10 Best: Battle Cries — 'By the Power of Greyskull... I Have the Power!'

By Lara Kristin Lentini

• 1. "This is where we fight! This is where they die!"
  —King Leonidas
  

  In 300, the king of Sparta uses this catchy jingle to rally his troops against the Persians. It scores big points for clarity, but it really gets a boost when 300 Spartans shout "HA-OOH!" in response.

• 2. "Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever?"
  —Sergeant Major Daniel Daly
  

  Besieged and outnumbered at the 1918 Battle of Belleau Wood, Daly egged on his men with a rhetorical question — and it actually worked. So well that Johnny Rico reused the line in Starship Troopers.

• 3. "By the power of Greyskull ... I have the powerrr!!!"
  —He-Man
  

  Prince Adam needs a thesaurus. His catchphrase is repetitive and vague (the power to do what, exactly?), but it's all about delivery: Props to him for managing to say it with conviction in a Speedo.

• 4. "Over? Did you say over? Nothing is over till we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!"
  —Bluto
  

  The Animal House call to arms transcends its historical imprecision by appealing to the brotherhood of all men and, by implication, the universal desire to get tanked wearing a bedsheet. Toga! Toga!

• 5. "From my cold, dead hands!"
  —Charlton Heston
  

  The NRA spokesperson and president didn't invent this slogan, but when he uttered the phrase in a primal, throaty growl while brandishing a musket over his head at the group's 2000 convention, it made the leap from bumper sticker to battle cry.

• 6. "Tulta munille!" (Fire at their balls!)"
  —Finnish troops
  

  In Väinö Linna's World War II novel The Unknown Soldier, the Finnish hollered this easy-to-remember directive, masterfully exploiting castration anxiety.

• 7. "Carthago delenda est!" (Carthage must be destroyed!)
  —Cato the Elder
  

  Back around 157 BC, the Roman statesman worked this imperative into all of his speeches on the senate floor. He also dropped it cold at toga parties and around town until the Third Punic War finally kicked off. Sound familiar?

• 8. "Leeeroy Jennnkins!"
  —Leeroy Jenkins
  

  This machinima avatar is immortalized among the World of Warcraft crowd for plunging into battle shouting his own nom de guerre while his comrades dawdled on the sidelines overthinking their strategy.

• 9. "I am the Love Angel, I am Wedding Peach, and I am very angry with you!"
  —Wedding Peach
  

  In her eponymous manga and anime, the poor girl has to juggle a demanding junior high schedule while fighting an endless variety of devils. She didn't ask to be the Love Angel. It makes you wonder why her cry is so mildly worded and tempered with ambivalence.

• 10. "Today is a good day to die!"
  —Klingons
  

  This badass race cherry-picked its maxim from the Sioux for its counterintuitive melding of both negative and positive thinking — a brand of logic sure to befuddle Spock.

• Original here