“An infallible method of conciliating a tiger is to allow oneself to be swallowed.”
“Appeasing a tyrant is like hand-feeding a shark.”
“At the end of the most grandiose plans and strategies is a soldier walking point.”
“Good commanders look after their troops, and good troops look after their commanders.”
“If you wish for peace, prepare for war.”
“There must be war for the sake of peace.” “We make war that we may live in peace.”
“If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon-shots.”
“In war, moral considerations account for three-quarters, the balance of actual forces only for the other quarter.”
“Nothing is more important in war than unity of command.”
“Strategy is the art of making use of time and space. I am less chary of the latter than the former. Space we can recover, lost time never.”
“When the drum has beaten the charge, when you must march straight upon the foe, bayonets fixed, your gloomy silence pledging victory—soldiers, remember to be worthy of yourselves!”
“In war there is no second prize for the runner-up.”
“The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.”
“My attitude is that when we put a youngster in harm's way, somebody who wears our nation's uniform in harm's way, he or she deserves the absolute best.
“We changed the nature of war, which in itself made the world a more peaceful place. The capacity for the United States to fight and win war makes the world more peaceful. Now the guilty can no longer hide behind the innocent. The whole notion of warfare where you had to bomb and destroy innocent life in order to be victorious changed in the year 2003 because of the might and strength and strategic planning and the technologies of the United States and its allies, but primarily the United States. So we can target the guilty and not the innocent. And, therefore, the guilty must fear, must fear, which makes it more likely we’ll win the war on terror and more likely that the world will be peaceful.”
“You know, there is—in my judgment, the only way to deal with these terrorists is to stay on the offensive, is to find them and bring them to justice before they hurt us again.”
“An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile—hoping that it will eat him last.”
“I would say to the House, as I said to those who have joined this Government: ‘I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.’ … You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.”
“In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.”
“No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.”
“Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one’s pulse and taking one’s temperature.”
“Peace is produced by war.”
“To conquer without risk is to triumph without glory.”
“If you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.”
“As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.”
“I say when you get into a war, you should win as quick as you can, because your losses become a function of the duration of the war. I believe when you get in a war, get everything you need and win it.”
“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.”
“We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.”
“To be always ready for war, said Mentor, is the surest way to avoid it.”
“A strong defense is the surest way to peace. Strength makes détente attainable. Weakness invites war, as my generation—my generation—knows from four very bitter experiences. Just as America’s will for peace is second to none, so will America’s strength be second to none. We cannot rely on the forbearance of others to protect this Nation. The power and diversity of the Armed Forces, active Guard and Reserve, the resolve of our fellow citizens, the flexibility in our command to navigate international waters that remain troubled are all essential to our security.”
“All of us who served in one war or another know very well that all wars are the glory and the agony of the young.”
“Get there first with the most men.”
“There was never a good war or a bad peace.”
“It is madness for sheep to talk peace with a wolf.”
“I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.”
“Hit hard, hit fast, hit often.”
“One sword keeps another in its sheath.”
“The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be effected by stratagem.”
“Peace, above all things, is to be desired, but blood must sometimes be spilled to obtain it on equable and lasting terms.”
“The patriot volunteer, fighting for country and his rights, makes the most reliable soldier on earth.”
“If there be one principle more deeply rooted than any other in the mind of every American, it is, that we should have nothing to do with conquest.”
“In times of peace the people look most to their representatives; but in war, to the executive solely.”
“Whensoever hostile aggressions … require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.”
“If you let a bully come into your front yard, he’ll be on your porch the next day, and the day after that he’ll rape your wife in your own bed.”
“An honorable Peace is and always was my first wish! I can take no delight in the effusion of human Blood; but if this War should continue, I wish to have the most active part in it.”
“I have not yet begun to fight.”
“I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm’s way.”
“It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.”
“No appeasement will avoid necessary battles. It only makes them more costly and lengthy.”
“What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.”
“Avoid popularity if you would have peace.”
“But in a larger sense we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract.”
“A warlike spirit, which alone can create and civilize a state, is absolutely essential to national defense and to national perpetuity.”
“However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.”
“I see that the old flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy every haul them down.”
“I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barrack ballads of that day [around the turn of the century] which proclaimed most proudly that ‘Old soldiers never die, they just fade away.’ And like the old soldier of that ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away—an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.”
“In war there is no substitute for victory.”
“It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit which we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory.”
“Look at an infantryman’s eyes and you can tell how much war he has seen.”
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such a war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give a victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, —is often the means of their regeneration. / A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he care more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
“A nation becomes a great power only on one condition: that its military establishment and resources are such that it could really threaten decisive warfare… Military power determines the political standing of nations.”
“The souls of emperors and cobblers are cast in the same mold. … The same reason that makes us bicker with a neighbor creates a war between princes.”
“The lesson of all history warns us that we should negotiate only when our military superiority is so convincing that we can achieve our objective at the conference table, and deny the aggressor theirs.”
“We must devote ourselves to the cause of peace and freedom in the world, but maintaining the will and the capability to employ force remains indispensable toward that end. Our readiness to resort to force to defend our security and interests deters those who would use force for aggressive purposes.”
“My factories may make an end of war sooner than your congresses. The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops.”
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
“It is the object only of war that makes it honorable. And if there was ever a just war since the world began, it is this in which America is now engaged.”
“War involves in its progress such a train of unforeseen and unsupposed circumstances…that no human wisdom can calculate the end. It has but one thing certain, and that is to increase taxes.”
“Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon, but if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”
“A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood.”
“Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base.”
“The most vital quality a soldier can possess is self-confidence.”
“There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is: ‘To so use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum time.”
“Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.”
“If I were an American, as I am an Englishman, while a foreign troop was landed in my country, I never would lay down my arms—never—never—never! You cannot conquer America.”
“Our strategy to go after this army is very, very simple. First, we’re going to cut it off, and then we’re going to kill it.”
“Soldiers in any war will endure hardships with very little complaint if they sense that their commander cares what happens to them.”
“The surest way to prevent a war is not to fear it.”
“Above all, we must realize that no arsenal, or no weapon in the arsenals of the world, is so formidable as the will and moral courage of free men and women. It is a weapon our adversaries in today’s world do not have.”
“Nations do not mistrust each other because they are armed; they are armed because they mistrust each other.”
“Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.”
“Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong.”
“There is a homely adage which runs, ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far.’ If the American nation will speak softely and yet build and keep at a pitch of the highest training a thoroughly efficient navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.”
“Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.”
“It doesn’t take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.”
“The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace.”
“War is at best barbarism. … Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell.”
“You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”
“All’s fair in love and war.”
“It may seem frightening to toil in isolation—enduring jeers from the indispensable French, while American soldiers dodge bullets in Tikrit. But we can't wish evil away any more than we can wave a wand and liberate those living beneath the boot of despotism.”
: “My men, yonder are the Hessians. They were bought for seven pounds and ten pence a man. Are you worth more? Prove it. Tonight, the American flag floats from yonder hill or Molly Stark sleeps a widow!”
John Stark, (1728–1822), American general
“A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.”
“An army avoids strength and strikes weakness.”
“The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities. … It is best to win without fighting.”
“The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
“The guerrilla fights the war of the flea, and his military enemy suffers the dog’s disadvantages: too much to defend; too small, ubiquitous, and agile an enemy to come to grips with.”
“They said we were soft, that we would not fight, that we could not win. We are not a warlike nation. We do not go to war for gain or for territory; we go to war for principles, and we produce young men like these. I think I told every one of them that I would have rather have that medal, the Congressional Medal of Honor, than to be the President of the United States.”
“Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not materials that counts.”
“A peace that depends on fear is nothing but a suppressed war.”
“Let him who desires peace prepare for war.”
“No one starts a war — or rather, no one in his senses ought to do so — without first being clear in his mind what he intends to achieve by that war and how intends to conduct it.”
“War is not merely a political act, but also a political instrument, a continuation of political relations, a carrying out of the same by other means.”
“War is the province of danger, and therefore courage above all things is the first quality of a warrior.”
“Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.”
“If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.”
“The time is now near at hand which must probably determine whether Americans are to be freemen or slaves; whether they are to have any property they can call their own; whether their houses and farms are to be pillaged and destroyed, and themselves consigned to a state of wretchedness from which no human efforts will deliver them. The fate of unborn millions will now depend, under God, on the courage and conduct of this army. Our cruel and unrelenting enemy leaves us only the choice of brave resistance, or the most abject submission. We have, therefore, to resolve to conquer or die.”
“To be prepared for War is one of the most effectual means for preserving peace.”
“Without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive. And with it, everything honorable and glorious.”
“The world must be safe for democracy.”