Quotes & Sayings About Army Chief

What, did you think," she asked, laughing as he struggled up the bank, "that I, a Gaulish maiden, could not swim?"
"I did not think anything about it," Malchus said; "I saw you pushed in and followed without thinking at all."
Although they imperfectly understood each other's words the meaning was clear; the girl put her hand on his shoulder and looked frankly up in his face.
"I thank you," she said, "just the same as if you had saved my life. You meant to do so, and it was very good of you, a great chief of this army, to hazard your life for a Gaulish maiden. Clotilde will never forget. — G.A. Henty

Yesterday, December 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan ... As Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, I have directed that all measures be taken for our defense ... With confidence in our armed forces - with the unbounded determination of our people - we will gain the inevitable triumph - so help us God.
-President F.D. Roosevelt - 8th December 1941 — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Hooray!" said the Chief of the Army. "Let's blow everyone up! Bang-bang! Bang-bang! — Roald Dahl

So, the moral of that story, other than never underestimate an independent bookseller, was that the Continental Army and its commander in chief had a soft spot for Chief Artillery Officer Henry Knox. — Sarah Vowell

The right response when, in the army, you are given an unlawful order, is to refuse that order. The right response of a chief executive in this state and in this nation, when faced with an order by a court that he conscientiously believes violates the constitution he is sworn to respect, is to refuse their order! — Alan Keyes

The chief attraction of military service has consisted and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness. — Leo Tolstoy

tired, wore a long-sleeved white shirt, its cuffs rolled up to his elbows, and khakis, both starched but well wrinkled. A wide-brimmed floppy canvas hat shielded his pale face and scalp from the sun. Roosevelt held up his glass in the direction of Mount Vernon, now visible on the southern bank. "A toast to our first commander in chief," the present commander in chief announced, "and spymaster. I trust you're aware that George Washington set up the Continental Army's first — William E. Butterworth IV

When Mussolini decided on war he did not take my advice or that of any other Army chief. In August 1939 the Duce had not been so sure about the invincibility of the Germans, and he told us that he had sought to persuade Hitler not to act. — Pietro Badoglio

The chief musician-a sergeant-led the twelve-nuan regimental band that provided entertainment as well as the music to which the army marched and fought. — Richard Bruce Winders

I have no doubt in my mind that our chief national problems relating to the eradication of poverty, illiteracy and disease and the scientific production and distribution can be tackled only along socialistic lines.The Very first thing that our future national government will have to do is to set up a commission for drawing up a comprehensive plan for reconstruction. — Subhas Chandra Bose

But let us not forget, too, that it was John Adams who nominated George Washington to be commander-in-chief of the Continental Army. It was John Adams who insisted that Jefferson be the one to write the Declaration of Independence. And it was President John Adams who made John Marshall chief justice of the Supreme Court. As a casting director alone, he was brilliant. Abigail — David McCullough

There were about twenty-eight folders, each with the words "TOP SECRET - PROJECT: GRILL FLAME" in inch-high red letters front and back. I'd seen these markings before, when I was being recruited for the unit. Inside each folder was a copy of some teletype message traffic: "MISSING - ARMY helicopter (UH-1H) tail number November Seven Nine, with crew: CW4 David Suitter (Pilot in Command), CWO Michael Foley (Co-Pilot) and Sergeant First Class William Staub (Crew Chief). — David Morehouse

Eisenhower had run the Army; he knew all the ways decision making can go off the rails, and insisted on collective debate precisely to prevent senior officials from freelancing, or putting their departmental interests first. For all the formal machinery, Eisenhower was very literally the commander in chief, making the key decisions himself and monitoring closely how they were carried out. Even years after D-Day, when critics needled him for not being on the front lines with the invading forces, he retorted, I planned it and took responsibility for it. Did you want me to unload a truck? — Nancy Gibbs

The Cherokee Nation took a case against Georgia to the US Supreme Court. With Chief Justice John Marshall writing for the majority, the Court ruled in favor of the Cherokees. Jackson ignored the Supreme Court, however, in effect saying that John Marshall had made his decision and Marshall would have to enforce it if he could, although he, Jackson, had an army while Marshall did not. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The Jesuits are a MILITARY organization, not a religious order. Their chief is a general of an army, not the mere father abbot of a monastery. And the aim of this organization is power - power in its most despotic exercise - absolute power, universal power, power to control the world by the volition of a single man. Jesuitism is the most absolute of despotisms - and at the same time the greatest and most enormous of abuses. — Napoleon Bonaparte

A commander-in-chief cannot take as an excuse for his mistakes in warfare an order given by his sovereign or his minister, when the person giving the order is absent from the field of operations and is imperfectly aware or wholly unaware of the latest state of affairs. It follows that any commander-in-chief who undertakes to carry out a plan which he considers defective is at fault; he must put forward his reasons, insist on the plan being changed, and finally tender his resignation rather than be the instrument of his army's downfall. — Napoleon Bonaparte

If the chief party, whether it be the people, or the army, or the nobility, which you think most useful and of most consequence to you for the conservation of your dignity, be corrupt, you must follow their humor and indulge them, and in that case honesty and virtue are pernicious. — Niccolo Machiavelli

Moses was the greatest legislator and the commander in chief of perhaps the first liberation army. — Elie Wiesel

The general verdict among the German generals I interrogated in 1945 was that Field-Marshal von Manstein had proved the ablest commander in their Army, and the man they had most desired to become its Commander-in-Chief. It is very clear that he had a superb sense of operational possibilities and equal mastery in the conduct of operations, together with a greater grasp of the potentialities of mechanized forces than any other commander who had not been trained in the tank arm. In sum, he had military genius. — Erich Von Manstein

(Carmine Crocco) A farm-labourer and cowherd, had joined the Bourbon army, killed a comrade in a brawl, deserted and lived as an outlaw for ten years. He joined the liberal insurgents in 1860 in the hope of an amnesty for his past offences, and subsequently became the most formidable guerilla chief and leader of men on the Bourbon side. — Eric Hobsbawm

I have broken all ties that bind me to the (U.S.) Army, not suddenly, impulsively, but conscientiously and after due deliberation. I sacrifice more to my principles than any other officer in the Army can do. I would rather carry a musket in the cause of the South than be commander-in-chief under Mr. Lincoln. — Edmund Kirby Smith

[General-in-Chief of the army, Lieutenant General Winfield] Scott not only believed that the idea [for a battlefield decoration, to wit, a Medal of Honor, or valor] smacked of Old World vanity, elitism, and snobbery, he also thought that such an award was entirely unnecessary. — Russell S. Bonds

How all occasions do inform against me,
And spur my dull revenge! What is a man,
If his chief good and market of his time
Be but to sleep and feed? a beast, no more.
Sure, he that made us with such large discourse,
Looking before and after, gave us not
That capability and god-like reason
To fust in us unused. Now, whether it be
Bestial oblivion, or some craven scruple
Of thinking too precisely on the event,
A thought which, quarter'd, hath but one part wisdom
And ever three parts coward, I do not know
Why yet I live to say 'This thing's to do;'
Sith I have cause and will and strength and means
To do't. Examples gross as earth exhort me:
Witness this army of such mass and charge
Led by a delicate and tender prince,
Whose spirit with divine ambition puff'd — William Shakespeare

...Chief without soldiers is just a very lonely man in a big bloody field — Joe Abercrombie

I spoke of an Army on the point of entering an enemy's territories. Answering the question as to the cause of delay: 'Waiting for supplies.' The answer might also have been: 'Waiting for instructions, 'Waiting for orders.' If the last dispatch had not been received, with the final orders of the commander in chief, the army dared not move. Even so in the Christian life - as deep as the need of waiting for supplies is that of waiting for instructions. — Andrew Murray

The president is commander-in-chief of the army and navy and of the state militia when called into the service of the United States. He holds this power in time of peace as well as in time of war. — Charles A. Beard

And if his youth was obvious, the Glorious Cause was to a large degree a young man's cause. The commander in chief of the army, George Washington, was himself only forty-three. John Hancock, the President of the Continental Congress, was thirty-nine, John Adams, forty, Thomas Jefferson, thirty-two, younger even than the young Rhode Island general. In such times many were being cast in roles seemingly beyond their experience or capacities, and Washington had quickly judged Nathanael Greene to be "an object of confidence. — David McCullough

Our ancestors, when about to build a town or an army post, sacrificed some of the cattle that were wont to feed on the site proposed and examined their livers. If the livers of the first victims were dark-coloured or abnormal, they sacrificed others, to see whether the fault was due to disease or their food. They never began to build defensive works in a place until after they had made many such trials and satisfied themselves that good water and food had made the liver sound and firm ... healthfulness being their chief object. — Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

I always wanted to be commander-in-chief of my one-woman army, But I can envision the mediocrity of my finest hour. — Ani DiFranco

Knew that the result of a battle is decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in his power. — Leo Tolstoy

The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the land and naval forces, as first general and admiral ... while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies - all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature. — Alexander Hamilton

In battles two things are usually required of the Commander-in-Chief: to make a good plan for his army and, secondly, to keep a strong reserve. — Winston Churchill

The chief support of an autocracy is a standing army. The chief support of a democracy is an educated people. — Lotus Coffman