Military Operations Quotes

• It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; . . . who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Motivational, Courage, Strong

  Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23 Apr. 1910. Richard M. Nixon quoted this passage in his address to the nation announcing his decision to resign the presidency, 8 Aug. 1974. See Theodore Roosevelt 1; Theodore Roosevelt 2; Theodore Roosevelt 5

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• A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

  John Stuart Mill

  Freedom, War, Military

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• 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.

  John Stuart Mill

  Military, War, Patriotic

  "The Contest in America", Fraser's Magazine, February 1862.

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• So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Courage, Badass, Military

  Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23 Apr. 1910. Richard M. Nixon quoted this passage in his address to the nation announcing his decision to resign the presidency, 8 Aug. 1974. See Theodore Roosevelt 1; Theodore Roosevelt 2; Theodore Roosevelt 5

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• I'm just very wary that once you start military operations in any country, it's very difficult to predict what the outcome is.

  Abdallah II

  Country, Military, Outcomes

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• You must all be aware that modern war is not a mere matter of military operations. It involves the whole strength and all the resources of the nation. Not only soldiers, but also all citizens without exception, take part.

  Chiang Kai-shek

  Military, War, Soldier

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• So the important thing in a military operation is victory, not persistence.

  Sun Tzu

  Military, War, Persistence

  Sun Tzu (2005). “The Art of War”, p.65, Shambhala Publications

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• A military operation involves deception. Even though you are competent, appear to be incompetent. Though effective, appear to be ineffective.

  Sun Tzu

  War, Lying, Military

  Sun Tzu (2005). “The Art of War”, p.21, Shambhala Publications

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• There are three ways that men get what they want; by planning, by working, and by praying. Any great military operation takes careful planning, or thinking. Then you must have well-trained troops to carry it out: that's working. But between the plan and the operation there is always an unknown. That unknown spells defeat or victory, success or failure. It is the reaction of the actors to the ordeal when it actually comes. Some people call that getting the breaks; I call it God. God has His part, or margin in everything, That's where prayer comes in.

  George S. Patton

  Prayer, Military, Army

  "The True Story of The Patton Prayer" by James H. O'Neill. Review of the News, www.pattonhq.com. October 06, 1971.

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• In a military operation, the command and control elements are a legitimate target.

  Stephen Hadley

  Military, Command And Control, Target

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• It is not the critic who counts

  Theodore Roosevelt

  Courage, Military, Failure

  Address at the Sorbonne, Paris, 23 Apr. 1910. Richard M. Nixon quoted this passage in his address to the nation announcing his decision to resign the presidency, 8 Aug. 1974. See Theodore Roosevelt 1; Theodore Roosevelt 2; Theodore Roosevelt 5

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• There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Military, Size, Overcoming

  Ernest Hemingway (2014). “The Hemingway Collection”, p.2966, Simon and Schuster

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• When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you've got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I'm not sure any country, either the United States or I don't hear of anyone else, who's willing to take on that responsibility.

  Colin Powell

  Country, Military, Responsibility

  "The Tavis Smiley Show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. June 11, 2012.

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• The logistic requirements for a large, elaborate mission to Mars are no greater that those for a minor military operation extending over a limited theatre of war.

  Wernher von Braun

  Military, War, Theatre

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• [M]ilitary metaphors have more and more come to infuse all aspects of the description of the medical situation. Disease is seen as an invasion of alien organisms, to which the body responds by its own military operations, such as the mobilizing of immunological "defenses", and medicine is "aggressive" as in the language of most chemotherapies.

  Susan Sontag

  Military, Health, Medicine

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• The struggle to maintain peace is immeasurably more difficult than any military operation.

  Anne O'Hare McCormick

  Peace, Military, Struggle

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• If I had undertaken the practical direction of military operations, and anything went amiss, I feared that my conscience would torture me, as guilty of the fall of my country, as I had not been familiar with military tactics.

  Lajos Kossuth

  Country, Military, Fall

  Lajos Kossuth, Francis William Newman (1854). “Select Speeches of Kossuth”, p.44

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• The Defense Department's plan to ban newspaper reporters from pool coverage of military operations is incredible. It reveals the administration to be out of touch with journalism, reality and the First Amendment.

  Arthur Ochs Sulzberger

  Military, Reality, Firsts

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• It is hard as an American to support the failure of American military operations in Iraq. Such failure will bring with it the death and wounding of many American service members, and many more Iraqis.

  Scott Ritter

  Military, Iraq, Support

  "A Critic's Defeatist Rhetoric" by David Asman, www.foxnews.com. February 15, 2005.

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• You know as well as I do that counterinsurgency is a very nuanced type of military operation.

  John Abizaid

  Military, Type, Operations

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• The military operation in Lebanon was the most successful military operation in recent Israeli history. Many in Israel don't recognise that.

  Ehud Olmert

  Military, Successful, Israel

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• It's perfectly natural to desire more troops when engaged in a military operation facing serious obstacles, and the more troops you have, probably, the [lower the] risk of causalities.

  Zbigniew Brzezinski

  Military, Risk, Desire

  Source: www.realclearworld.com

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• There are markets extending from Mali, Indonesia, way outside the purview of any one government which operated under civil laws, so contracts weren't, except on trust. So they have this free market ideology the moment they have markets operating outside the purview of the states, as prior to that markets had really mainly existed as a side effect of military operations.

  David Graeber

  Military, Government, Law

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• The reality of Canadian history is that we've been willing to do the important things the world demanded of us: fighting in World War II, in Korea, in the Balkans, where we were involved in offensive military operations, and in Afghanistan, where we have made disproportionate contributions.

  Chris Alexander

  Military, War, Fighting

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• Our task was not to conduct a full-fledged military operation there [in Crimea], but it was to ensure people's safety and security and a comfortable environment to express their will. We did that. But it would not have been possible without the Crimeans' own strong resolution.

  Vladimir Putin

  Strong, Military, People

  Source: www.washingtonpost.com

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