Douglas MacArthur Quotes

My father had risen in the British Army under the revolutionary aegis of General Montgomery, who was mad about training for battle, not muddling into disaster.

I think with the Romans, that the general of today should be a soldier tomorrow if necessary.

A commander in chief with military experience might be able to prod a conservative military into thinking more imaginatively.

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

No general in the midst of battle has a great discussion about what he is going to do if defeated.

We don’t need corporate generals. We need warrior generals…. Many of our military leaders are like car designers who have never driven a car….they go along to get along.

You have to give the soldiers, the Army, a clear vision.

[James Mattis] is a student of history. He's a strategic thinker.

A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought… but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands.

Oh, I am heartily tired of hearing about what Lee is going to do. Some of you always seem to think he is suddenly going to turn a double somersault, and land in our rear and on both of our flanks at the same time. Go back to your command, and try to think what are we going to do ourselves, instead of what Lee is going to do.

The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat: - let such a one be dismissed!

The only way to form an army to be confided in, was a systematic discipline, by which means all men may be made heroes.

Often times the best military leaders were soldiers.

Great armies are nothing but a collection of weakness.

NAPOLEON: What shall we do with this soldier, Giuseppe? Everything he says is wrong. GIUSEPPE: Make him a general, Excellency, and then everything he says will be right.

The truth is, no study is possible on the battle-field; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows . Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well.

Any clever person can make plans for winning a war if he has no responsibility for carrying them out.

No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.

Not for the first time, he wished he commanded a highly trained bunch of soldiers instead of a ragtag mob of rejects in varying stages of alcoholism.

A military mindset is objectively analyzing a planned course of action and anticipating the likely consequences before you take that action.

In warfare, first lay plans which will ensure victory, and then lead your army to battle; if you will not begin with stratagem but rely on brute strength alone, victory will no longer be assured.

Now an army is exposed to six several calamities, not arising from natural causes, 1 but from faults for which the general is responsible. These are: (1) Flight; (2) insubordination; (3) collapse; (4) ruin; (5) disorganisation; (6) rout.

It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other.

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

Our poetry emulates the recent progress in military strategy: Our army's strength is the foot soldiers.