Military Genius Quotes

It is surely no coincidence that Napoleon's two greatest heroes were Alexander the Great and Julius Caesar. In certain respects, he would outdo them both.

[Of Napoleon BonaparteII:] His mind was a kind of extinct sulfur pit.

I used to say of Napoleon that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.

Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he'll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas "Fscking" Edison.

[Napoleon Bonaparte:] A very great mind, and a rather small soul.

Strategy is the most important department of the art of war, and strategical skill is the highest and rarest function of military genius.

My dad had the greatest admiration for MacArthur when they were working together in Washington before the Philippines. And Dad used to talk with absolute awe about MacArthur's brain.

The new king [Alexander the Great] should perform acts so important and glorious as would make the poets and musicians of future ages labour and sweat to describe and celebrate him.

The transformation of the impossible into reality is always the mark of a demonic will. The only way to recognize a military genius is by the fact that, during the war, he will mock the rules of warfare and will employ creative improvisation instead of tested methods and he will do so at the right moment.

Napoleon the Third was not much. He died in England, and was buried in a country church-yard much the same as Kiltartan. But Napoleon the First was a great man; it was given out of him there never would be so great a man again.

I thought his genius was military, but that as a party manager, he would not succeed. He did not know the arts of the politician and would not practice them if understood, and he did know those of war.

I would not be telling anyone anything [new] that in these beautiful dispatches from the Italian campaign, General Bonaparte was already a great writer. It is a trait he had in common with the great captains

General Giap was one of the most brilliant military strategists of our era, who in Dien Bien Phu was able to place missile launchers in remote, mountainous jungles, something the yankee and European military officers considered impossible.

I have no Napoleonic dream. I'm just hard-working and pragmatic.