Us Military General Quotes & Sayings

The most important decisions in organizations are people decisions, and yet only the military, and only recently, has begun to ask, "If we assign this general to lead this base, what do we expect him to accomplish?" — Peter Drucker

A generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody - or at least some force - is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel. This is the same cruel and paradoxically benevolent bullshit that has kept the Catholic Church going for so many centuries. It is also the military ethic ... a blind faith in some higher and wiser "authority." The Pope, The General, The Prime Minister ... all the way up to "God. — Hunter S. Thompson

First of all, let me give my comments on the blasphemy law. This law was introduced by the military dictator General Ziaul Haq. No one demanded the blasphemy law in Pakistan. But he wanted to give protection to his undemocratic rule, dictatorship, by using religion. So Pakistan came into being in 1947, and from 1947 until 1986 no case against any minorities was registered under the protection of the blasphemy law. Nobody from minorities was killed and no act of violence happened [against them]. — Shahbaz Bhatti

Poland, after the First World War, was beset by chaos, disorder, and a foolish incursion by the Red Army, which helped to produce the ultra-nationalist military dictatorship of General Pilsudski. — Tariq Ali

The general's staff is a handpicked collection of killers, spies, geniuses, patriots, political operators and outright maniacs. There's a former head of British Special Forces, two Navy Seals, an Afghan Special Forces commando, a lawyer, two fighter pilots and at least two dozen combat veterans and counterinsurgency experts. They jokingly refer to themselves as Team America, taking the name from the South Park-esque sendup of military cluelessness, and they pride themselves on their can-do attitude and their disdain for authority. — Michael Hastings

I'm too old to be ignorant as I am."
--Twelve-year-old Gabriella to the general, who does not want her to know about Emmett Till and the world's brutality. — Elle Thornton

The reason the founders chafed at the idea of an American standing army and vested the power of war making in the cumbersome legislature was not to disadvantage us against future enemies, but to disincline us toward war as a general matter ... With citizen-soldiers, with the certainty of a vigorous political debate over the use of a military subject to politicians' control, the idea was for us to feel it- uncomfortably- every second we were at war. But after a generation or two of shedding the deliberate political encumbrances to war that they left us ... war making has become almost an autonomous function of the American state. It never stops. — Rachel Maddow

The General belonged to the learned type of military men who believed that liberal and humane views can be reconciled with their profession. But being by nature a kind and intelligent man, he soon felt the impossibility of such a reconciliation. — Leo Tolstoy

The Irish have played a part in every military conflict on American soil since the founding of the republic. Donegal-born Richard Montgomery was the first American general to lose his life in the Revolutionary War. In fact, one British major general at the time told the House of Commons that "half the rebel Continental Army was from Ireland. — Rashers Tierney

As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man, I want you to know that. — Norman Schwarzkopf

The women tended the crops and took general charge of village affairs while the men were always hunting or fishing. And since they supplied the moccasins and food for warring expeditions, they had some control over military matters. As Gary B. Nash notes in his fascinating study of early America, Red, White, and Black: "Thus power was shared between the sexes and the European idea of male dominancy and female subordination in all things was conspicuously absent in Iroquois society. — Howard Zinn

There are no more worlds to conquer! — Alexander The Great

One general, Fabius Maximus was nicknamed Cunctator, "the Procrastinator." He drove Hannibal, who had an obvious military superiority, crazy by avoiding and delaying engagement. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

European countries unresistingly submitted to the introduction of general military service
i.e., to a state of slavery involving a degree of humiliation and submission incomparably worse than any slavery of the ancient world. — Leo Tolstoy

General welfare is a general condition - maybe sound currency is general welfare, maybe markets, maybe judicial system, maybe a national defense, but this is specific welfare. This justifies the whole welfare state - the military industrial complex, the welfare to foreigners, the welfare state that imprisons our people and impoverishes our people and gives us our recession. — Ron Paul

JAG is an acronym for the Judge Advocate General, which is the judicial system of the military. — Catherine Bell

We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general. — Winston Churchill

We have women in the military, but they don't put us in the front lines. They don't know if we can fight, if we can kill. I think we can. All the general has to do is walk over to the women and say, 'You see the enemy over there? They say you look fat in those uniforms.' — Elayne Boosler

In brief, we do more research on men in prison, men in the military, and men in general than we do on women for the same reason we do more research on rats than we do on humans. — Warren Farrell

I'd like to have two armies: one for display with lovely guns, tanks, little soldiers, staffs, distinguished and doddering generals, and dear little regimental officers who would be deeply concerned over their general's bowel movements or their colonel's piles, an army that would be shown for a modest fee on every fairground in the country. — Jean Larteguy

Military life in general depraves men. It places them in conditions of complete idleness, that is, absence of all rational and useful work; frees them from their common human duties, which it replaces by merely conventional duties to the honor of the regiment, the uniform, the flag; and while giving them on the one hand absolute power over other men, also puts them into conditions of servile obedience to those of higher ranks than themselves. — Leo Tolstoy

A capable, clear-eyed sovereign, she knew how to build a fleet, suppress an insurrection, control a currency, alleviate a famine. An eminent Roman general vouched for her grasp of military affairs. Even at a time when women rulers were no rarity she stood out, the sole female of the ancient world to rule alone and to play a role in Western affairs. She was incomparably richer than anyone else in the Mediterranean. And she enjoyed greater prestige than any other woman of her age ... Cleopatra descended from a long line of murderers and faithfully upheld the family tradition but was, for her time and place, remarkably well behaved. She nonetheless survives as a wanton temptress, not the last time a genuinely powerful woman has been transmuted into a shamelessly seductive one. — Stacy Schiff

The way you blunder from one catastrophe to the next, it's a wonder the whole galaxy doesn't hate you.
The galaxy is a big place, General. You provincial military types don't get far enough out to really see that.
-General Tagon & Captain Kevyn Andreyasn — Howard Tayler

Disarmament should be conducive to the enhancement of every country's general security instead of becoming the instrument and means for a few countries to strengthen their military superiority by weakening or restricting other countries. — Sha Zukang

What an advantage that knowledge can be stored in books! The knowledge lies there like hermetically sealed provisions waiting for the day when you may need a meal. Surely what the Collector was doing as he pored over his military manuals, was proving the superiority of the European way of doing things, of European culture itself. This was a culture so flexible that whatever he needed was there in a book at his elbow. An ordinary sort of man, he could, with the help of an oil-lamp, turn himself into a great military engineer, a bishop, an explorer or a General overnight, if the fancy took him. — J.G. Farrell

At a time when the threat of nuclear arms is again increasing, the Norwegian Nobel Committee wishes to underline that this threat must be met through the broadest possible international cooperation. This principle finds its clearest expression today in the work of the IAEA and its director general. In the nuclear non-proliferation regime, it is the IAEA which ensures that nuclear energy is not misused for military purposes, and the director general has stood out as an unafraid advocate of new measures to strengthen that regime. — Mohamed ElBaradei

Outside the gates of the finca, watching the passing rows of tin-roofed shacks which represented the residential section of San Francisco de Paula, I began to think about The Old Man and the Sea, and I realized it was Ernest's counterattack against those who had assaulted him for Across the River. It was an absolutely perfect counterattack and I envisioned a row of snickering carpies bearing the likenesses of Dwight Macdonald and Louis Kronenberger and E.B. White, who in the midst of cackling, "Through! Washed Up! Kaput!" suddenly grab their groins and keel over. It is a rather elementary military axiom that he who attacks must anticipate the counterattack, but the critics, poor boys, would never make General Staff. As Ernest once said, "One battle doesn't make a campaign but critics treat one book, good or bad, like a whole goddamn war. — A. E. Hotchner

The American Civil War lays out the stark contrast: the greatest generals in war are often abundant failures during peacetime, and vice versa. McClellan and Sherman are the sharpest contrasts; but there is also Grant the peacetime drunkard, and Stonewall Jackson the barely tolerable military professor. Only Lee stands out as effective in both peace and war (and even he had a mentally unstable father, and himself may have been dysthymic in his general personality). This conflict reflects, I think, the different psychological qualities of leadership needed in different phases of human activity, peace and war being the two extremes. — S. Nassir Ghaemi

He, general or mere captain, who employs every one in the storming of a position can be sure of seeing it retaken by an organized counterattack of four men and a corporal. — Ardant Du Picq

McChrystal's defenders at the Pentagon were making the case Tuesday that the president and his men - (the McChrystal snipers spared Hillary) - must put aside their hurt feelings about being painted as weak sisters. Obama should not fire the serially insubordinate general, they reasoned, because that would undermine the mission in Afghanistan, and if that happens, then Obama would be further weakened.
So the commander in chief can be bad-mouthed as weak by the military but then he can't punish the military because that would make him weak? It's the same sort of pass-the-Advil vicious circle reasoning the military always uses. — Maureen Dowd

I think General Pershing was the most military figure I've ever seen. — Frank Buckles

The General Order is always:
... To manoeuver in a body and on the attack.
... To maintain strict but not pettifogging discipline.
... To keep the troops constantly at the ready.
... To employ the utmost vigilance on sentry go.
... To use the bayonet on every possible occasion.
And to follow up the enemy remorselessly until he is utterly destroyed. — Lazare Carnot

You get a lawyer whether you're in a military tribunal or whether you're in a federal court, number one. The attorney general decided that the court with the biggest - with the greatest venue, with the best jurisdiction was the New York court. That was the right decision to make. — Joe Biden

Wars results in immediate deaths and destruction, but the environmental consequences can last hundreds, often thousands of years. And it is not just war itself that undermines our life support system, but also the research and development, military exercises and general preparations for battle that are carried out on a daily basis in most parts of the world. The majority of this pre-war activity takes place without the benefit of civilian scrutiny and therefore we are unaware of some of what is being done to our environment in the name of 'security. — Rosalie Bertell

There is a cottage industry of these Muslim bashers who are training law enforcement personnel, military personnel ... and you are breeding a generation of leaders in our society who have this suspicion of Islam and hostility towards American Muslims and Muslims in general. The intention of these trainers is to demonise Islam and to marginalise American Muslims. — Ibrahim Hooper

I think we're being laughed at all over the world. I think that if you look at our military, we can't beat ISIS, General George Patton, General Douglas MacArthur are spinning in their grave. We can't beat ISIS, okay? I think that our veterans are not taken care of, they're treated worse than illegal immigrants, by the way. — Donald Trump

German soldiers, posted as informers, were found dressed as peasants, even as peasant women. The latter were discovered, presumably in the course of non-military action, by their government issued underwear; but many were probably never caught, it being impossible, General Gourko regretfully admitted, to lift the skirts of every female in East Prussia. — Barbara W. Tuchman

Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy - not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits - despotic in his ordinary demeanour - known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty - when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity - to join in the cry of danger to liberty - to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion - to flatter and fall in with all the non sense of the zealots of the day - It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may "ride the storm and direct the whirlwind. — Alexander Hamilton

Only great and general battles can produce great results — Carl Von Clausewitz

Instead of concentrating on the war against poverty, global attention is focused on another kind of slaughter - on something that is intangible and yet being tackled by all the possible military means we can muster. And all the lofty declarations by world leaders about combatting poverty that were lauded by the General Assembly turned out to be damp squibs. — Muhammad Yunus