Top 100 Ww1 Generals Quotes
#2. If war is too important to trust to generals, then policy is too important to trust to politicians.
Glen Cook
#3. We made a great mistake in the beginning of our struggle, and I fear, in spite of all we can do, it will prove to be a fatal mistake. We appointed all our worst generals to command our armies, and all our best generals to edit the newspapers
Robert E.Lee
#4. Four generals
Set our for Iran.
With the first one, war did not agree.
The second never won a victory.
For the third the weather never was right.
For the fourth the men would never fight.
Four generals
And not a single man!
Bertolt Brecht
#5. Generals who can write always make me nervous.
Ben Bradlee
#6. Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much!
Aristophanes
#7. It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why history is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.
E. M. Forster
#8. Vivas to those who have fail'd!
And to those whose war-vessels sank in the sea!
And to those themselves who sank in the sea!
And to all generals that lost engagements, and all overcome heroes!
And the numberless unknown heroes equal to the greatest heroes known!
Walt Whitman
#9. Good generals select intelligent officers, thoughtful advisors, and brave subordinates. They oversee their troops like a fierce tiger with wings.
Zhuge Liang
#10. Nobody wins wars. Generals plan battles to be swift and decisive. When they are not, the aim is to end the conflict less defeated than your opponent.
Steph Bennion
#11. History has shown very clearly that for democracy to continue, the people, and not the generals or even the executive authority, must have control over the military. The
T.R. Fehrenbach
#12. The great actors we had came from the actor-manager theaters. Not only did they create a team, they were the generals working with the soldiers.
Steven Berkoff
#13. Do you know we are being led to Slaughters by placid admirals & that fat slow generals are getting Obscene on young blood Do you know we are ruled by t.v.
Jim Morrison
#14. There are a number of World War II historians I admire: Cornelius Ryan, Mark Stoler, Antony Beevor, to name a few. As for generals, there are those I admire as combat leaders and others I admire because they're great fun to write about.
Rick Atkinson
#15. Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true.
Leonard Cohen
#16. There is such an equality among them that the officers have no authority. The privates are all generals, but not soldiers.
Bernard Law Montgomery
#17. Understood what the books and the generals always repeated: that armies did not kill each other, they broke each other, that the day would be won when one army believed it could not survive. A matter of deception, of conviction, of lies made true through performance. Like everything else.
Seth Dickinson
#18. [A] military force was collected in Europe, formidable by their arms and numbers, if the generals had understood the science of command, and the soldiers the duty of obedience.
Edward Gibbon
#19. Alexander's top generals were about to tangle with one of history's toughest teenage girls.
James Romm
#20. Successful generals make plans to fit circumstances, but do not try to create circumstances to fit plans.
George S. Patton
#21. Nine-tenths of tactics are certain, and taught in books: but the irrational tenth is like the kingfisher flashing across the pool, and that is the test of generals.
T.E. Lawrence
#22. The law is too important to be left to the lawyers, to paraphrase Georges Clemenceau about war and generals. We laymen know too little about our Constitution and think too superficially about its influence on the qualities of American life. Civic duty requires more.
David K. Shipler
#23. 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
#24. When I warned them [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken! Some neck!
Winston Churchill
#26. 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
#27. With such incentives to brave deeds, and with the trust that God is with us, your generals will lead you confidently to the combat - assured of success. General commanding
Shelby Foote
#28. I say no body of men are fit to make Presidents, judges and generals, unless they themselves supply the best specimens of the same; and that supplying one or two such specimens illuminates the whole body for a thousand years.
Walt Whitman
#29. Corporate planning cycles are a classic example of generals fighting the last war over again instead of preparing for what might lie ahead.
Jay Samit
#30. Admirals and Generals always want more ships and more weapons and they take the arguments where they can find them.
Helmut Schmidt
#32. Athena came to stand by her side. She reached out and ran a light touch over the read wrap. 'Nice dress.
Grace frowned in disbelief. 'They're fighting to the death and you're admiring my clothes?'
Athena laughed. 'Trust me, I pick my generals well. Priapus doesn't stand a chance.
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#33. It is tragic that the Fuehrer should have the whole nation behind him with the single exception of the Army generals. In my opinion it is only by action that they can now atone for their faults of lack of character and discipline.
Alfred Jodl
#34. Strategy was first used in Athens (508 BC) to describe the art of leadership used by the ten generals on the war council. Some argue for the more creative, human side, while others argue for the more analytic side of strategy.
Max McKeown
#35. All revered spiritual leaders, political leaders, and diplomats, captains of industry, intellectuals, and winning generals exhibit genuine humility that empowers them to act with integrity and courage under the most distressing circumstances.
Kilroy J. Oldster
#36. If the enemy begins to love one of the king's generals, the king may half suspect that his general is turning traitor.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon
#37. The generals commanded the colonels and the colonels commanded the majors and the majors commanded the captains and the captains commanded the private, who marched with an air of proud importance because it required so many officers to give him his orders.
L. Frank Baum
#38. I can't even begin to visualize myself as a five-star general ... When I think of the people who are five-star generals, I can't even see myself standing in their shadow.
Norman Schwarzkopf
#39. Refuse to accept the narrative of history laid down by presidents, prime ministers, generals and journalists.
Robert Fisk
#40. The real story of our times is seldom told in the horse-puckey-filled memoirs of dopey, self-serving presidents or generals, but in the outrageous, demented lives of guys like Lenny Bruce, Giordano Bruno, Scott Fitzgerald - and Paul Krassner. The burrs under society's saddle. The pains in the ass.
Harlan Ellison
#41. Timing: The alpha and omega of aerialists, jugglers, actors, diplomats, publicists, generals, prizefighters, revolutionists, financiers, dictators, lovers.
Marlene Dietrich
#42. His view of war - and he had seen a great deal of it - was that a general made as many blunders as he fought battles, but, by the grace of the gods, the opposing generals' blunders were sometimes worse.
Aubrey Menen
#43. Today, if we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other-that man, that woman, that child is my brother or my sister. If everyone could see the image of God in his neighbor, do you think we would still need tanks and generals?
Mother Teresa
#44. This modern craze for putting the young in positions of authority - headmasters in their thirties, bishops without a gray hair on their heads, generals who scarcely need to use a razor - ever since it took hold the world's gone steadily downhill.
Elizabeth Goudge
#45. Of old, the demagogue was also a general, and then democracies changed into tyrannies. Most of the ancient tyrants were originally demagogues. They are not so now, but they were then; and the reason is that they were generals and not orators, for oratory had not yet come into fashion.
Aristotle.
#46. Anyone can act strategically, it doesn't take much to make a plan. The skill of a general is his or her ability to react strategically when plans fail.
Lance Conrad
#47. The Roman envoys replied that they would go where their own generals led them, not where bidden by their enemies.
Livy
#48. The rules are drawn up by lawyers who are trying to protect the admirals and generals from the politicians; they're not written by people who are worried about the guys on the ground getting shot.
Chris Kyle
#49. I like generals. I like Napoleon. I like strategy. The majority of them are praised for mass destruction, but it's exciting to see how it comes to the mind mentally.
Curtis Jackson
#50. Napoleon wanted his generals to be lucky. I don't think he would have worked with me.
Graham Taylor
#51. If the thumbnail version of the Iraq war was that Bush lied about WMD, the thumbnail version of Obama's war in Afghanistan is that the generals pushed him into a war he didn't want to fight.
Michael Hastings
#52. A very remarkable people the Zulus: they defeat our generals, they convert our bishops, they have settled the fate of a great European dynasty.
Benjamin Disraeli
#53. For long, history was mainly political history, and historical narrative was confined to an account of the most important crises in political life, or to an account of wars and great generals.
Michael Rostovtzeff
#54. As president, I wouldn't be making the day-to-day combat decisions. The job of the commander-in-chief is to lay the objective out and then you rely upon the generals and admirals and commanders to give you their expert advice on the tools needed to carry out that objective.
Ted Cruz
#55. Hostess Bakery plants shut down due to a workers' strike. It was split up. The State Department hired all the Twinkies, the Secret Service hired all the HoHos, the generals are sleeping with the Cupcakes and the voters sent all the Ding Dongs to Congress.
Argus Hamilton
#56. When the people of any country choose peace at all costs, not even generals can make war.
Pearl S. Buck
#57. There are a lot of car bombs and roadside bombs, house bombs, even, in this city planted by ISIS. So - but it's going to be a tough fight ahead, and the Iraqi generals expect to take the city back, the city of Ramadi, by mid-January.
Tom Bowman
#58. Anybody will do for you, but not for me. I must have somebody.
Abraham Lincoln
#59. Isn't it possible that this midcentury moment enters the skin more lastingly than the vast shaping strategies of eminent leaders, generals steely in their sunglasses -- the mapped visions that pierce our dreams?
Don DeLillo
#60. T's one of history's many valuable lessons: the foot soldiers tend to be the casualties in any conflict, not the generals.
Mark Mills
#61. Though triumphs were to generals only due, crowns were reserved to grace the soldiers too.
Alexander Pope
#63. Politicians, like generals, have a tendency to fight the last war.
John Bolton
#64. Abraham Lincoln went through 12 generals before he got Ulysses S. Grant. He had never done a Civil War before.
Marianne Williamson
#65. Our enemies are small worms,' he told his generals. 'I saw them in Munich.
Ian Kershaw
#67. The West German population would protest passionately if it knew what secret meetings between the federal chancellor, McCoy, and foreign and Nazi generals are planning.
Walter Ulbricht
#68. Begum Hazrat Mahal of Oudh was the last of the breed of able queens and generals. The queen led her kingdom's army into battle during the revolt of 1857. Even after she was defeated she defied Queen Victoria's famous Proclamation and issued a counter Proclamation ...
Qurratulain Hyder
#69. Success in past U.S. conflicts has not been strictly the result of military leadership but rather the judgment of the president in choosing generals and setting broad strategy.
Robert Dallek
#70. They have destroyed your weapons," he had told the generals, in effect. "But these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.
Winston S. Churchill
#71. Let the Kez come," Tamas roared. "Let them send their greatest generals after us. Let them stack the odds against us. Let them come upon us with all their fury, because these hounds at our heels will soon know we are lions!
Brian McClellan
#72. I haven't mentioned another argument, The Hague tribunal. It is clear our generals and all of you who are sitting here now with me could end up there, too.
Franjo Tudjman
#73. Not all living creatures die. An amoeba, for example, need never die; it need not even, like certain generals, fade away. It just divides and becomes two new amoebas.
George Wald
#74. In the half-reclined bed, Yaz slept, mouth open, snoring - probably doped. Mike turned on the TV. For twenty minutes, he watched retired generals on CNN discussing Afghanistan and troop surges as though they knew what the hell war was all about.
Pete Barber
#75. Napoleon was asked, "Who do you consider to be the greatest generals?" He responded saying, "The victors.
Donald Rumsfeld
#76. So this general with the background in intelligence who is supposed to conquer Afghanistan can't even figure out what Rolling Stone is? We're not talking Guns & Ammo here; we're talking the antiwar hippie magazine.
Maureen Dowd
#77. Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.
Harper Lee
#78. When I first met Mandela, we did not discuss anything of substance; we just felt each other out. He spent a long time expressing his admiration for the Boer generals and how ingenious they were during the Anglo-Boer war.
F. W. De Klerk
#80. Advertising people who ignore research are as dangerous as generals who ignore decodes of enemy signals.
David Ogilvy
#81. Enter the candidates on horseback: While military leaders can sometimes be dangerous in politics, our best generals and admirals embody the democratic values and leadership skills for which the country is yearning.
David Ignatius
#82. I am not making spiteful assertions now but merely stating the facts-that, for instance, among Hungarian generals there is such a considerable percentage of men of German origin, who of course had, in most cases, to alter their names if they wanted to get anywhere.
Heinrich Himmler
#83. Richmond's newspaper questioned how a senior general could not even get two of his own generals to cooperate with him. They nicknamed him "Granny" Lee or "The King Of Spades," because he insisted that his men dig trenches on Sewell Mountain.
Clint Johnson
#84. Both Bush as well as Tony Blair are undermining an idea [the United Nations]. Is this because the secretary general of the United Nations [Ghanaian Kofi Annan] is now a black man? They never did that when secretary generals were white.
Nelson Mandela
#85. During the Civil War, on hearing complaints that Gen. Ulysses S. Grant drank alcohol to excess Find out what Grant drinks and send a barrel of it to each of my other generals!
Abraham Lincoln
#86. The movers and shakers on our planet, aren't the billionaires and generals, they are the incredible numbers of people around the world filled with love for neighbor and for the earth who are resisting, remaking, restoring, renewing and revitalising.
Bill McKibben
#87. And how would he learn his history now? Imagine growing up in a world where only generals and geniuses, empires and companies, had histories, not your own town or grandfather, house or Samantha - none of the things you'd loved.
William H Gass
#88. I can make brigadier generals, but i can't make horses.
Abraham Lincoln
#89. It is not the kings and generals that make history, but the masses of the people.
Nelson Mandela
#90. And who is this General Calrissian? Thane decided not to ask that question out loud. If the Rebel Alliance was happy turning over its two most critical missions of all time to a bunch of brand-new generals, okay, fine -
Claudia Gray
#91. In two thousand years all our generals and politicians may be forgotten, but Einstein and Madame Curie and Bernard Shaw and Stravinsky will keep the memory of our age alive.
Anthony Burgess
#92. You have women generals? She goes into combat? And you let her?"
"What you'll learn, lad, is that you don't let the females of the Southlands do a damn thing. You simply get out of their way or pray they don't run you down.
G.A. Aiken
#93. Some of the generals are saying, 'We're making progress. We are clearing an area.' But you really don't defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.
Colin Powell
#94. Most benefactors are like unskillful generals who take the city and leave the citadel intact.
Nicolas Chamfort
#95. Battles are sometimes won by generals; wars are nearly always won by sergeants and privates.
F. E. Adcock
#96. Around the world, the generals are being ousted, and the poets are taking charge.
Warren G. Bennis
#98. You boys ain't got it so bad," he said to his rigid squadmates. "You oughta see how we treat the generals, if you think you's bad off.
Kurt Vonnegut
#99. Gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals and philosophers have all died of gout.
Thomas Sydenham
#100. I've decided that the political context is such that the only way reform will finally come about in the Russian military is that the deterioration goes beyond the point to which these old generals can stand up there and resist it.
William Odom
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
