Tag: George Patton

Famous Leadership Quotes

Posted on January 19, 2011 by

Do not follow where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. – Harold R. McAlindon

Leadership: The art of getting someone else to do something you want done because he wants to do it. – Dwight D. Eisenhower

There go the people. I must follow them for I am their leader. – Alexandre Ledru-Rollin

What chance gathers she easily scatters. A great person attracts great people and knows how to hold them together. – Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him. – General Douglas MacArthur

The real leader has no need to lead– he is content to point the way. – Henry Miller

Go to the people. Learn from them. Live with them. Start with what they know. Build with what they have. The best of leaders when the job is done, when the task is accomplished, the people will say we have done it ourselves. – Lao Tzu

A leader is a dealer in hope. – Napoleon Bonaparte

Rely on your own strength of body and soul. Take for your star self-reliance, faith, honesty and industry. Don’t take too much advice — keep at the helm and steer your own ship, and remember that the great art of commanding is to take a fair share of the work. Fire above the mark you intend to hit. Energy, invincible determination with the right motive, are the levers that move the world. – Noah Porter

If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader. – John Quincy Adams

He who has never learned to obey cannot be a good commander. – Aristotle

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy. – Martin Luther King, Jr. (from Christian Leadership World)

Any one can hold the helm when the sea is calm. – Publilius Syrus

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

Where there is no vision, the people perish. – Proverb

Misfortunes, untoward events, lay open, disclose the skill of a general, while success conceals his weakness, his weak points. –Horace

In this world a man must either be an anvil or hammer. – Henry W. Longfellow

I light my candle from their torches. – Robert Burton

Leadership does not always wear the harness of compromise. – Woodrow Wilson

The greater a man is in power above others, the more he ought to excel them in virtue. None ought to govern who is not better than the governed. – Publius Syrus

A bold onset is half the battle. – Giuseppe Garibaldi

The power is detested, and miserable the life, of him who wishes to be feared rather than to be loved. – Cornelius Nepos

To be a great leader and so always master of the situation, one must of necessity have been a great thinker in action. An eagle was never yet hatched from a goose’s egg. – James Thomas

Ill can he rule the great that cannot reach the small. – Edmund Spenser

He who has learned how to obey will know how to command. – Solon

When I give a minister an order, I leave it to him to find the means to carry it out. – Napoleon Bonaparte

No man can stand on top because he is put there. – H. H. Vreeland

A ruler should be slow to punish and swift to reward. – Ovid

It is impossible to imagine anything which better becomes a ruler than mercy. – Seneca

No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. – Abraham Lincoln

What you cannot enforce do not command. – Sophocles

No general can fight his battles alone. He must depend upon his lieutenants, and his success depends upon his ability to select the right man for the right place. – Philip Armour

To do great things is difficult; but to command great things is more difficult. – Friedrich Nietzsche

It is absurd that a man should rule others, who cannot rule himself. (Absurdum est ut alios regat, qui seipsum regere nescit.) – Latin Proverb

Let him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself. – Thomas Carlyle

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible. – Polybius

Military Quotes

Posted on November 18, 2010 by

The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave… –Patrick Henry

Victory belongs to the most persevering. –Napoleon Bonaparte

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

We have met the enemy and they are ours! –Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry, 1813

Veni, Vedi, Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) –Julius Caesar

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. The person 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. –John Stewart Mill

War is cruelty. There’s no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over. –William Tecumseh Sherman

Freedom isn’t free. –Anonymous

Never give in–never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, 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. –Winston Churchill

If it moves, salute it; if it doesn’t move, pick it up; and if you can’t pick it up, paint it. –Anonymous (1940’s saying)

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

Soldiers are men…most apt for all manner of services and best able to support and endure the infinite toils and continual hazards of war. –Henry Knyvett

A soldier is he whose blood makes the glory of the general. –Adapted from Henry G. Bohn

Army: A body of men assembled to rectify the mistakes of the diplomats. –Josephus Daniels

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

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

A young man who does not have what it takes to perform military service is not likely to have what it takes to make a living. –John F. Kennedy

A ship without Marines is like a garment without buttons. –Admiral David D. Porter, USN

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

Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are in finishing it. –Will Rogers

Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war. –Thucydides

Soldiers usually win the battles and generals get the credit for them. –Napoleon Bonaparte

We make war that we may live in peace. –Aristotle

In war there is no substitute for victory. –General Douglas MacArthur

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. –Ernest Miller Hemmingway

The number of medals on an officer’s breast varies in inverse proportion to the square of the distance of his duties from the front line. –Charles Edward Montague

Always forgive your enemies–nothing annoys them so much. –Oscar Wilde

Being in the army is like being in the Boy Scouts, except that the Boy Scouts have adult supervision.–Blake Clark

Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy.–Helvetius

Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier. –Samuel Johnson

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

Now I recall the Recon Marines ragged, filthy cammie shirted young men in green paint who move silent like the fog with deadly purpose in their eyes. Swift, Silent, Deadly. I smile. –GYSGT Correll, USMC, Retired Recon Marine

Hard pressed on my right. My center is yielding. Impossible to maneuver. Situation excellent. I am attacking.–Ferdinand Foch at the Battle of the Marne

War Quotes

Posted on October 14, 2010October 9, 2010 by

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein

“May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t.” – George Patton

“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” – Jeannette Rankin

“There never was a good war or a bad peace.” – Benjamin Franklin

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless whether the mad destruction is brought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?” – Mahatma Gandhi

“There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.” – Dwight Eisenhower

“It is well that war is so terrible – otherwise we would grow too fond of it.” – Robert E. Lee

“War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.” – Thomas Mann

“Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn’t every war fought between men, between brothers?” – Victor Hugo

“My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.” – George Washington