T. E. Lawrence
T. E. Lawrence
Thomas Edward Lawrence CB DSO FASwas a British author, archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat. He was renowned for his liaison role during the Sinai and Palestine Campaign and the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The breadth and variety of his activities and associations, and his ability to describe them vividly in writing, earned him international fame as Lawrence of Arabia—a title used for the 1962 film based on his wartime activities...
NationalityBritish
ProfessionSoldier
Date of Birth16 August 1888
To me an unnecessary action, or shot, or casualty, was not only waste but sin.
Cling tight to your sense of humour. You will need it every day.
Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.
All the revision in the world will not save a bad first draft: for the architecture of the thing comes, or fails to come, in the first conception, and revision only affects the detail and ornament, alas!
They taught me that no man could be their leader except he ate the ranks' food, wore their clothes, lived level with them, and yet appeared better in himself.
Mankind has had ten-thousand years of experience at fighting and if we must fight, we have no excuse for not fighting well.
To have news value is to have a tin can tied to one's tail.
Half a calamity is better than a whole one.
An opinion can be argued with; a conviction is best shot. The logical end of a war of creeds is the final destruction of one, and Salammbo is the classical text-book instance.
I could write for hours on the lustfulness of moving Swiftly,
Do not try and do too much with your own hands. Better the Arabs do it tolerably than you do it perfectly. It is their war, and you are to help them, not win it for them.
The dreamers of the day are dangerous... for they may act their dream with open eyes, to make it possible.
The people of England have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honor.
This creed of the desert seemed inexpressible in words, and indeed in thought.