John Adams Quotes

Great armies are nothing but a collection of weakness.

Morale is good; troops are confident; leaders are capable.

He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.

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

When orders are consistently trustworthy and observed, the relationship of a commander with his troops is satisfactory.

Discipline is the soul of an army.

A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or an army, is expected to look backward as well as forward; but he must think only forward.

If a general shows confidence in his men but always insists on his orders being obeyed, the gain will be mutual.

The history of struggle is rich with stories of heroes and heroines - some of them leaders, some of them followers, all of them deserve to be remembered.

To say that there is a case for heroes is not to say that there is a case for hero worship. The surrender of decision, the unquestioning submission to leadership, the prostration of the average man before the Great Man -- these are the diseases of heroism, and they are fatal to human dignity. History amply shows that it is possible to have heroes without turning them into gods. And history shows, too, that when a society, in flight from hero worship, decides to do without great men at all, it gets into troubles of its own.

Heroes come along when you need them.

At the head of an army, nothing is more becoming than simplicity.

If soldiers are punished before they have grown attached to you, they will not prove submissive; and, unless submissive, then will be practically useless. If, when the soldiers have become attached to you, punishments are not enforced, they will still be unless.

A nation without heroes is nothing.

Have we the means of resisting disciplined armies, when our only defence, the militia, is put in the hands of Congress?

The commander must establish personal and comradely contact with his men, but without giving away one inch of authority.

Your Marines having been under my command for nearly six months, I feel that I can give you a discriminating report as to their excellent standing with their brothers of the army and their general good conduct.

If you don't believe your general, you're not going to go into battle knowing you're going to die.

If officers desire to have control over their commands, they must remain habitually with them, industriously attend to their instruction and comfort, and in battle lead them well.

In the last analysis, one must be a military man in order to govern. It is only with boot and spurs that one can govern a horse.

Heroes betray us. By having them, in real life, we betray ourselves.

Many opportunities have been lost and hundreds of valuable lives uselessly sacrificed for want of a strict observance of discipline. Its object is to enable an army to bring promptly into action the largest possible number of its men, in good order and under the control of their officers. Its effects are visible in all military history, which records the triumphs of discipline and courage far more frequently than those of numbers and resources.

There was always talk of espirit de corps, of being gung ho, and that must have been a part of it. Better, tougher training, more marksmanship on the firing range, the instant obedience to orders seared into men in boot camp.

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 prince must not have any objective nor any thought, nor take up any art, other than the art of war and its ordering and discipline; because it is the only art that pertains to him who commands. And it is of such virtue that not only does it maintain those who were born princes, but many times makes men rise to that rank from private station.