Category: Quotes of the Week

My regret is we didn’t win the war. For we had the force, skill and intelligence, but our civilian betters wouldn’t turn us loose.

—General William Momyer, on Viet Nam

Strategy is finding a sonofabitch whom you rank and telling him to take a place, and relieving him if he doesn’t.

—General George Patton

Flexibility: A large general-purpose tent under which chaos, confusion and incompetency are kept well hidden.

—Creighton Abrams

I am convinced that the best service a retired general can perform is to turn in his tongue along with his suit and to mothball his opinion.

—General Omar Bradley

After a battle is over people talk a lot about how decisions were methodically reached, but actually there’s always a hell of a lot of groping around.

—Admiral Frank Fletcher

Those who win a war well rarely can make a good peace and those who could make a good peace never have won the war.

—Winston Churchill

Vietnam was the first war ever fought without any censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

—General William Westmoreland

For most men, the matter of learning is one of professional preference. But for Army officers, the obligation to learn, to grow in their profession, is clearly a public duty.

—General Omar Bradley

If civilians are going to be killed, I would rather have them be their civilians than our civilians.

—Stuart Symington