Curtis LeMay Quotes

If you are going to use military force, then you ought to use overwhelming military force. Use too much and deliberately use too much; you'll save lives, not only your own, but the enemy's too.

If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.

There are no innocent civilians, so it doesn't bother me so much to be killing innocent bystanders.

If we'd lost the war, we'd all have been prosecuted as war criminals.

If we maintain our faith in God, love of freedom, and superior global air power, the future looks good.

I think there are many times when it would be most efficient to use nuclear weapons. However, the public opinion in this country and throughout the world throw up their hands in horror when you mention nuclear weapons, just because of the propaganda that's been fed to them.

I don't have time to distinguish between the unfortunate and the incompetent.

I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.... Every soldier thinks something of the moral aspects of what he is doing. But all war is immoral and if you let that bother you, you're not a good soldier.

You've got to kill people, and when you've killed enough they stop fighting.

We went over there and fought the war and eventually burned down every town in North Korea anyway, someway or another, and some in South Korea too. Over a period of three years or so, we killed off - what - twenty percent of the population of Korea as direct casualties of war, or from starvation and exposure?

I don't mind being called tough, since I find in this racket it's the tough guys who lead the survivors.

My solution to the problem would be to tell [the North Vietnamese Communists] frankly that they've got to draw in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the Stone Age. And we would shove them back into the Stone Age with Air power or Naval power - not with ground forces.

Native annalists may look sadly back from the future on that period when we had the atomic bomb and the Russians didn't. Or when the Russians had aquired (through connivance and treachery of Westerns with warped minds) the atomic bomb - and yet still didn't have any stockpile of the weapons. That was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even skinned our elbows doing it.

Don't like to do anything half-heartedly, even if it is a wicked and self-destructive avocation like smoking cigars

We're at war with Japan. We were attacked by Japan. Do you want to kill Japanese, or would you rather have Americans killed?

Today, shooting wars are won or lost before they start. If they are fought at all, they would be fought principally to confirm which side had won at the outset.

Sometime in the future - 25, 50, 75 years hence - what will the situation be like then? By that time the Chinese will have the capability of delivery too.

Killing Japanese didn't bother me very much at that time... I suppose if I had lost the war, I would have been tried as a war criminal.

You [President Kennedy] have made some pretty strong statements about their being defensive and that we would take action against offensive weapons. I think that a blockade and political talk would be considered by a lot of our friends and neutrals as being a pretty weak response to this [the Cuban missile crisis]. And I'm sure a lot of our own citizens would feel that way too. In other words, you're in a pretty bad fix at the present time.

I don't want to hear of any of you men getting into any fights with the British. But if you do, you'd better not get whipped.

My solution to the problem would be to tell the North Vietnamese Communists frankly that they've got to drawn in their horns and stop their aggression or we're going to bomb them into the stone age.

I'd like to see a more aggressive attitude on the part of the United States. That doesn't mean launching an immediate preventive war.