H. R. McMaster Quotes

I like generals. I like Napoleon. I like strategy. The majority of them are praised for mass destruction, but it's exciting to see how it comes to the mind mentally.

Read over and over again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene and Frederic. ... This is the only way to become a great general and master the secrets of the art of war.

We cannot change the hearts of the people of the South, but we can make war so terrible that they will realize the fact that however brave and gallant and devoted to their country still they are mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.

Truman fired the popular Gen. Douglas MacArthur because he disobeyed orders in the Korean War. Johnson knew that he had reached the endgame in Vietnam when Gen. William Westmoreland, the top commander in Vietnam, requested 240,000 more troops in 1968 for the prolonged war that also could not be won.

Not since Crassus and the campaign against the Parthaginians was there such an incompetent a general as Shafter….

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men.

It's important to study and understand your responsibilities within any profession, but it's particularly important for military officers to read, think, discuss, and write about the problem of war and warfare so they can understand not just the changes in the character of warfare but also the continuities.

War is a serious game in which a man risks his reputation, his troops, and his country. A sensible man will search himself to know whether or not he is fitted for the trade.

shane: so is world war fifteen over out there? claire:i think so

In his fairy dreams of war [Thaddeus] always made conquest the sure end of his battles.

Thus the highest form of generalship is to balk the enemy's plans, the next best is to prevent the junction of the enemy's forces, the next in order is to attack the enemy's army in the field, and the worst policy of all is to besiege walled cities.

Politics and war are remarkably similar situations.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

When you scan the globe's hot spots, every civil war and massacre, every act of terror and every clash between states has its unique local circumstances.

In time of war steamships and improved arms are the most important things.

War is the trade of Kings.

In strife who inquires whether stratagem or courage was used?

I have always had a keen interest in defence and military history and read more on this subject than anything else.

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

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.

In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.

I was born into Sudan's civil war, and before I could read or write, I was using an AK47 in the conflict between the Muslim north and Animist/Christian south over the land and natural resources.