Joe Haldeman Quotes

An army to be useful must be a unit, and out of this has grown the saying, attributed to Napoleon, but doubtless spoken before the days of Alexander, that an army with an inefficient commander was better than one with two able heads.

But the Air Force was sort of a bastard child of the Army, much like the Marines with the Navy. Everything had to be done over by the Army after it had already been done by the Air Corps, a mess.

An army is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. Every enactment, every change of rule which impairs this principle weakens the army, impairs its value, and defeats the very object of its existence.

It is the duty of every good officer to obey any orders given him by his commander in chief.

If our most highly qualified General Staff officers had been told to work out the most nonsensical high level organization for war which they could think of, they could not have produced anything more stupid that that which we have at present.

I don't like fantasy where a king snaps his fingers and suddenly a whole army appears and goes off to war - he's got to feed them, he's got to pay them, he's got to take care of the camp followers and the gamblers and the people who cause disorder.

…the Army stood in need of talent as never before… the whole department is unscientifically managed, over officered and wastefully conducted.

An army is not a deliberative body. It is the executive arm. Its law is that of obedience.

We have a nation with great wealth, willing to spend its money freely for the procurement of arms and munitions of war and supplies of all kinds. Nevertheless, no one can fail to see that there has been in the past, in the administration of the army, something which was out of joint. It is not necessary for me to go into the specification of details; for every one of us knows that whenever an exigency has come, confusion has come

War is best left to the Generals. I believe in letting the military authorities manage the army. If they manage it badly, we shall make a bad matter worse by tampering and interfering.

CIA is slowly turning into the Department of Agriculture. The agency has an advanced case of bureaucratic arteriosclerosis.

No American officer was a proven commander when we entered the First Word War I…. No one had ever commanded a large body of troops. General Pershing, who was selected, had only commanded a brigade in the Mexican war.

Good order and discipline in any army are to be depended upon more than courage alone.

The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one.

It would probably be a direct order, shape up your morale. And so he understands command. He understands how to delegate. And I think that [General John Kelly] will bring law and order.

We have good corporals and good sergeants and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals.

All power rests on hierarchy: An army is nothing but a well-organized lynch mob.

Discipline is the soul of an army.

An army is a nation within a nation, it is one of the vices of courage.

To make an Army work you have to have every man in it fitted into a fear ladder... The Army functions best when you're frightened of the man above you, and contemptuous of your subordinates.

The Army needs leaders the way a foot needs a big toe.

Most armies are in fact run by their sergeants - the officers are there just to give things a bit of tone and prevent warfare becoming a mere lower-class brawl.

Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.

Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties.

The army of relief and other subsidy recipients will continue to grow, and the solvency of the government will become increasingly un tenable, as long as part of the population can vote to force the other part to support it.