Quotes by Military Leaders - Page 6

The only thing I am afraid of is fear.
Arthur Wellesley
It is easier to make our wishes conform to our means than to make our means conform to our wishes.
Robert E. Lee
Politics is too serious a matter to be left to the politicians.
Charles de Gaulle
The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
The devil's name is Dullness.
Robert E. Lee
Perpetual Optimism is a Force Multiplier.
Colin Powell
You don't know what you can get away with until you try.
Colin Powell
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
Colin Powell
To do all that one is able to do is to be a man to do all that one would like to do is to be a god.
Napoléon Bonaparte
To march over dead man, to hear without concern the groans of the wounded, I say few men can stand such scenes unless steeled by habit or fortified by military pride.
Nathanael Greene
In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Be courteous to all but intimate with few and let those few be well-tried before you give them your confidence.
George Washington
I am surrounded by priests who repeat incessantly that their kingdom is not of this world, and yet they lay hands on everything they can get.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Morale is the greatest single factor in successful wars.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Cadets can neither be treated as schoolboys or soldiers.
Robert E. Lee
A man's palate can in time become accustomed to anything.
Napoleon
The torment of precautions often exceeds the dangers to be avoided. It is sometimes better to abandon one's self to destiny.
Napoléon Bonaparte
I have never advocated war except as a means of peace.
Ulysses S. Grant
Men take only their needs into consideration never their abilities.
Napoléon Bonaparte
The history of free men is never written by chance but by choice - their choice.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
In politics, stupidity is not a handicap.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.
Colin Powell
Action not words are the true criterion of the attachment of friends.
George Washington
It is not in our hands to prevent the murder of workers… and families… but it is in our hands to fix a high price for our blood, so high that the Arab community and the Arab military forces will not be willing to pay it.
Moshe Dayan
As a rule what is out of sight disturbs men's minds more seriously than what they see.
Julius Caesar
It requires more courage to suffer than to die.
Napoleon
With audacity one can undertake anything.
Napoléon Bonaparte
An army of sheep led by a lion is better than an army of lions led by a sheep.
Alexander the Great
Read history, works of truth, not novels and romances
Robert E. Lee
I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me.
Arthur Wellesley
Men of learning in Milan have not enjoyed proper respect. They hid themselves in their laboratories and thought themselves lucky if . . . priests left them alone. All is changed today. Thought in Italy is free. Inquisition, intolerance, despots have vanished. I invite scholars to meet and propose what must be done to give science and the arts a new flowering.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Next to a battle lost, the greatest misery is a battle gained.
Arthur Wellesley
In each succeeding war there is a tendency to proclaim as something new the principles under which it is conducted. Not only those who have never studied or experienced the realities of war, but also professional soldiers frequently fall into the error. But the principles of warfare as I learned them at West Point remain unchanged.
John J. Pershing
If they want peace nations should avoid the pin-pricks that precede cannon-shots.
Napoleon
Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich.
Napoléon Bonaparte
If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.
OMAR N. BRADLEY
Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
Arthur Wellesley
Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers.
Alexander the Great
It is preposterous to suppose that the people of one generation can lay down the best and only rules of government for all who are to come after them, and under unforeseen contingencies.
Ulysses S. Grant
I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy but by God they frighten me.
Duke of Wellington
The art of governing consists in not letting men grow old in their jobs.
Napoléon Bonaparte
History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live.
Douglas MacArthur
They seemed so united that I loved them as one person." Lee wrote of his son and daughter-in-law on his daughter-in-law's death.
Robert E. Lee
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.
George Washington
I was admonished to adopt feminine clothes; I refused, and still refuse. As for other avocations of women, there are plenty of other women to perform them.
Jeanne d'Arc
Pessimism never won any battle.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
Hence, likewise, they will avoid the necessity of those overgrown military establishments, which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty, and which are to be regarded as particularly hostile to Republican Liberty. In this sense it is, that your Union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
George Washington
Soldiers forty centuries are looking down upon you from these pyramids.
Napoleon
Damn it, how will I ever get out of this labyrinth?
Simon Bolivar
Fear that man who fears not God.
Abd-el-Kader
If I had to choose a religion, the sun as the universal giver of life would be my god.
Napoléon Bonaparte
Labor disgraces no man unfortunately you occasionally find men who disgrace labor.
Ulysses S. Grant
God made them as stubble to our swords.
Oliver Cromwell
It is better to be alone than in bad company.
George Washington
Statesmanship is developed in the hard knocks of general experience, private and public.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights. For happily the government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction - to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens.
George Washington
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
In order to become the master the politician poses as the servant.
Charles de Gaulle