War Quotes
"Engines of
war have long since reached their limits, and I see no further hope of any
improvement in the art."*
*
_Frontinus, 90
AD
"All
the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to
find out what you don't know from what you do." *
*
_Arthur Wellesley, Duke Of Wellington
"Direct
pressure always tends to harden and consolidate the resistance of an opponent."*
*
_Sir Basil H. Liddel-Hart
"A great part of the information obtained in war is contradictory, a still
greater part is false and by far the greatest part is of doubtful character."*
*
_Carl von Clausewitz
"Men
are seldom born brave but they acquire courage through training and discipline -
a handful of men inured to war proceed to certain victory; while on the contrary
numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men
dragged to the slaughter."*
*
_Vegetius,(3rd
c. AD)
"Everything
which the enemy least expects will succeed the best."*
*
_Frederick the Great
"When
you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,*
And the women come out to cut up what remains,*
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains,*
An' go to your Gawd like a soldier.*
*
_Rudyard
Kipling
"The beginning
of leadership is a battle for the hearts and minds of men." *
*
_Viscount
Montgomery of Alamein
"There
is no point in having the capacity if you haven't got the will to use it."*
*
_Viscount
Montgomery of Alamein
"It is
always a good thing to persuade the soldier that what you want him to do is
right." *
*
_Viscount
Montgomery of Alamein
"A piece of paper makes you an officer, a radio makes you a commander." *
*
_General Omar Bradley
"There
are no bad regiments, there are only bad officers." *
*
_Field
Marshall Lord Slim
"If you
do not know others and do not know yourself, you will be in danger in every
single battle."*
*
_Sun Tzu
"Gentlemen,
you may be sure that of the three courses open to the enemy, he will always
choose the fourth."*
*
_Field
Marshall Helmuth von Moltke to his staff
"War is
the province of uncertainty; three-fourths of the things on which action in war
is based lie hidden in the fog of uncertainty."*
*
_Carl von Clausewitz
"The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerilla wins if he does
not lose." *
*
_Henry Kissinger
"The way to avoid what is strong is to strike what is weak."*
*
_Sun Tzu
"Opportunity
in war is usually of greater value than bravery.*
Terrain is often of more value than bravery.*
Bravery is of more value than numbers."**
*
_Vegetius,(3rd
c. AD)
"It is
necessary only for the good man to do nothing for evil to triumph."*
*
_Edmund Burke
"Tanks
are easily identified, easily engaged, much-feared targets which attract all the
fire on the battlefield. When all is said and done, a tank is a small steel box
crammed with inflammable or explosive substances which is easily converted into
a mobile crematorium for its highly skilled crew."*
*
_Brigadier
Shelford Bidwell
"Being shelled is the real work of an infantry soldier, which no one talks
about. Everyone has his own way of going about it. In general, it means lying
face down and contracting your body into a small a space as possible."*
*
_Louis Simpson
"War is
fear cloaked in courage."*
*
_General William Westmoreland
"What
counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of
the fight in the dog."*
*
_Dwight D.
Eisenhower
"No man can
tame a tiger into a kitten by stroking it. There can be no appeasement with
ruthlessness. There can be no reasoning with an incendiary bomb."*
*
_Franklin Delano Roosevelt Fireside Chat (December 29, 1940)
"Strategy
without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the
noise before defeat."*
*
_Sun Tzu
"Battles
are sometimes won by generals; wars are nearly always won by sergeants and
privates."*
*
_F E Adcock
"Youth
is the first victim of war; the first fruit of peace. It takes 20 years or more
of peace to make a man; it takes only 20 seconds of war to destroy him."*
*
_Baudouin I
"A soldier
will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon."*
*
_Napoleon
Bonaparte
"Take
time to deliberate, but when the time for action has arrived, stop thinking and
go in."*
*
_Napoleon
Bonaparte
"The greatest
general is he who makes the fewest mistakes."*
*
_Napoleon
Bonaparte
"Veni,
Vidi, Vici" ( I came, I saw, I conquered)."*
*
_Julius Caesar
"Never
in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill
"A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you
not to kill him."*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill
"To
jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill
"The British and Americans do not want war with races or governments as such.
Tyranny, external or internal, is our foe"*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill
"No matter how enmeshed a commander becomes in the elaboration of his own
thoughts, it is sometimes necessary to take the enemy into account."*
*
_Winston Churchill
"Arm
yourselves, and be ye men of valour, and be in readiness for the conflict; for
it is better for us to perish in battle than to look upon the outrage of our
nation and our altar"*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill
"Battles
are won by slaughter and manoeuvre. The greater the general, the more he
contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter."*
*
_Sir Winston Churchill
"To
secure peace is to prepare for war."*
*
_Karl Von Clausewitz
"In a
man to man fight the winner is the one who puts an extra round in his magazine"*
*
_ Field Marshal Erwin Rommel
"Never
forget that no military leader has ever become great without audacity."*
*
_Karl Von Clausewitz
"I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace an interlude
during war."*
*
_Georges Clemenceau
"War is
a series of catastrophes that results in a victory."*
*
_Georges Clemenceau
"There
is deceit and cunning and from these wars arise"*
*
_Confucius
"The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten."*
*
_Calvin Coolidge
"No one would be foolish enough to choose war over peace - in peace sons bury
their fathers, but in war fathers bury their sons."*
*
_Croesus of
Lydia
"There
is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to
any fear."*
*
_George S. Patton
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its
brutality, its futility, its stupidity"*
*
_Dwight David
Eisenhower
"The art of
war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you
can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving
on"*
*
_President
Ulysses S Grant
"Strength
lies not in defense but in attack."*
*
_Adolf Hitler
"In war
there is no substitute for victory."*
*
_General Douglas MacArthur
"Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."*
*
_General Douglas MacArthur
"Politics
is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed."*
*
_Mao Zedong
"To
fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme
excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."*
*
_Lao Zi
"Only
fools seek power, and the greatest fools seek it through force."*
*
_Lao Zi
"Great empires are not maintained by timidity."*
*
_Tacitus
"Carry
the battle to them. Don't let them bring it to you. Put them on the defensive.
And don't ever apologize for anything"*
*
_Harry S Truman
"Never
cut off a man's escape route unless you want to see just how hard he can fight"*
*
_Sun Tzu
"Pain
is weakness leaving the body."*
*
_Unknown U. S.
Marine Corps slogan
"I do not believe that the men who served in uniform in Vietnam have been given
the credit they deserve. It was a difficult war against an unorthodox enemy"*
*
_General William C Westmoreland
"History
shows that there are no invincible armies."*
*
_Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin
"All
war is deception"*
*
_Sun Tzu
"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard
die for his."*
*
_General George S Patton Jr,
"A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood."*
*
_General George S Patton Jr,
"A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow."*
*
_General George S Patton Jr
"Wars
may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who
follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory"*
*
_General George S Patton Jr,
"It is
foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that
such men lived"*
*
_General George S Patton Jr,
"The best tank terrain is that without anti-tank weapons." *
*
_Russian
military doctrine
"Only
the dead have seen the end of war."*
*
_Plato
"Tomorrow's
battle is won during today's practice."*
*
_Samurai maxim
"All
right, they're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us,
they're behind us, they can't get away this time !."*
*
_Lieutenant
General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller USMC
"We're
Surrounded, that Simplifies Our Problems!"*
*
_Lieutenant
General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller USMC
"An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last."*
*
_Winston Churchill
"Put
your trust in God, but keep your powder dry."*
*
_Oliver Cromwell
"Some
people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in
the world, but the Marines don't have that problem."*
*
_Ronald Reagan
"War is
cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it
will be over"*
*
_General William Tecumseh Sherman
"When
the pin is pulled, Mr. Grenade is not our friend."*
*
_U.S. Army training notice
"If the
enemy is in range, so are you."*
*
_Infantry
Journal
"If
your attack is going too well, you're probably walking into an ambush."*
*
_Infantry
Journal
"I don't know
what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me."*
*
_Arthur Wellesley, Duke Of Wellington
"It is
generally inadvisable to eject directly over the area you just bombed"*
*
_U.S. Air Force flight training manual
"People
sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do
violence on their behalf."*
*
_George Orwell
"It is
good that war is so terrible, else we should become accustomed to it."*
*
_Robert E. Lee
"If men
make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail."*
*
_General Ulysses S. Grant
"Some
of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you,
boys, it is all hell!"*
*
_General William T. Sherman
"The difficulty of tactical maneuvering consists in turning the devious into the
direct, and misfortune into gain."*
*
_Sun Tzu
"Throw
your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer
death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not
achieve."*
*
_Sun Tzu
"Fools
say that they learn by experience. I prefer to profit by others experience"*
*
_Otto Von Bismarck
"People
never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election."*
*
_Otto Von Bismarck
"An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot
defeat the enemy."*
*
_Mao Zedong
"Nothing
except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won."*
*
_Arthur Wellesley, Duke Of Wellington
"The guerrilla must move amongst the people as a fish swims in the sea."*
*
_Mao Zedong
"When
the enemy advances, withdraw; when he stops, harass; when he tires, strike; when
he retreats, pursue."*
*
_Mao Zedong
"Weapons
are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not
materials that counts."*
*
_Mao Zedong
"Artillerymen
believe the world consist of two types of people; other Artillerymen and
targets."*
*
_Unknown
"Ultima ratio regum." (The final argument of kings) *
*
_Inscription
on French cannons, on order of Louis XIV
"Artillery
conquers and infantry occupies."*
*
_J.F.C. Fuller
"The first shot is for the Devil, the second for God, and only the third for the
King."*
*
_Napoleon
Bonaparte
"Leave
the Artillerymen alone, they are an obstinate lot."*
*
_Napoleon
Bonaparte
"One of
the serious problems in planning the fight against American doctrine, is that
the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to
follow their doctrine."*
*
_From a Soviet
Junior Lt's Notebook