Army Quotes

The ideal army would be the one in which every officer would know what he ought to do in every contingency; the best possible army is the one that comes closest to this. I give myself only half the credit for the battles I have won, and a general gets enough credit when he is named at all, for the fact is that a battle is won by the army.

Victory and disaster establish indestructible bonds between armies and their commanders.

The first qualification of a soldier is fortitude under fatigue and privation. Courage is only the second; hardship, poverty, and want are the best school of the soldier.

The army is the true nobility of our country.

Two of my Marshalls are racing to get under their orders the Italian troops; i leave it to Suchet who has better ambitions than Macdonald. The Italians will soon be recognized again as the first soldiers of Europe. I'm very proud of my brave Italian army.

You have already been informed of my arrival on the borders of the Red Sea, with an innumerable and invincible Army, full of the desire of delivering you from the iron yoke of England. I eagerly embrace this opportunity of testifying to you the desire I have of being informed by you, by the way of Muscat and Mocha, as to your political situation. I would even wish you could send some intelligent person to Suez or Cairo, possessing your confidence, with whom I may confer. May the Almighty increase your power and destroy your enemies.

The art of war consists in being always able, even with an inferior army, to have stronger forces than the enemy at the point of attack or the point which is attacked.

The most desirable quality in a soldier is constancy in the support of fatigue; valor is only secondary.

Turks can be killed, but they can never be conquered.

If you build an army of 100 lions and their leader is a dog, in any fight, the lions will die like a dog. But if you build an army of 100 dogs and their leader is a lion, all dogs will fight as a lion.

When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.

Cossacks are the best light troops among all that exist. If I had them in my army, I would go through all the world with them.

Every private in the French army carries a Field Marshall wand in his knapsack.

Two armies are two bodies which meet and try to frighten each other.

The frontiers of nations are either large rivers, or chains of mountains, or deserts. Of all these obstacles to the march of an army, deserts are the most difficult to surmount; mountains come next; and large rivers hold only the third rank.

The strength of an army, like the momentum in mechanics, is estimated by the weight multiplied by the velocity. A rapid march exerts a beneficial moral influence on the army and increases its means of victory.

An army should have but a single line of operations which it should carefully preserve, and should abandon only when compelled by imperious circumstances.

Nothing is so contrary to military rules as to make the strength of your army known, either in the orders of the day, in proclamations, or in the newspapers.

As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense, that always will our whole nation remember the character of the onslaught against us.

Once you have rid yourself of the fear of the oppressor and his prisons, his police, his army, there is nothing that they can do. You are liberated.