William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes

War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle.

Oh, go in anywhere Colonel, go in anywhere. You'll find lovely fighting all along the line.

I like war.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

From the earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all those species of artificial, learned, and refined cruelty, in which we are now so expert, and which make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is our principal glory.

War,--the trade of barbarians!

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.

The brazen throat of war.

I personally didn't see personal atrocities in the sense I saw somebody cut a head off or something like that. However, I did take part in free-fire zones, I did take part in harassment and interdiction fire, I did take part in search-and-destroy missions.

War is simple, direct, and ruthless.

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

War. What was it about the prospect of some bloody enterprises that reduced men to the level of animals?

War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end.

War is not civilized.

Combat is a piece of war. But war is a totalizing, uncivilized experience.

History has been the history of warfare.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.

You give us the mission, we can get ‘em. We’ll rout ’em out. When we’re through with them, they will have flies walking across their eyeballs.

Wars ruin armies.

Killing, and nothing else, is what the army is for, and the only thing it can properly build is killers and killees.

Policy is not made with papers or ceremonies. Policy is made with iron and blood.

After all, it is not nice going to war with one’s equal or possible superior in strength – so different from those delightful “military operations” which consist in “potting”, savages with an amount of danger just sufficient to give a zest to the sport …But then the special line the skill of our ablest and most valiant generals takes is that of “thrashing a cannibal.” Thrashing a Cossack is a different sort of thing.

It is hazardous to engage an enemy who longs rather for battle than for victory.

We are conditioned to regard warfare as something exciting and even glamorous.