Authors
Topics
Lists
Pictures
Resources
More about Ferdinand Foch
Ferdinand Foch Quotes
27 Sourced Quotes
Source
Report...
The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
The will to conquer is the first condition of victory.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
This is not a peace treaty, it is an armistice for twenty years.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
The power to command has never meant the power to remain mysterious.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
My center is giving way, my right is pushed back, situation excellent, I am attacking.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
What you did was the greatest thing accomplished by any private soldier of all of the armies of Europe.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
If defeat comes from moral causes, victory may come from moral causes also, and one may say: 'A battle won is a battle we will not acknowledge to be lost.'
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
Every manoeuvre must be the development of a scheme; it must aim at a goal.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
To inform, and, therefore to reconnoitre, this is the first and constant duty of the advanced guard.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
There is but one means to extenuate the effects of enemy fire: it is to develop a more violent fire oneself.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
[Airplanes] are interesting toys, but of no military value.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
I am conscious of having served England as I served my own country.
Ferdinand Foch
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
Source
Report...
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
1
2
Quote of the day
A happy marriage is a long conversation that always seems too short.
André Maurois
Ferdinand Foch
Creative Commons
Born:
October 2, 1851
Died:
March 20, 1929
(aged 77)
Bio:
Marshal Ferdinand Jean Marie Foch was a French general and Marshal of France, Great Britain and Poland, a military theorist and the Allied titled Généralissime during the First World War.
Most used words:
victory
,
war
,
fire
,
power
,
knowledge
,
object
,
enemy
,
art
,
battle
,
military
,
conclusion
,
moral
,
field
,
nature
Ferdinand Foch on Wikipedia
Suggest an edit or a new quote
Ferdinand Foch Quotes
Ferdinand Foch Short Quotes
French Soldier Quotes
Soldier Quotes
19th-century Soldier Quotes
Related People
Philippe Pétain
French Political leader
Georges Clemenceau
French Politician
Erich Ludendorff
German Politician
Joseph Joffre
Featured Authors
Lists
Predictions that didn't happen
If it's on the Internet it must be true
Remarkable Last Words (or Near-Last Words)
Picture Quotes
Confucius
Philip James Bailey
Eleanor Roosevelt
Letitia Elizabeth Landon
Popular Topics
life
love
nature
time
god
power
human
mind
work
art
heart
thought
men
day
×
Lib Quotes