood.”

— Robert Penn Warren

“I didn't want to give up my job and join the ranks of the Doing Fuck All brigade no matter how much money I had in the bank.”

— Sara Sheridan

“As each brigade emerged from the woods, from 50 to 100 guns opened upon it, tearing great gaps in its ranks; but the heroes pressed on and were shot down by reserves at the guns. It was not war, it was murder.”

— Daniel Harvey Hill

“If my mom came here today, she'd probably join this red-hat brigade. My mother got my sense of humor, even when I was a kid. I would just do things that tickled my fancy in the moment, and she would ask me who I was entertaining. I'd say, 'Well, me.' And she would tell me that nobody knew that and they thought I was psychotic. Well, I don't ever want people to think I'm psychotic, but I can't help myself from doing these things.”

— Howie Mandel

“Because we all know one of the main factors of war is the element of surprise. And what could be more surprising than the First Batallion Transvestite Brigade? Airborne Wing.”

— Eddie Izzard

“Rational free spirits are the light brigade who go on ahead and reconnoiter the ground which the heavy brigade of the orthodox will eventually occupy.”

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

“Success looks like you sitting here pretty confident that an armed brigade isn't going to come pouring in here and blow your head off. Which I don't think is your major concern. Therefore, the United States' foreign policy is successful.”

— George Friedman

“I grew up on the Bones Brigade as well. The very first skateboard video I saw was the Bones Brigade Video Show and I'd always valued the Bones Brigade and Powell Peralta as the ultimate in skateboarding.”

— Mike Vallely

“Through getting sponsored and becoming a part of the Bones Brigade and Powell Peralta, doors were being opened. The entire culture was shifting from ramps to street, and I sort of became a poster child for that.”

— Mike Vallely

“Viva la the New Brigade! Viva la the Old One, too! Viva la, the Rose shall fade, And the Shamrock shine for ever new!”

— Thomas Davis

“No tin-hat brigade of goose-stepping vigilantes or bibble-babbling mob of blackguarding and corporation paid scoundrels will prevent the onward march of labor, or divert its purpose to play its natural and rational part in the development of the economic, political and social life of our nation.”

— John L. Lewis

“I believe that one can't command sitting on one's ass in the rear.One has to up among the forward brigade commanders, even as far as battalion commanders, especially if one is fighting a defensive action. One simply has to know what is going on.”

— Christopher Vokes

“Let us not demand of ourselves that we alone must be the agent of change. In a fire brigade everyone passes along a bucket, but only the last person puts out the fire. None of us know where we stand in line. We may be here simply to pass a bucket; we may be called on to play a major role. In either case, all we can do is think, act, and say. Let us direct our thoughts, words, and actions to peace. That is all we can do. Let the results be what they will be.”

— Deepak Chopra

“A politician can do what he thinks is right, he just has to be sophisticated in how he goes about it. Those who seek a president who 'will disregard the polls and just lead,' ask for the political equivalent of 'The Charge of the Light Brigade.'”

— Dick Morris

“General," said the commander of the delinquent brigade, "I am persuaded that any further display of valor by my troops will bring them into collision with the enemy.”

— Ambrose Bierce

“If I were in the government I would have a brigade of policemen assigned to keeping an eye on people who paint landscapes outdoors. Oh, I wouldn't want anyone killed. I'd be satisfied with just a little buckshot to begin with.”

— Edgar Degas

“Let vice and immorality of every kind be discouraged as much as possible in your brigade; and, as a chaplain is allowed to each regiment, see that the men regularly attend during worship. Gaming of every kind is expressly forbidden, as being the foundation of evil, and the cause of many a brave and gallant officer's and soldier's ruin.”

— George Washington

“There are three bodies no sensible man directly challenges: the Roman Catholic Church, the Brigade of Guards and the National Union of Mineworkers”

— Harold MacMillan