Alfred Thayer Mahan Quotes

The aggressive spirit, the offensive, is the chief thing everywhere in war, and the air is no exception.

We realize that wars are never won on the defensive. We must take the battle to the enemy

The time has come when we must proceed with the business of carrying the war to the enemy, not permitting the greater portion of our armed forces and our valuable material to be immobilized within the continental United States.

I don't want to get any messages saying, "I am holding my position." We are not holding a Goddamned thing. Let the Germans do that. We are advancing constantly and we are not interested in holding onto anything, except the enemy's balls. We are going to twist his balls and kick the living shit out of him all of the time.

Being Americans, we prosecute wars to win them, not to have reasonable response, not to have appropriate levels of retaliation. Our theory is you start bombing our cities; we're going to defeat you and make it impossible.

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.

If the enemy has occupied them before you, do not follow him, but retreat and try to entice him away.

In war the only sure defense is offense, and the efficiency of the offense depends on the warlike souls of those conducting it.

In this war, which was total in every sense of the word, we have seen many great changes in military science. It seems to me that not the least of these was the development of psychological warfare as a specific and effective weapon.

The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.

[Napoleon deployed] every available resource to inflict all-out defeats on [his] enemies.

If you find your opponent in a strong position costly to force, you should leave him a line of retreat as the quickest way of loosening his resistance. It should, equally, be a principle of policy, especially in war, to provide your opponent with a ladder by which he can climb down.

Barack Obama has done more than anyone else to promote the dangerous illusion that we can choose whether to have a war or not. But our enemies have already made that choice. Retired Marine Corps General James Mattis said: “No war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it's over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote“.

Wherever the enemy goes let our troops go also.

To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape.

In war there is but one favorable moment; the great art is to seize it!

The first law of war is to preserve ourselves and destroy the enemy.

Do not press an enemy at bay.

Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign.

According to true military art, one should never push one's enemy to the point of despair, because such a state multiplies his strength and increases his courage which had already been crushed and failing, and because there is no better remedy for the health of beaten and overwhelmed men than the absence of all hope.

I have destroyed the enemy merely by marches.

The secret of war lies in the communications.

For the US, the Kosovo War was a success because it encouraged the development of the Pentagon's 'Revolution in Military Affairs' (RMA). The war provided a test site for experimentation, and paved the way for emergence of what I call in Strategie de la deception 'the second deterrence'.

In war, numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power.

In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts.