Military Quotes Donald W. Sampcor – Algernon Charles Swinburne

T: Sampcor – Swinburne Military Quotes / Quotations

“Maneuvers are often media events rather than full-scale war games.”
– Donald W. Sampcor, USMC

“The shovel is the brother to the gun.”
– Carl Sandburg, American poet, biographer, and Spanish-American War veteran.
A soldier in combat quickly learns that digging a hole to hide in offers better protection than using his weapon.

When the rich make war it’s the poor that die.
– Jean-Paul Sartre

“Fascism is not defined by the number of its victims, but by the way it kills them.”
– Jean-Paul Sartre

“It is not big armies that win battles, it is the good ones!”
– Marshal Maurice de Saxe (“Mes Reveries”)

“Hope encourages men to endure and attempt everything; in depriving them of it, or in making it too distant, you deprive them of their very soul.”
– Field Marshal Maurice Comte de Saxe, French Army

“The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched into the Rhineland, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even moderate resistance.”
– Dr. Paul Schmidt, Hitler’s interpreter

“Military history, when superficially studied, will furnish arguments in support of any theory.”
– Bronsart von Schellendorf, imperial German officer and military historian

“The fear of war is worse than war itself.”
– Lucius Annaeus Seneca (often known simply as Seneca. 4 BC – AD 65)
Roman Stoic philosopher, statesman, dramatist,

“You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young men carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“The capacity of any conqueror is more likely than not to be an illusion produced by the incapacity of his adversary.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.”
– George Bernard Shaw

“There’s only one truth about war: people die.”
– Sheridan

“The dominant feeling of the battlefield is loneliness”
– Field Marshall Viscount Slim of Burma, June 1941.

“Most of the time, leaders should laugh at themselves rather than others.”
– Major General Perry M. Smith, U.S. Air Force

“Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind,
a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice”
– Baruch Spinoza

“A sincere diplomat is like dry water or wooden iron.”
– Joseph Stalin, 1913.

“A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic”
– Joseph Stalin

“The Limey layout is simply stupendous, you trip over Lieutenant-Generals on every floor, most of them doing captains work, or none at all.”
– General Joseph Stillwell, about the Burma campaign 1943

“More than one general has redeemed faulty dispositions and won fame by a suitably glorious death.”
– James Lawton Stokesbury, military historian

“Military doctrine is military, and particularly tactical philosophy; doctrine creates certainty, which is the soul of every action.”
– General A.A. Svechin. “The foundation of military doctrine” 1920.

“War: that mad game the world so loves to play.”
– Jonathan Swift

One enemy can do more hurt than ten friends can do good.
– Jonathan Swift, 1667-1745

“Not with dreams but with blood and iron Shall a nation be molded at last.”
– Algernon Charles Swinburne, English poet and critic

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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