
"You
can't help someone get up a hill without getting closer to the top
yourself."
- Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf (1934
- )
"I am quite confident
that in the foreseeable future armed conflict will not take the form of huge
land armies facing each other across extended battle lines, as they did in
World War I and World War II or, for that matter, as they would have if NATO
had faced the Warsaw Pact on the field of battle."
- Gen. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf (1934 - )
"As far as Saddam
Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he
schooled in the operational art, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a
general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that he's a great military man-I
want you to know that."
-
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf (1934 - ) When asked in 1991 by a reporter
what his impressions were of Saddam Hussein as a military strategist.
"We need to destroy not
attack, not damage, not surround. I want to destroy the Republican Guard"
- Gen. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf (1934 - )
"I feel that retired
generals should never miss an opportunity to remain silent concerning
matters for which they are no longer responsible."
- Gen. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf (1934 - )
"If we do go to war,
psychological operations are going to be absolutely a critical, critical part
of any campaign that we must get involved in."
- Gen. H. Norman
Schwarzkopf (1934 - )
"The mothers and fathers of America
will give you their sons and daughters...with the confidence in you
that you will not needlessly waste their lives. And you dare not.
That's the burden the mantle of leadership places upon you. You could
be the person who gives the orders that will bring about the deaths of
thousands and thousands of young men and women. It is an awesome
responsibility. You cannot fail. You dare not fail..."
-
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf (1934 - ) From a speech in Eisenhower Hall
Theater to the Corps of Cadets on 15 May 1991
"....If you leave here with the word
DUTY implanted in your mind; if you leave here with the word HONOR
carved in your soul; if you leave here with love of COUNTRY stamped on
your heart, then you will be a twenty-first century leader worthy...of
the great privilege and honor...of leading...the sons and daughters of
America..."
-
Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf (1934 - ) From a speech in Eisenhower Hall
Theater to the Corps of Cadets on 15 May 1991
"Quo Fas et Gloria Ducunt"
("Where Right and Glory Lead")
- Motto of the
Royal Engineers
"Who dares, wins"
- SAS (Special Air Service)
Creed
"Per mare per terram"
("By sea, by land")
- Motto of the Royal Marines
" Utrinque Paratus "
("Ready For Anything")
- Motto of the British
Parachute
Regiment "The Paras"
"WGlaine ár gcroí.
Neart ár ngéag. Agus beart de réir ár
mbriathar."
(The cleanliness of our hearts. The strength of our
limbs. And our commitment to our promise.
- Motto of the Irish
Defence Forces Sciathán
Fianóglach an Airm (Army Ranger Wing)
"Not by strength, but by guile"
- Motto of the British
Special Boat Service (SBS)
"De Oppresso Libre"
("Liberate from Oppression")
- Motto of the U.S. Army
Special
Forces (Green Berets)
"Schwert der Demokratie"
("'Sword of Democracy")
- Motto of the Austrian
Gendarmerie Einsatz
Kommando (GEK)
"The only tactical
principal not subject to change, is to inflict the maximum amount of
wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of
time."
-
Gen. George S. Patton (1885 -
1945)
"No bastard ever won a war by dying for
his country. You win the war by making the other poor dumb bastard die
for his country!"
- Gen. George S.
Patton (1885 - 1945)
"Do your damnedest in an ostentatious
manner all the time. "
- Gen. George S.
Patton (1885 - 1945)
"Take calculated risks. That is quite
different from being rash."
- Gen. George S.
Patton (1885 - 1945)
"If
you can't get them to salute when
they should salute and wear the clothes you tell them to wear, how are
you going to get them to die for their country?"
- Gen. George S.
Patton (1885 - 1945)
"A pint of sweat will save a gallon of
blood."
- Gen. George S.
Patton (1885 - 1945)
"If a man does his best, what else is
there?"
-
Gen. George S. Patton (1885 - 1945)
"Never
tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will
surprise you with their ingenuity."
- Gen. George S. Patton (1885 - 1945)
"Be an example to your men, in your
duty and in private life. Never spare yourself, and let the troops see
that you don't in your endurance of fatigue and privation. Always be
tactful and well mannered and teach your subordinates to do the same.
Avoid excessive sharpness or harshness of voice, which usually
indicates the man who has shortcomings of his own to hide."
-
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
"So long as one isn't carrying ones
head under one's arm, things aren't too bad."
-
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
"One must not judge everyone in the
world by his qualities as a soldier: otherwise we should have no
civilization."
-
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
"In the absence of orders, go find
something and kill it."
-
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
"The art of concentrating strength at
one point, forcing a breakthrough, rolling up and securing the flanks
on either side, and then penetrating like lightning deep into his rear,
before the enemy has time to react."
-
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
"The commander must try, above all, to
establish personal and comradely contact with his men, but without
giving away an inch of his authority."
-
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
"In a man to man fight the winner is the one who puts
an extra round in his magazine"
-
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
"I would rather he
had given me one more division"
-
Field Marshall Erwin Rommel (1891-1944)
"If you know the enemy
and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you
will also suffer a defeat."
- Sun Tzu - The Art Of War (500 BC)
"Opportunities multiply as they are
seized."
-Sun Tzu - The Art
Of War (500 BC)
"In no other profession are the
penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or so
irrevocable as in the military."
-
General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
"In war there is no substitute for
victory."
-
General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
"It
is fatal to enter a war without the
will to win it."
-
General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
"We are not retreating - we are
advancing in another Direction."
-
General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
"I Shall Return"
-
General Douglas MacArthur (1880-1964)
"Guns will make us powerful, butter
will only make us fat."
-
Hermann Goering
"It is dangerous to be right in matters
on which the established authorities are wrong."
-
Voltaire
[François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)
"A witty saying proves nothing."
- Voltaire
[François Marie Arouet] (1694-1778)
"I have often regretted my speech,
never my silence."
-
Xenocrates (396-314 B.C.)
"A clever man commits no minor
blunders."
-
Goethe (1749-1832)
"When ideas fail, words come in very
handy."
-
Goethe (1749-1832)
"All that is necessary for the
triumph of evil is that
good men do nothing."
- Edmund Burke - Irish
orator, philosopher, &
politician (1729 - 1797)
"Once you eliminate the impossible,
whatever remains, no
matter how improbable, must be the truth."
- Sherlock
Holmes
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, 1859-1930
"Good people do not need laws to
tell them to act
responsibly, while bad people will find a way around the laws."
- Plato (427-347 B.C.)
"What luck for the rulers that men
do not think!"
- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"Fools say that they learn by
experience. I prefer to profit by others experience"
- Otto Von Bismarck
"Anyone who has ever looked into the
glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard
before starting a war."
- Otto Von Bismarck
"Be polite; write diplomatically; even
in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness."
- Otto Von Bismarck
"People never lie so much as after a
hunt, during a war, or before an election."
- Otto Von Bismarck
"Those who cannot remember the past
are condemned to
repeat it."
- George Santayana (1863-1952)
"Too bad all the people who know how
to run this country
are busy running taxicabs or cutting hair."
- George Burns (1896-1996)
"Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the dogs of
war."
-
William Shakespeare ~ Spoken by Antony in Julius
Caeser (Act 3 Scene 1)
"We few, we happy few, we band of
brothers.
For he today that sheds his
blood with me
Shall be my brother; be ne'er
so vile,
This day shall gentle his
condition.
And gentlemen in England now
abed
Shall think themselves accursed
they were not here,
And hold their manhoods cheap
whiles any speaks
That fought with us upon Saint
Crispin's day."
- William Shakespeare ~
Spoken by King Henry in King
Henry V,
(Act 4 Scene 3)
"Cowards die many times before their
death; the valiant never taste death but once."
- William Shakespeare ~ Julius Caesar (Act 2 Scene
2)
"I hear and I forget. I see and I
remember. I do and I understand."
-
Confucius
"The cautious seldom err."
-
Confucius
"Real knowledge is to know the extent
of ones ignorance."
-
Confucius
"Never in the field of human conflict
was so much owed, by so many, to so few."
- Sir
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
commenting on the RAF pilots
"Everyone has his day and some days
last longer than others. "
-
Sir
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"A lie gets halfway around the world
before the truth has a chance to get its pants on."
- Sir
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"If you are going through hell, keep
going."
- Sir
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"When you have to kill a man, it costs
nothing to be polite."
- Sir
Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"The greatest leader in the world could
never win a campaign unless he understood the men he had to lead."
-
General Omar Bradley
"War is an ugly thing, but not the
ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and
patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing
which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable
creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the
exertions of better men than himself."
-
John Stuart Mill (1806 - 1873)
"The
art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him
as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving."
- Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (1822 - 1885)
"It
is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it."
- Gen. Robert E. Lee (1807 - 1870)
"I had rather die than be whipped."
-
J.E.B. Stuart
"War is hell."
-
William Tecumseh Sherman
"A people that values its privileges
above its principles soon loses both."
- Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969), Inaugural Address, January 20, 1953
"You can fool all the people some of
the time, and some of the people all the time, but you cannot fool all
the people all the time."
-
Abraham Lincoln
"Don't interfere with anything in the
Constitution. That must be maintained, for it is the only safeguard of
our liberties."
-
Abraham Lincoln
"My son, seek thee out a kingdom equal
to thyself; Macedonia has not room for thee."
-
Philip of Macedonia to Alexander (the Great)
"Big Brother is watching you. "
-
George Orwell - Nineteen
Eighty-Four
"I don't know why I did it, I don't
know why I enjoyed it, and I don't know why I'll do it again."
-
Bart Simpson
"A lady came up to me on the street
and pointed to my
suede jacket. "You know a cow was murdered for that jacket?" she
sneered. I replied in a psychotic tone, "I didn't know there were any
witnesses. Now I'll have to kill you too."
-
Jake Johanson
"Anyone who can walk to the welfare
office can walk to work. "
-
Al Capp
"Everything should be as simple as it
is, but not simpler. "
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"It has become appallingly obvious that
our technology has exceeded our humanity."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit
a very persistent one."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Not everything that can be counted
counts, and not everything that counts can be counted."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Only two things are infinite, the
universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
-
Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
"Diligence is the mother of good luck. "
-
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"Well done is better than well said."
-
Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790)
"A man cannot be too careful in his
choice of enemies. "
- Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Some cause happiness wherever they go;
others, whenever they go."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"A little sincerity is a dangerous
thing, and a great deal of it is absolutely fatal. "
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"A man can't be too careful in the
choice of his enemies."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"It is better to have a permanent
income than to be fascinating."
-
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
"Always do what you are afraid to do. "
- Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Do what you can, with what you have,
where you are. "
-
Theodore Roosevelt
"Any fool can criticize, condemn, and
complain -- and most fools do. "
-
Dale Carnegie
"No...No try! Do, or do not. There is
no try. "
-
Yoda - Jedi Master
"A classic is something that everybody
wants to have read and nobody wants to read. "
-
Mark Twain
"Nature has given us two eyes, two
ears, and but one tongue, to the end that we should hear and see more
than we speak."
-
Socrates
"Do not forget your dogs of war, your
big guns, which are the most-to-be respected arguments of the rights of
kings."
-
Frederick the Great
"We make war that we may live in peace.
"
- Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Wit is educated insolence."
-
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.)
"Victory belongs to the most
persevering."
-
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is
forever."
-
Napoleon Bonaparte
(1769-1821)
"Never interrupt your enemy when he is
making a mistake."
-
Napoleon Bonaparte (1769-1821)
"Let him who desires peace prepare for
war."
-Vegetius
(4th century), Roman military strategist.
"There is no avoiding war; it can only
be postponed to the advantage of others."
-
Niccolò Machiavelli
"Forgive your enemies, but never forget
their names."
-
John F. Kennedy
"Moral indignation is jealousy with a
halo."
- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
"Victory goes to the player who makes
the next-to-last mistake."
-
Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)
"I do not feel obliged to believe that
the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has
intended us to forgo their use."
-
Galileo Galilei
"I find that the harder I work, the
more luck I seem to have."
-
Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)
"Each problem that I solved became a
rule which served afterwards to solve other problems."
-
Rene Descartes (1596-1650), "Discours de la Methode"
"Whenever I climb I am followed by a
dog called 'Ego'."
-
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"We have art to save ourselves from the
truth."
-
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"When you gaze long into the abyss, the
abyss also gazes into you."
-
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)
"The difference between 'involvement'
and 'commitment' is like an eggs-and-ham breakfast: the chicken was
'involved' - the pig was 'committed'."
-
Unknown
"There is no problem that cannot be
solved by the use of high explosives."
-
Unknown
"I have not failed. I've just found
10,000 ways that won't work."
-
Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)
"Be nice to people on your way up
because you meet them on your way down."
-
Jimmy Durante
"The true measure of a man is how he
treats someone who can do him absolutely no good."
- Samuel Johnson (1709-1784)
"If everything seems under control,
you're just not going fast enough."
-
Mario Andretti
"Tragedy is when I cut my finger.
Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die."
- Mel
Brooks
"People sleep peaceably in their beds
at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their
behalf."
-
George Orwell
"I am become death, shatterer of
worlds."
-
Robert J. Oppenheimer (1904-1967) (citing from the Bhagavad Gita, after
witnessing the world's first nuclear explosion)
"Friends may come and go, but enemies
accumulate."
-
Thomas Jones
"The backbone of surprise is fusing
speed with secrecy."
-
Carl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
"Never forget that no military leader
has ever become great without audacity. If the leader is filled with
high ambition and if he pursues his aims with audacity and strength of
will, he will reach them in spite of all obstacles."
-
Carl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
"If
the leader is filled with high ambition and if he pursues his aims with
audacity and strength of will, he will reach them in spite of all
obstacles."
-
Carl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831)
"It is better to be feared than loved,
if you cannot be both."
-
Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527), "The Prince"
"Execute every act of thy life as
though it were thy last."
-
Marcus Aurelius
"They couldn't hit an elephant at this
dist..."
-
Last words of General John B. Sedgwick, 1864
"Let us cross over the river and rest
under the shade of the trees."
-
Last words of Gen. Thomas
Jonathan
"Stonewall" Jackson, 10 May 1863.
"Don't let it end like this. Tell them
I said something. "
-
Last words of Pancho Villa
"Now comes the mystery. "
-
Last words of Henry Ward Beecher