George S. Patton Quotes

Discipline can only be obtained when all the officers are imbued with the sense of their awful obligation to their men and to their country that they cannot tolerate negligence. Officers who fail to correct errors or to praise excellence are valueless in peace and dangerous misfits in war.

You hire a chief executive, pay him, and hold him accountable after a year or two. The time for so-called honorary jobs is over. What Pakistan squash needs is results, and that can only be achieved by professionals.

If I am incompetent, I am useless, the people of India will see that.

I'm not the manager because I'm always right, but I'm always right because I'm the manager.

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

Let them police themselves, and then it goes another step past them to my coaches and there a coach that is responsible for a different area and different category on the field.

I had 16 other prisons that I needed to pay attention to, and we did. And I had 3,400 soldiers who were depending on me to take care of them, and I did.

I wasn’t hired to do well in the polls. I was hired to do a good job.

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

Goddammit, he looks like a loser to me …. When I had an officer like that in World War II, I relieved him.

Very few men occupy themselves with the higher problems of war...when they arrive at the command of armies they are totally ignorant, and, in default of knowing what should be done, they do what they know.

We have good soldiers but crummy generals.

The good general makes good soldiers.

You can have no idea of the spirit which animates our military officers. They are no longer the men you knew. They are men who have fought for years and believe themselves superior; and yet they are humiliated and impoverished, with no hope of enjoying the fruits of the work of their lances. They are often resolute llaneros, ignorant men who think themselves superior to those of greater accomplishments. Even I, who have always been at their head, cannot say of what they might be capable. I treat them with the greatest consideration, but it doesn’t seem to inspire them with the spirit which ought to exist among comrades and fellow citizens. Believe me... we are over a volcano about to erupt. I fear peace even more than I fear war.

If heads don’t roll, nobody makes any changes

Real leadership recognizes the effect of the decisions you make on the people at the bottom.

My generation has failed miserably. We've failed because of lack of courage and vision. It requires more courage to keep the peace than to go to war.

Statesman only talk of fate when they have blundered

Trust is equal parts character and competence... You can look at any leadership failure, and it's always a failure of one or the other.

Leaders, whether in the family, in business, in government, or in education, must not allow themselves to mistake intentions for accomplishments .

Can those entrusted with the gravest authority set any example save that of the sternest obedience to the law?

New Rule: Someone has to tell Francesco Schettino that embracing a callous policy of "every man for himself" doesn't make you a sea captain. It makes you the Republican nominee.

the point of educating instead of blaming seems to me very important. For nothing stultifies one more than being blamed. Moreover, if the question is, who is to blame?, perhaps each will want to place the blame on someone else, or on the other hand, someone may try to shield his fellow-worker. In either case the attempt is to hide the error and if this is done the error cannot be corrected.

Be both a speaker of words and a doer of deeds.

He was constantly on me about the job that I was to do and the responsibility that I had upon the campus. And how I must be able to carry myself because people were looking.