Military Quotes

Our real problem, then, is not our strength today; it is rather the vital necessity of action today to ensure our strength tomorrow. What I have just said applies to our strength as a single country.

As with our military potential, our economic assets are more than equal to the task. Our independent farmers produce an abundance of food and fibre. Our free workers are versatile, intelligent, and hardworking. Our businessmen are imaginative and resourceful. The productivity, the adaptability of the American economy is the solid foundation-stone of our security structure.

A nation with a strong defence industry will not only be more secure. It will also reap rich economic benefits - it can boost investment, expand manufacturing, support enterprise, raise the technology level and increase economic growth in the country.

Keeping technology at the forefront, we need to further speed up our defence programme & keep pace with the world.

When people have a sense of our military capability, nobody will ever dare to cast an evil eye on our nation.

Where the Government is weak, military sway prevails.

An order that can be misunderstood, will be misunderstood.

I know he's a good general, but is he lucky?

If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.... I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

The knowledge of higher leadership can only be acquired by the study of military history and actual experience. There are no hard and fast rules; everything depends on the plans of the general, the condition of the troops, the season of the year, and a thousand other circumstances, which have the effect that no one case will ever resemble another.

You must be a soldier, and then a soldier, and again a soldier; bivouac with your advance guard, be in the saddle night and day, march with your advance guard to have the latest information, or else stay in your harem. You make war like a satrap. Good God, is it from me that you have learned that? From me who, with an army of 200,000 men, am at the head of my skirmishers?

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.

A military leader must possess as much character as intellect. Men who have a great deal of intellect and little character are the least suited; they are like a ship whose masts are out of proportion to the ballast; it is preferable to have much character and little intellect. Those men whose intellect is mediocre and whose character is in proportion are likely to succeed in their profession. The base must equal the height.

A general's principal talent consists in knowing the mentality of the soldier and in gaining his confidence.

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.

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.

A soldier will fight long and hard for a bit of coloured ribbon.

You must not fear death, my lads; defy him, and you drive him into the enemy's ranks.

I make my battle plans from the spirit of my sleeping soldiers.