Quotes About Leadership

People do not make wars; governments do.

Too frequent rewards indicate that the general is at the end of his resources; too frequent punishments that he is in acute distress.

What enables the wise sovereign and the good general to strike and conquer, and achieve things beyond the reach of ordinary men, is foreknowledge.

No president can easily commit our sons and daughters to war.

Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.

Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.

Once politics become a tug-of-war for shares in the income pie, decent government is impossible.

Kennedy said that if we had nuclear war we'd kill 300 million people in the first hour. McNamara, who is a good businessman and likes to save, says it would be only 200 million.

I think that Lee should have been hanged. It was all the worse that he was a good man and a fine character and acted conscientiously... It's always the good men who do the most harm in the world.

The transition from the defensive to the offensive is one of the most delicate operations in war.

Generals are fascinating cases of arrested development - after all, at five all of us wanted to be generals.

He is cautious. He ought to be. But he is NOT slow. Lee is a phenomenon. He is the only man whom I would follow blindfolded.

He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks.

You should not go to war for the privilege of withdrawal. You need to define your objective and the outcome, and it cannot be the removal of one man.

There's no difference between one's killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It's exactly the same thing, or even worse.

Arthur Scargill is the Labour movements nearest equivalent to a First World War General.

Wars are the hobbies of half-informed children who have somehow come into possession of the levers of power.

Generals think war should be waged like the tourneys of the Middle Ages. I have no use for knights; I need revolutionaries.

I will always be an advocate in terms of wars of necessity. I am just much more cautious on wars of choice.

Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short in all management of human affairs.

Older men start wars, but younger men fight them.

Having a spine is overrated. If everybody squealed and ran away, there'd be no more wars.

Free nations don't develop weapons of mass destruction.

When settling disputes between his subjects, he should ensure that his judgement is irrevocable; and he should be so regarded that no one ever dreams of trying to deceive or trick him.