T: Tacitus – Tzu Military Quotes and Quotations
“Reason and calm judgment, the qualities specially belonging to a leader.”
– Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus (AD 56 – after 117)
Senator and a historian of the Roman Empire.
“There are only two kinds of people on this beach; the dead and those about to die. so lets get the hell out’a here”
– Colonel George Taylor – Omaha beach, 6 June 1944
Commander of the 16th. Infantry
“He makes no friend who never made a foe.”
– Alfred Tennyson, 1809-1892
“Fortune favors the brave.”
– Terence
“If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.”
– Mother Teresa
“He who flees will fight again …..”
– Tertullian (QUINTUS SEPTIMIUS FLORENS TERTULLIANUS ca 160).
“A world without nuclear weapons would be less stable and more dangerous for all of us.”
– Margareth Thatcher
“Being powerful is like being a lady. If you have to tell people you are, you aren’t.”
– Margareth Thatcher
“Democratic nations must try to find ways to starve the terrorist and the hijacker of the oxygen of publicity on which they depend. ”
– Margareth Thatcher
“He who has command of the sea has command of everything.”
– Themistocles. 524–459 BC. Athenian politician and general.
“Cyberspace is the battlefield of tomorrow…Instead of confronting us head-to-head on the traditional battlefield, adversaries will confront the U.S. at its point of least resistance– our information infrastructure.”
– Sen. Fred Thompson, Chairman of the Senate (1998)
“He who learns and runs away, lives to learn another day”
– Edward Lee Thorndike
“If your sword is too short, take one step forward”
– Admiral Marquis Heihachiro Togo (1846-1934), May 1905.
He was one of Japan’s greatest Naval heroes. In the Russo-Japanese War he defeated the Russian fleet at Port Arthur in 1904 and destroyed the Russian Baltic fleet in 1905 at the battle of Tsushima.
“Without war no State could be. All those we know of arose through war, and the protection of their members by armed force remains their primary and essential task. War, therefore, will endure to the end of history, as long as there is a multiplicity of states.”
– Heinrich von Treitschke
“The atom bomb was no ‘great decision.’ . . . It was merely another powerful weapon in the arsenal of righteousness.”
– President Harry Truman
“A leader is a man who had the ability to get other people to do what they don’t want to do, and like it.”
– Harry Truman
“Whether in an advantageous position or a disadvantageous one, the opposite state should be always present to your mind.
– Ts`ao Kung
Bravery without forethought causes a man to fight blindly and desperately like a mad bull. Such an opponent must not be encountered with brute force, but may be lured into an ambush and slain
– Ts`ao Kung
“It is a principle of the art of war that one should simply lay down his life and strike. If one’s opponent also does the same, it is a even match. Defeating one’s opponent is then a matter of faith and destiny.”
– Yamamoto Tsunetomo (1659-1719)
samurai of the Saga Domain in Hizen Province under his lord Nabeshima Mitsushige
“When one has made a decision to kill a person, even if it will be very difficult to succeed by advancing straight ahead, it will not do to think about going at it in a long roundabout way. One’s heart may slacken, he may miss his chance, and by and large there will be no success. The Way of the Samurai is one of immediacy, and it is best to dash in headlong.”
– Yamamoto Tsunetomo
“Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war.”
– Barbara W. Tuchman: August 1914 (1962)
“War is the unfolding of miscalculations.”
– Barbara Tuchman: The Guns Of August
“You must love soldiers in order to understand them, and understand them in order to lead them.”
– Henri Turenne
“Without harmony in the State, no military expedition can be undertaken; without harmony in the army, no battle array can be formed.”
– Wu Tzu / Wuzi
A classic Chinese work on military strategy attributed to Wu Qi
“Weapons are baleful instruments, strife is antagonistic to virtue, a military commander is the negation of civil order!”
– Wei Liao Tzu / Wei Liaozi
Text on military strategy, one of the Seven Military Classics of ancient China.
I can’t guarantee that these quotations are correct or true, but I have tried to verify as many of the quotes as possible. Please contact me if you find any errors in the quotes, have some additional information about the quotes or if you know any more quotations that are not listed here.
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