Military Quotations

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Ralph's Favorite Military Quotations
Quotations, wit, and wisdom from great military leaders and simple soldiers. Do you have a quote or a short annadote with sharing? Then please e-mail the WEBMASTER and send it in.

Sweat saves blood, blood saves lives, and brains save both.

       - Erwin Rommel

Don't fight a battle if you don't gain anything by winning.

       - Erwin Rommel

In the absence of orders, go find something and kill it.

       - Erwin Rommel

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

       - Dwight D. Eisenhower

We cant all be heros. Some of us have to stand on the curb and clap as they go by.

       - Will Rogers

If anyone attempts to haul down the Flag, shoot him on the spot.

       - John Adams Dix (Civil War General and Governor of NY)

When in doubt -- Attack. If you don't succeed -- attack again.

        - LTC Ralph Huber

If we don't know what we are doing, the enemy certainly can't anticipate our future actions!

        - 1st Canadian Division Staff Officer (WWII)

In any problem where an opposing force exists and cannot be regulated, one must foresee and provide for alternative courses. adaptability is the law which governs survival in war as in life ... To be practical, any plan must take account of the enemy's power to frustrate it; the best chance of overcoming such obstruction is to have a plan that can be easily varied to fit the circumstances met;

- Sir Basil H. Liddell-Hart

I only want you to work half days -- Just tell me which twelve hour shift you want.

-Craig Scrivner

If it doesn't grow -- pick it up. If it doesn't move -- Paint it!

-SGM Conrad Watson

A good battle plan that you act on today can be better than a perfect one tomorrow.

- Gen George S. Patton

You don’t know how much Blood I have shed for this country… theirs not mine…

-George Fasulo, CSM (Retired)

Don’t tell me why…just show me the bones

-SGM Conrad Watson

FRONT towards the Enemy.

-Instruction printed on Claymore Mine

You make a living by what you get, you make a life by what you give

-Winston Churchill

Don’t coddle them… break them down like a shot gun they’ll shoot straighter.

- SGM Conrad Watson

Bravery is being the only one who knows you're afraid.

- David Hackworth Link

Confusion in battle is what pain is in childbirth - the natural order of things.

- General Maurice Tugwell

I don’t want to hear about the labor pains, just show me the baby

-Craig Scrivner

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

- Dwight D Eisenhower

No person what ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.

-Calvin Coolidge

I think we consider too much the good luck of the early bird and not enough the bad luck of the early worm.

- Franklin D. Roosevelt

If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly.

- David Hackworth

Leadership is the art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it.

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

The beatings will continue until morale improves.

The reason the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices it on a daily basis.

- Attributed to an unknown German General Officer after WWII

Leadership is finding out what the troops like and taking it away.

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

- Charles De Gaulle

We sleep safely in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would harm us.

- George Orwell

From time to time, the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots.

-Thomas Jefferson

War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over.

-William Tecumseh Sherman

War is the continuation of policy(politics) by other means.

- Karl von Clausewitz

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.

- Georges Clemenceau

The 'eathen in 'is blindness must end where 'e began. But the backbone of the Army is the non-commissioned man!

-Rudyard Kipling

We never fail when we try to do our duty, we always fail when we neglect to do it

-Sir Robert Baden-Powell

Some people live an entire lifetime and wonder if they have ever made a difference in the world, but the Marines don't have that problem

- Ronald Reagan

In war, only the simple succeeds.

-Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

-George Patton

Always forgive your enemies--nothing annoys them so much.

-Oscar Wilde

The only difference between the Cub Scouts and the Army is that the Cub Scouts have adult supervision

- Anonymous

Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.

-Ferdinand Foch