Military History Quotes

Many opportunities have been lost and hundreds of valuable lives uselessly sacrificed for want of a strict observance of discipline. Its object is to enable an army to bring promptly into action the largest possible number of its men, in good order and under the control of their officers. Its effects are visible in all military history, which records the triumphs of discipline and courage far more frequently than those of numbers and resources.

If you go back into military history, the person who's leading the troops ought to be in with the troops and not just standing on the backline sending them into battle.

[General James Mattis] a very talented individual. He's - has a personal library of about 10,000 books and he's read most of them on military history and strategy and so forth.

House passes #dadt (don't ask don't tell) repeal. A step fwd on equality 4 gay Americans in military. History will judge those who tried 2 block passage on this.

We seem to know that international wars tend not to stop with their formal "peace treaties." We seem not to have thought enough about the difference between the large official events of political and military history and their overflow both into recognized effects and into the lives of unofficial people who suffer them.

I think one of the great disasters (in military history) is the way that the Second World War has become the defining reference point for every crisis and every conflict.

I love general history. That's all I read really. I don't read novels, I read history. I love it. I live in an area that's really rich in Civil War history. I live in Kentucky on a farm. A lot of revolution, a lot of military history I love.

A ship without Marines is like a garment without buttons.

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.

In the tradition of Black Hawk Down, Malcolm MacPherson vividly brings to life this harrowing story of courage, pathos, and war at its grittiest. For military history buffs, or those interested in the front lines of the war on terror, Roberts Ridge is a must read.

The sanctity of our battlefields, monuments, and veterans institutions is of utmost importance to preserve military history and pay respect to those who fought.

I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat.

Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

Christopher Lynch has made the best and the first careful translation of Machiavelli's Art of War. With useful notes, an excellent introduction, an interpretive essay, glossary, and index, it is a treasure for readers of military history and Renaissance thought as well as for lovers of Machiavelli.

Know the enemy and know yourself.

Live for something rather than die for nothing. —George Patton

Live for something rather than die for nothing.

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

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

The war with Iraq ... had to be one of the greatest non sequiturs in military history. Attacked by a gang composed largely of Islamic militants from Saudi Arabia, the United States countered by invading an unrelated country, and one of the most secular in the Middle East at that.

I've always been homeschooled, so doing it on set is kind of the same thing. My mom makes it very interactive - we'll get a book on chocolate and learn how to make it, or she will buy antique items. I love military history, the mechanics and strategy of it.

I was a pretty angry kid, and I got into military history largely as a way to vent my own anger. As I got older it narrowed down to a more specific focus on individual violence. I'm just trying to understand where it came from.

Part of what I loved - and love - about being around older people is the tangible sense of history they embody. I'm interested in military history, for instance, because both my grandfathers fought in World War II. I'm interested in writing because one of those grandfathers wrote books.

Lincoln made mistakes. Roosevelt made mistakes. Eisenhower made mistakes. The Battle of the Bulge was the biggest intelligence failure in American military history, much bigger than any in Vietnam or now. We didn't know that the Soviets were moving 400,000 or 500,000 troops. We missed it.

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

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

A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.

We have met the enemy and they are ours.

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour; at Omaha it held up the U.S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history.

Always forgive your enemies - nothing annoys them so much.

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never -- in nothing, great or small, large or petty -- never give in, except to convictions of honor and good sense.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

All the forms of civil polity have been tried by mankind, except one, and that seems to have been reserved in Providence to be realized in America. Most of the states, of all ages ...have been founded in rapacity, usurpation, and injustice; so that in the contests recorded in history ...the military history of all nations being but a description of the wars and invasions of the mutual robbers and devastators of the human race.

**** the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.