15 Famous Quotes About War

[Schmedlap]

"My logisticians are a humorless lot... they know that if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay." - Alexander the Great

“I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. In the time it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our place.” – Mustafa Kemal, 25 April 1915, organizing the successful defense of Ari Burnu during the Gallipoli campaign of WWI

“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.” – Sir Charles Napier, British General in India

"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials - after the fact." Robert E. Lee, 1863

"But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other." - John Stuart Mill

[Uboat509]

"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials - after the fact." Robert E. Lee, 1863

I wish that General Petraeus had said this. It seems to ring all the more true now.

SFC W

[Stan]

"Rünnak on parim kaitse"

"Attack is the best defense"

No one here knows who said it, but some claim it was originally quoted by Eisenhower.

[Mark O'Neill]

My Lord,
If I attempted to answer the mass of futile correspondence which surrounds me, I should be debarred from the serious business of campaigning...
So long as I retain an independent position, I shall see no officer under my command is debarred by attending to the futile driveling of mere quill-driving from attending to his first duty, which is and always has been to train the private men under his command that they may without question beat any force opposed to them in the field.
- Letter to the Secretary of State for War during the Peninsular Campaign

[Rob Thornton]

"There are plenty of hard working men who are dead, but not many lucky ones, but you know - the harder I work, the luckier I get"

"There are no lessons learned, only lessons available"

LTC(R) Darryl D. Schoening 1/24th IN

Both of those have stuck with me - Semper Paratus. Best, Rob