Manfred von Richthofen Quotes

To be a successful soldier, you must know history.

Nothing matures a military force quicker than actual military operations.

The only situation a commander can know fully is his own: his opponent's he can know only from unreliable intelligence.

Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.

So it is that good warriors take their stance on ground where they cannot lose, and do not overlook conditions that make an opponent prone to defeat.

I didn't expect myself to be perfect my first season because no one ever pulled me aside and said "This is how you walk."

The truth is, no study is possible on the battle-field; one does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows . Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal and to know it well.

Even modern wars are fought like revenge tales from some petty grievance.

The game taught me the game.

You can only acquire really useful general ideas by first acquiring particular ideas . . . You cannot make bricks without straw.

Deadline for Iraqi withdrawal is legislating defeat.

We of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war

I trained with an ex-Navy Seal. We shot a lot of guns. Real bullets... I underwent commando training.

You can't play everything you learn, anyway. You just try to bring it all on-board and use what's useful. In the end, it's your job to own the role and, in the end, you are playing certain aspects of your own self, even.

The first time I ever saw a jet, I shot it down.

As it is in the body, so it is in the mind; practice makes it what it is, and most even of those excellencies, what are looked on as natural endowments, will be found, when examined into more narrowly, to be the product of exercise, and to be raised to that pitch, only by repeated actions.

First let a man teach himself, and then he will be taught by others.

I learn everything I play by listening to somebody else.

I've always been somebody that it takes me longer to learn things, but once I learn them... I'm like a quarterback that plays best in the fourth quarter.

If we know that our own men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the enemy is not open to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory. If we know that the enemy is open to attack, but are unaware that our own men are not in a condition to attack, we have gone only halfway towards victory. If we know that the enemy is open to attack, and also know that our men are in a condition to attack, but are unaware that the nature of the ground makes fighting impracticable, we have still gone only halfway towards victory.

The small and bullying leader of Russia is now dictating terms to the United States to the point where all the United States of America - the greatest nation on Earth - just withdraws from talks about a cease-fire while Vladimir Putin puts a missile defense system in Syria while he marshals the forces and begins - look, we have got to begin to lean into this with strong, broad-shouldered American leadership.

Leaders aren't born they are made.

I am sure that few successful men are so-called 'natural geniuses.'

Time and rest are needed for absorption. Psychologists confirm that it is really in the summer that our muscles learn to skate and in the winter, how to swim.

I believe that one can't command sitting on one's ass in the rear. One has to up among the forward brigade commanders, even as far as battalion commanders, especially if one is fighting a defensive action. One simply has to know what is going on.