Moltke the Elder: Military
No plan survives contact with the enemy – or –
Therefore no plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.
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Anonymous: Military
The only guarantee of our rights tomorrow is vigilance today
(From the internet website: Revolutionary War Archives, 18 Sep 2009, http://www.revolutionarywararchives.org/index.php)
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Winston Churchill: Military
Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.
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Eliot Cohen: Military
Airpower is an unusually seductive form of military strength, in part because, like modern courtship, it appears to offer gratification without commitment.
(Foreign Affairs, 1994)
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President Ulysses S. Grant: Military
The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.
(Statement to John Hill Brinton, at the start of his Tennessee River Campaign, early 1862, as quoted in Personal Memoirs of John H. Brinton, Major and Surgeon USV [United States Volunteers], 1861-1865)
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Christopher Hoctor: Military
Brilliant leadership brings tactical advantage to war, bravery and wisdom lead to valor, and risk brings greater reward. The combination of these bring victory.
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Christopher Hoctor: Military
My leadership will be reflected in the actions of my people; my squadron’s success will be a measure of my leadership.
(From coursework response on ‘commanding’)
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Christopher Hoctor: Military
I am a loyal crusty old Airman but have come to admire my buzz cut bulldog brethren, especially in recent times. The Marines command a level of respect that would be a mistake not to acknowledge. Their history of sacrifice, service and honor is amended daily with continuous valor. They stand apart.
(From coursework response on the role of Marines)
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Christopher Hoctor: Military
An effective force, a most effective force is a net – resources, capabilities, reconnaissance, leadership and communication woven together
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Christopher Hoctor: Military
No policy or practice in the military dies until someone comes up with a new catch phrase… and then it’s the same thing in a new wrapper.
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President Thomas Jefferson: Military
War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice.
(Letter to Thomas Pickney, 1797)
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President Abraham Lincoln: Military
It seems that one day a telegraph operator at the War Department informed President Lincoln the Confederates had captured numerous horses and a Union brigadier general, but the operator was surprised when the president showed more concern for the horses. Apparently President Lincoln explained his concern with the comment that:
I can make a brigadier general in five minutes. But it's not so easy to replace 100 horses.
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John Stuart Mill: Military
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things;
the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks
that nothing is worth war is much worse.
A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight;
nothing he cares more about than his own personal safety;
is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free,
unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
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Billy Mitchell: Military
Aeronautics is a new and developing art. We must not prepare for what happened yesterday, but what is going to happen tomorrow, and the day after.
(Our Air Force, 1921)
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General George S. Patton: Military
Despite the years of thought and oceans of ink which have been devoted to the elucidation of war its secrets still remain shrouded in mystery. Indeed it is due largely to the very volume of available information that the veil is so thick.
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General George S. Patton: Military
War is an art and as such is not susceptible of explanation by fixed formulae. Yet from the earliest time there has been an unending effort to subject its complex and emotional structure to dissection, to enunciate rules for its waging, to make tangible its intangibility.
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Major John Pustay: Military
If the cause of an insurgency is not, or cannot be, erased, then the best military effort will probably be defeated in the long run.
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Karl von Clausewitz: Military
When it is all said and done, it is really the commander's coup d'oeil, his ability to see things simply; to identify the whole business of war completely with himself, that is the essence of good generalship.
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Karl von Clausewitz: Military
The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.
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Karl von Clausewitz: Military
I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.
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