Effective Command Quotes

The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.

If you command wisely, you'll be obeyed cheerfully.

No commander in chief would ever say, 'I'm not going to listen to the guys on the ground.'

A piece of paper makes you an officer, a radio makes you a commander.

I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn't waste their lives because I didn't have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.

Command is often not what you do but the way you do it.

In this age, I don't care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are: if you cannot create harmony - even vicious harmony - on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.

The good general makes good soldiers.

He is cautious. He ought to be. But he is NOT slow. Lee is a phenomenon. He is the only man whom I would follow blindfolded.

An army formed of good officers moves like clockwork; but there is no situation upon earth less enviable, nor more distressing, than that person's who is at the head of troops which are regardless of order and discipline.

We need a commander in chief not a professor of law standing at a lectern - the lectern.

Command is often not what you do but the way you do it…. one can't command sitting on one's ass in the rear.

If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle.