Military Quotes

“Go, bid the soldiers shoot.”

“Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.”

“We proceeded systematically, village by village and we destroyed the houses, filled up the wells, blew down the towers, cut down the shady trees, burned the crops and broke the reservoirs in punitive devastation.”

“Make sure that the beer - four pints a week - goes to the troops under fire before any of the parties in the rear get a drop.”

“Indomitable in retreat, invincible in advance; insufferable in victory.”

“Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.”

“Victory is the beautiful, bright-colored flower. Transport is the stem without which it could never have blossomed.”

“We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.”

“This war proceeds along its terrible path by the slaughter of infantry...I say to myself every day. What is going on while we sit here, while we go away to dinner or home to bed? Nearly, 1000 - Englishmen, Britishers, and the other is America...Everything else is swept away.”

“The Golcondas were considered incomparably the best team in Southern India ... [But] we defeated [them] by 9 goals to 3. On succeeding days we made short work of all other opponents, and established the record, never since broken, of winning a first-class tournament within fifty days of landing in India.”

“The whole of northern Norway was covered with snow to depths which none of our soldiers had ever seen, felt, or imagined. There were neither snow-shoes nor skis - still less skiers. We must do our best. Thus began this ramshackle campaign.”

“We hoped to land a wild cat that would tear out the bowels of the Boche. Instead we have stranded a vast whale with its tail flopping about in the water.”

“...every offensive lost its force as it proceeded. It was like throwing a bucket of water over the floor. It first rushed forward, then soaked forward, and finally stopped altogether until another bucket could be brought.”

“In battles two things are usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and, secondly, to keep a strong reserve.”

“The tank was originally invented to clear a way for the infantry in the teeth of machine-gun fire. Now it is the infantry who will have to clear a way for the tanks.”

“... I think it would be so much better for me to learn something which would be useful to me in the army, as well as affording me exercise and amusement.”

“Put together a seaman, soldier and airman and what do you get? The sum of all fears.”

“I am not one of those who believe that a great standing army is the means of maintaining peace, because if you build up a great profession those who form parts of it want to exercise their profession.”

“I believe that soldiers will bear me out in saying that both come in time of battle. I take it that the moral courage comes in going into the battle, and the physical courage in staying in.”

“There is required for the composition of a great commander not only massive common sense and reasoning power, not only imagination, but also an element of legerdemain, an original and sinister touch, which leaves the enemy puzzled as well as beaten.”

“It has not fallen to your lot to command great armies. You had to create them, organize them and inspire them.”

“...We are intensely proud of their noble record and are glad to have had the whole world see how irresistible they are in their might when a cause which America holds dear is at stake. The whole nation has reason to be proud of them.”

“Building slow destroyers ! One might as well breed slow race horses.”

“Luckily ... there were Zulus and Afghans, also the Dervishes in the Soudan. Some of these might, if they were well-disposed, 'put up a show' some day.”

“We must be very careful not to assign this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations”