Top 59 William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes
#4. Wars are not all evil, they are part of the grand machinery by which this world is governed.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#5. Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#6. If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#8. This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#9. I see every chance of a long, confused and disorganizing civil war, and I feel no desire to take a hand therein.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#10. The whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak violence upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#11. I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#12. The way to success is strategically along the way of least expectation and tactically along the line of least resistance.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#14. Though I never ordered it, and never wished for it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#15. An army to be useful must be a unit, and out of this has grown the saying, attributed to Napoleon, but doubtless spoken before the days of Alexander, that an army with an inefficient commander was better than one with two able heads.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#17. You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it ... Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them?
William Tecumseh Sherman
#18. If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#20. Many and many a person in Georgia asked me why we did not go to South Carolina; and, when I answered that we were en route for that State, the invariable reply was, - Well, if you will make those people feel the utmost severities of war, we will pardon you for your desolation of Georgia.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#24. We can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#25. You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!
William Tecumseh Sherman
#26. Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!
William Tecumseh Sherman
#28. I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash-and it may be well that we become so hardened.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#29. If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#30. I make up my opinions from facts and reasoning, and not to suit any body but myself. If people don't like my opinions, it makes little difference as I don't solicit their opinions or votes.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#31. You may as well say, 'That's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#33. I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#34. An Army is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. Every change in the rules which impairs the principle weakens the army.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#36. I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#37. My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#39. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#42. I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come-if alive.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#43. We cannot change the hearts of the people of the South, but we can make war so terrible that they will realize the fact that however brave and gallant and devoted to their country still they are mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#46. I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#48. The more Indians we can kill ... the less will have to be killed the next war, for the more I see of these Indians, the more convinced I am that they all have to be killed or be maintained as a species of paupers.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#52. But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for any thing. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#53. I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant. I want him to hold what he has earned and got. I have all the rank I want.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#55. There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#56. The carping and bickering of political factions in the nation's capital reminds me of two pelicans quarreling over a dead fish.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#57. After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.
William Tecumseh Sherman
#58. 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
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