Quotes & Sayings About Good Generals

Nothing personal; I just don't have people over. — Alvin Ailey

We have good corporals and good sergeants and some good lieutenants and captains, and those are far more important than good generals. — William Tecumseh Sherman

I explain to you, exactly and truly, how we are circumstanced. A greater portion of our means is unavailable, consisting of a house in S. Springfield and some wild lands in Iowa. Notwithstanding my great and good husband's life was sacrificed for his country, we are left to struggle in a manner ... of life undeserved. Roving Generals have elegant mansions showered upon them, and the American people leave the family of the Martyred President to struggle as best they may! Strange justice this. — Mary Todd Lincoln

There are no good wars or bad wars. The only thing bad about a war is to lose it. All wars have been fought for a so-called good Cause on both sides. But only the victor's Cause becomes history's Noble Cause. It's not a matter of who is right or who is wrong, it's a matter of who has the best generals and the better army! — Charles Bukowski

To think of education as a means of preserving institutions however excellent, is to have a superficial notion of its end and purpose, which is to mould and fashion men who are more than institutions, who create, outgrow, and re-create them. — John Lancaster Spalding

What enables the enlightened rulers and good generals to conquer the enemy at every move and achieve extraordinary success is foreknowledge. — Sun Tzu

The great thing is, Internet allows you to create your own job, not just look for jobs other people are going to give you. And that, combined with the American spirit, I think, is going to help us come out of the recession faster than other countries. And I think it's going to help Africa come out of, you know, a century of slump. — Esther Dyson

There are in Europe many good generals, but they see too many things at once. I see one thing, namely the enemy's main body. I try to crush it, confident that secondary matters will then settle themselves. — Napoleon Bonaparte

But Pavlov purely for a good purpose. Pavlov for friendliness and trust and compassion. Whereas you prefer to use Pavlov for brainwashing, Pavlov for selling cigarettes and vodka and patriotism. Pavlov for the benefit of dictators, generals and tycoons. — Aldous Huxley

To know that you are a prisoner of your mind is the dawn of wisdom. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

There comes a time in one's life, perhaps in middle age, when we stop and assess who we are, and the life we have. — Fennel Hudson

The Russian general is used to such supplicant behavior. During the war, he ordered his troops to shoot any of their comrades who ran from the Germans, and any Russian village that was thought to have collaborated with the Nazis was burned to the ground. Zhukov is so feared that other Russian generals have been known to tremble in his presence. Patton does not tremble. "He was in full dress uniform much like comic opera and covered in medals," Patton later wrote to Beatrice of Zhukov. "He is short, rather fat and has a prehensile chin like an ape but good blue eyes." As Russian tanks rolled past the reviewing stand, Patton noticed Zhukov gloating over the new Soviet IS-3 model — Bill O'Reilly

They had to go back to Gally. — James Dashner

Well, I've worried some about, you know, why write books ... why are we teaching people to write books when presidents and senators do not read them, and generals do not read them. And it's been the university experience that taught me that there is a very good reason, that you catch people before they become generals and presidents and so forth and you poison their minds with ... humanity, and however you want to poison their minds, it's presumably to encourage them to make a better world. — Kurt Vonnegut

everyone is lied to for his or her own good. A mother telling a child it will be okay. A lover telling a lover I will always love you. Politicians promising a better and brighter future. Generals and admirals insisting war begets peace. — Julia Fierro

Now is everything
Now is the essence
Now is the focus
Focus on the now
For that is the key — Karen Hackel

I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be. — J.R.R. Tolkien

This is what the human story is, not the emperors and the generals and their wars, but the nameless actions of people who are never written down, the good they do for others passed on like a blessing, just doing for strangers what your mother did for you, or not doing what she always spoke against. And all that carries forward and makes us what we are. — Kim Stanley Robinson

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses. — Thomas Jefferson

I was taught in the sixth grade that we had a standing army of just over a hundred thousand men and that the generals had nothing to say about what was done in Washington. I was taught to be proud of that and to pity Europe for having more than a million men under arms and spending all their money on airplanes and tanks. I simply never unlearned junior civics. I still believe in it. I got a very good grade. — Kurt Vonnegut

Good generals select intelligent officers, thoughtful advisors, and brave subordinates. They oversee their troops like a fierce tiger with wings. — Zhuge Liang

Goals are visions and dreams with work clothes on. — Dave Ramsey

Never build a dungeon you wouldn't be happy to spend the night in yourself. The world would be a happier place if more people remembered that. — Terry Pratchett

Our generals talk a good game about taking care of their grunts, and the majority of our Beltway politicians bay with moralistic fervor about how they, too, support the troops. — David Hackworth

And I like a good horror story as much as the next person
so long as they kill off some men too and not just girls. But the voices Joan heard were real.
There's clear and substantiated proof they were real. She won battles that would otherwise
have been lost because of what those voices told her in advance of them allowing the French
generals to strategize in ways completely different than they did before Joan came along.
People's lives were saved because of what those voices told her. — Meg Cabot

We have not all had the good fortune to be ladies. We have not all been generals, or poets, or statesmen; but when the toast works down to the babies, we stand on common ground - for we have all been babies. — Mark Twain

I wanted to write a battle song for the Judeans but so far I can think of nothing noble and weighty enough. — Isaac Rosenberg

Signs of fatigue soon manifested themselves more and more strongly, and slowly the men dropped out one by one, from sheer exhaustion. No murmur of complaint, however, would be heard. — Fritz Kreisler

Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much! — Aristophanes

I am asked if I would not be gratified if my friends would procure me promotion to a brigadier-generalship. My feeling is that I would rather be one of the good colonels than one of the poor generals. The colonel of a regiment has one of the most agreeable positions in the service, and one of the most useful. "A good colonel makes a good regiment," is an axiom. — Rutherford B. Hayes

Good general differ from bad generals only in the degree to which they resist the psychopathology of the very organization they serve. Norman Dixon — Patrick Hennessey

He was not only the most brilliant strategist of all our generals, but he had a good political sense. A man of that quality was too difficult for Hitler to swallow for long. At conferences Manstein often differed from Hitler, in front of others, and would go so far as to declare that some of the ideas which Hitler put forward were nonsense. — Erich Von Manstein