Military Leader Quotes

Serious research and development efforts are required to produce technologies, strategies, organizations, and trained personnel who can go into failed states, work with our allies and friends, and promote the political and economic reforms that will meet popular needs and reduce the sources of terrorism and conflict.

Only a fighting nation can make itself responsible for world peace, and such a nation must organize its material resources and manpower with the highest possible degree of efficiency.

Chiang Kai-shek

I had not forgotten the way to reconquer it [Urbino].

The bomb will not start a chain-reaction in the water converting it all to gas and letting all the ships on all the oceans drop down to the bottom. It will not blow out the bottom of the sea and let all the water run down the hole. It will not destroy gravity. I am not an atomic playboy, as one of my critics labeled me, exploding these bombs to satisfy my personal whim.

William H. P. Blandy

Parachuting has taught us to be strong, and only those are needed by our country

Stanisław Sosabowski

1. Political officials and leaders are to be liquidated.
2. Insofar as they are captured by the troops, an officer with authority to impose disciplinary punishment decides whether the given individual must be liquidated. For such a decision the fact suffices that he is a political official.
3. Political leaders in the troops (Red Army) are not recognized as prisoners of war and are to be liquidated at the latest in the prisoner-of-war transit camps.

Walter Warlimont

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

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

If they turn on their radars we're going to blow up their goddamn SAMs [surface-to- air missiles]. They know we own their country. We own their airspace…We dictate the way they live and talk. And that's what's great about America right now. It's a good thing, especially when there's a lot of oil out there we need.

William R. Looney III

Service in this business is tough and often dangerous. It extracts a price for participants, and that price can be high. It is tempting to protect yourself from the personal and professional cost of loss by limiting how much you commit, how much you believe and trust in people, and how deeply you care… If I had it to do over again, I'd do some things in my career differently, but not many. I believed in people and I still believe in them. I trusted and I still trust. I cared and I still care. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

Stanley A. McChrystal

It's morning now. We're going to attack the Zhao camp and have a grand feast there this afternoon.

Troops without ammunition or food. Effective command no longer possible. 18,000 wounded without any supplies or dressings or drugs. Further defence senseless. Collapse inevitable. Army requests immediate permission to surrender in order to save lives of remaining troops.

Friedrich Paulus

Don't tell them anything. When it's over, tell them who won.

The United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.

George Marshall

If Paulus's army had capitulated before the end, the Russians would have had the advantage of withdrawing forces against Paulus and against the southern front, where I had only two Romanian armies. Therefore, the resistance of the Sixth German Army, even to the death of the last man, was necessary.

Erich von Manstein

I have served the Government of China for many years, first the Emperor, and after that the Republican Government at Nanking. I have always tried to do my best; but I must have committed errors—- though I do not know what they were—-or this misfortune would not have befallen me. I have lost face.

Without establishing national laws, how can you suppress the rebellion?

Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy of Macedonia has received you hospitably.

Alexander I of Macedon

There can be no doubt that if we had been victorious on the Vistula, the revolutionary fires would have reached the entire continent.

Mikhail Tukhachevsky

There will be no withdrawal without written orders and these orders shall never be issued.

Absolute liberty of military action in time of war is an indispensable condition of military success.... It is a gratuitous illusion to suppose that modern war does not demand far more brutality, far more violence, and an action far more general than was formerly the case.

Julius von Hartmann

A soldier's first duty is to obey, otherwise you might as well do away with soldiering.

Albert Kesselring

Engage in combat fully determined to die and you will be alive; wish to survive in the battle and you will surely meet death.

Ah, my faith! I know nothing about it; I am my own ancestor.

Jean-Andoche Junot

Courage! Do not fall back; in a little the place will be yours. Watch! When the wind blows my banner against the bulwark, you shall take it.