Ferdinand Foch Quotes

27 Sourced Quotes

The will to conquer is the first condition of victory.

Ferdinand Foch
The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.

Ferdinand Foch
[Airplanes] are interesting toys, but of no military value.

Ferdinand Foch
This absence of similarity among military questions naturally brings out the inability of memory to solve them; also the sterility of invariable forms, such as figures, geometrical drawings ( épures ), plans ( schémas ), etc. One only right solution imposes itself:;: namely, the application, varying according to circumstances, of fixed principles.

Ferdinand Foch
I am conscious of having served England as I served my own country.

Ferdinand Foch
My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking.

Ferdinand Foch
To inform, and, therefore to reconnoitre, this is the first and constant duty of the advanced guard.

Ferdinand Foch
An army is to a chief what a sword is to a soldier. It is only worth anything in so far as it receives from him a certain impulsion (direction and vigour).

Ferdinand Foch
Men called to the conduct of troops should prepare themselves to deal with cases more and more varied upon an ever-increasing horizon of experience. They can only be given the capacity to arrive at a prompt and judicious position by developing in them through study their power of analysis and of synthesis; that is, of conclusion in a purely objective sense, conclusion upon problems which have been actually lived and taken from real history. Thus also can they be founded through the conviction that comes from knowledge in a confidence sufficient to enable them to take such decisions upon the field of action.

Ferdinand Foch
A war not only arises, but derives its nature, from the political ideas, the moral sentiments, and the international relations obtaining at the moment when it breaks out.
This amounts to saying : try and know why and with the help of what you are going to act; then you will find out how to act.

Ferdinand Foch
My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, situation excellent, I am attacking.

Ferdinand Foch
To be disciplined does not mean being silent, abstaining, or doing only what one thinks one may undertake without risk; it is not the art of eluding responsibility; it means acting in compliance with orders received, and therefore finding in one's own mind, by effort and reflection, the possibility to carry out such orders. It also means finding in one's own will the energy to face the risks involved in execution.

Ferdinand Foch
The laurels of victory are at the point of the enemy bayonets. They must be plucked there; they must be carried by a hand-to-hand fight if one really means to conquer.

Ferdinand Foch
Against what should fire be opened? Against the obstacles which may delay the march of infantry.
The first obstacle is the enemy gun. It will be the first objective assigned to artillery masses.

Ferdinand Foch
The military art is not an accomplishment, an art for dilettante, a sport. You do not make war without reason, without an object, as you would give yourself up to music, painting, hunting, lawn tennis, where there is no great harm done whether you stop altogether or go on, whether you do little or much. Everything in war is linked together, is mutually interdependent, mutually interpenetrating. When you are at war you have no power to act at random. Each operation has a raison d'etre, that is an object; that object, once determined, fixes the nature and the value of the means to be resorted to as well as the use which ought to be made of the forces.

Ferdinand Foch
In war there are none but particular cases; everything has there an individual nature; nothing ever repeats itself.
In the first place, the data of a military problem are but seldom certain; they are never final. Everything is in a constant state of change and reshaping.

Ferdinand Foch
Far from being a sum of distinct and partial results, victory is the consequence of efforts, some of which are victorious while others appear to be fruitless, which nevertheless all aim at a common goal, all drive at a common result: namely, at a decision, a conclusion which alone can provide victory.

Ferdinand Foch
The truth is, no study is possible on the battle-field; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows. Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well.

Ferdinand Foch
The distribution of troops devoted to the defence of a place includes a garrison, an occupying force, numerically as weak as possible; a reserve as strong as possible, designed for counterattacking and for providing itself, at the moment it goes into action, with a security service which will guard it from any possible surprise.

Ferdinand Foch
There is but one means to extenuate the effects of enemy fire: it is to develop a more violent fire oneself.

Ferdinand Foch
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.

Ferdinand Foch
The power to command has never meant the power to remain mysterious.

Ferdinand Foch
What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all of the armies of Europe.

Ferdinand Foch
This is not a peace treaty, it is an armistice for twenty years.

Ferdinand Foch
In a time such as ours when people believe they can do without an ideal, cast away what they call abstract ideas, live on realism, rationalism, positivism, reduce everything to knowledge or to the use of more or less ingenious and casual devices — let us acknowledge it here — in such a time there is only one means of avoiding error, crime, disaster, of determining the conduct to be followed on a given occasion — but a safe means it is, and a fruitful one; this is the exclusive devotion to two abstract notions in the field of ethics: duty and discipline; such a devotion, if it is to lead to happy results, further implies besides… knowledge and reasoning.

Ferdinand Foch