Norman Schwarzkopf Quotes

I think as a rifle platoon and company commander your view is about 1,000 meters in front of you and you hope you can cover that ground and not have to back up and give it up again.

Of your own indefatigable labor from early dawn and of your explicit instructions, that the batteries should reserve their ammunition, until the grand charge should commence, for which the enemy were undoubtedly preparing.

I had my own battle tactics.

I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.

You cannot tell the enemy you're going to leave and expect the enemy to not - and expect to succeed. I mean, that's just a fundamental of warfare.

The Spartans do not inquire how many the enemy are, but where they are.

The Artillery Barrage: The last reasoning of Kings.

That's the secret, hit without getting hit.

We want to be sure that both NATO's territory and NATO soldiers are well protected. We need to make sure that there is the air defense and the air support for these forces in case that is necessary.

When two opposing sides meet in battle, the one without an enemy will be victorious.

Whoever is the first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy will be fresh for the fight... Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy... By holding out advantages to him, he can cause the enemy to approach of his own accord; or by inflicting damage, he can make it impossible for the enemy to draw near.

My philosophy is the same as a Samurai: To hit without getting hit.

I have every confidence in the ultimate success of our joint cause; but success in modern war requires something more than courage and a willingness to die: it requires careful preparation.

Artillery is more essential to cavalry than to infantry, because cavalry has no fire for its defence, but depends on the sabre.

A people [America] that does not prepare to fight should then be morally prepared to surrender. To fail to prepare soldiers and citizens for limited, bloody ground action, and then to engage in it, is folly verging on the criminal.

The People's Liberation Army should play the role of shock troops, overcoming fatigue and sharpening vigilance to make new contributions.

We never announced a scorched-earth policy; we never announced any policy at all, apart from finding and destroying the enemy, and we proceeded in the most obvious way. We used what was at hand, dropping the greatest volume of explosives in the history of warfare over all the terrain within the thirty-mile sector which fanned out from Khe Sanh. Employing saturation-bombing techniques, we delivered more than 110,000 tons of bombs to those hills during the eleven-week containment of Khe Sanh.

My skill didn't lie in planning battles, only in fighting them.

A certain grasp of military affairs is vital for those in charge of general policy.

There is but one means to extenuate the effects of enemy fire: it is to develop a more violent fire oneself.

The bow is tactically strong at the commencement of battle, especially battles on a moor, as it is possible to shoot quickly among the spearmen.

Well we always need brave, capable young men and women who can run a tactical operation and take risks on the battlefield but you should know when we need you to go in there, that if there's any other way to do it, that we could do this without risking your life, we wouldn't ask you to risk your life.

An army should always be so distributed that its parts can aid each other and combine to produce the maximum possible concentration of force at one place, while the minimum force necessary is used elsewhere to prepare the success of the concentration.

We were lavish of blood in those days, and it was thought to be a grand thing to charge a battery or an earth-work lined with infantry.

When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones. For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope; if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped to go rolling down.