H. R. McMaster Quotes

I have need of Rigaud. He is violent. I want him for carrying on war; and that war is necessary to me.

In order to prosecute war, you have to take some risk.

As an infantry officer who served in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, I have led men in combat and trained them on tactics and strategy. The mission of the infantry is to 'close with, and destroy, the enemy.' Our job, in a direct way, is to fight and win wars.

As not infrequently happens in the affairs of war, it is easier to point out mistakes after they are committed, than to see and avoid them amid the difficulties and dangers by which the military commander is at the moment surrounded.

When bulls fight, woe to the frogs.

If there is going to be a war – and no one can say that there is not – we must keep him fresh to be our war Prime Minister

Military action without political context is ineffective.

When you're at war you do what it takes to win.

When I'm fighting it's just search and destroy.

From ancient to modern times, the human animal knows how to find fighting.

When you're in the battlefield, survival is all there is.

Writing books for me is anyway much like a military campaign. I confess to fighting my way through with military metaphors. There is a strategy, an overall concept, and there are tactics along the way…Tradition would say I was a 'child of Mars.'

War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale.

Cutting down the enemy is the way of strategy, and there is no need for many refinements of it.

Deliberation is a good thing when it comes to fighting wars.

War is the science of destruction.

For the most part, everybody who fights in war fights to survive.

Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.

Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Either a war has to be fought, or it doesn't.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

People don't seem to understand that it's a damn war out there.