You can build a throne with bayonets, but it's difficult to sit on it. ~ Boris Yeltsin

A bayonet (from French baïonnette) is a knife, sword, or spike-shaped weapon designed to fit in, on, over or underneath the muzzle of a rifle, musket or similar weapon, effectively turning the gun into a spear.

Quotes

  • In 1863, Colonel Kit Carson was ordered to clear the country of Navajo Indians and to resettle any survivors at Fort Sumner in eastern New Mexico, where they could be "civilized." Carson's strategy was the same as that applied against the Plains Indians a little later: He destroyed the Navajo food base by systematically killing their livestock and by burning their fields. Carson's "Long Knives" (his soldiers so named because of their bayonets) also cut off the breast of Navajo girls and tossed them back and forth like baseballs.
  • It is time to realize that neither socialism, nor friendship, nor good-neighborliness, nor respect can be produced by bayonets, tanks or blood.
    • Eduard Shevardnadze Cited in: North Atlantic Assembly. Political Committee (1990) Reports. p. 7
  • The bullet is a fool, the bayonet is a fine chap.
  • You can build a throne with bayonets, but it's difficult to sit on it.
    • Boris Yeltsin in televised speech (4 October 1993), as quoted in A Democracy of Despots (1995) by Donald Murray. p. 8
    • Variant translations: You can make a throne of bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long.
      You can build a throne with bayonets, but you can't sit on it for long.
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