British Military Leader Quotes

Horatio Nelson

Benedict Arnold

Charles James Napier

Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton

Orde Charles Wingate

Bertram Ramsay

Frederick E. Morgan

The politics of courts are so mean that private people would be ashamed to act in the same way; all is trick and finesse, to which the common cause is sacrificed.

If a man divides the whole of his work into two branches and delegates his responsibility, freely and properly, to two experienced heads of branches he will not have enough to do. The occasions when they would have to refer to him would be too few to keep him fully occupied. If he delegates to three heads he will be kept fairly busy whilst six heads of branches will give most bosses a ten hours' day. Those data are the results of centuries of the experiences of soldiers.

Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton

Sound opinion is not the exclusive prerogative of those who are paid to give it.

Frederick E. Morgan

Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom; prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs.

Charles James Napier

The drafts from the regiments at Ticonderoga are a miserable set; indeed the men on board the fleet, in general, are not equal to half their number of good men.

Benedict Arnold

The positions occupied by our troops presented a military situation unique in history. The force, in short, held a line possessing every possible military defect.

As a soldier who has spent a quarter of his life in the study of the science of arms, let me tell you I went into the British Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I believe now that if you prepare thoroughly and efficiently for war, you get war.

Frederick B. Maurice

O Lord! thou knowest how busy I must be this day: if I forget thee, do not thou forget me.

Jacob Astley, 1st Baron Astley of Reading

No army in the history of warfare has done more to avoid harming civilians in a combat zone than the Israel Defence Forces in Gaza.

Nowadays people seem to imagine that impartiality means readiness to treat lies and truth the same, readiness to hold white as bad as black and black as good as white. I, on the contrary, believe that without integrity a man had much better not approach a problem at all. I came here with an open mind and I testify that I have seen. I believe that righteousness exalteth a nation and righteousness does not mean playing off one side against the other while you guard your own interests.

Orde Charles Wingate

Our task in conjunction with the Merchant Navies of the United Nations, and supported by the Allied Air Forces, is to carry the Allied Expeditionary Force to the Continent, to establish it there in a secure bridgehead and to build it up and maintain it at a rate which will outmatch that of the enemy. Let no one underestimate the magnitude of this task.