Douglas MacArthur Quotes - Page 3

Life is a lively process of becoming.

The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.

Nine times of ten an army has been destroyed because its supply lines have been severed

Defensive strategy never has produced ultimate victory.

Men will not fight and die without knowing what they are fighting and dying for.

There are no atheists in the foxholes of Bataan.

I have just returned from visiting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world!

In short, is American life of the future to be characterized by freedom or by servitude, strength or weakness? The answer must be clear and unequivocal if we are to avoid the pitfalls toward which we are now heading with such certainty. In many respects it is not to be found in any dogma of political philosophy but in those immutable precepts which underlie the Ten Commandments.

It is my earnest hope, and indeed the hope of all mankind, that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past...

Training distinguishes an army from an armed mob.

Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain with death - the seas bear only commerce - men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world lies quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way.

The inescapable price of liberty is an ability to preserve it from destruction.

In no other profession are the penalties for employing untrained personnel so appalling or so irrevocable as in the military.

One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.

A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

Expect only 5% of an intelligence report to be accurate.The trick of a good commander is to isolate the 5%.

This does not mean that you are warmongers. On the contrary, the soldier above all other people prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of all philosophers: "Only the dead have seen the end of war.

The soldier, above all other men, is required to perform the highest act of religious offering-sacrifice. In battle and in the face of danger and death he discloses those divine attributes which his amke gave when he created in his own image. No physical courage and no brute instincts can take the place of the divine annunciation and spiritual gift which will alone sustain him.

The chickens are coming home to roost, and you happen to have just moved into the chicken house.

They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.

However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.

The nations of the world will have to unite for the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of Earth must some day make a common front against attack by people from other planets.

Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always.

Americans never quit.