Douglas MacArthur Quotes - Page 6

My staff was unanimous in believing that Japan was on the point of collapse and surrender.

It seems to me the worst possible concept, militarily, that we would simply stay there, resisting aggression, so-called...it seems to me that the way to "resist aggression" is to destroy the potentialities of the aggressor to continually hit you...When you say, merely, "we are going to continue to fight aggression," that is not what the enemy is fighting for. The enemy is fighting for a very definite purpose-to destroy our forces.

A better world shall emerge based on faith and understanding.

If I had one more division like this First Marine Division I could win this war.

Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

A soldier plods and groans, sweats and toils, he growls and curses, and at the end he dies.

In this situation, it becomes vital that our own country orient its policies in consonance with this basic evolutionary condition rather than pursue a course blind to the reality that the colonial era is now past and the Asian peoples covet the right to shape their own free destiny. What they seek now is friendly guidance, understanding, and support - not imperious direction - the dignity of equality and not the shame of subjugation.

In many situations that seemed desperate, the artillery has been a most vital factor.

I am of Virginia and all my professional life I have studied of Lee and Jackson

I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on the endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations.

While I was not consulted prior to the President's decision to intervene in support of the Republic of Korea, that decision from a military standpoint, proved a sound one, as we hurled back the invader and decimated his forces. Our victory was complete, and our objectives within reach, when Red China intervened with numerically superior ground forces.

I'll come back as soon as I can with as much as I can. In the meantime, you've got to hold!

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.

I will defend Korea as I would my own country-just as I would California.

We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.

It was close; but that's the way it is in war. You win or lose, live or die - and the difference is just an eyelash.

Apart from an innate grasp of tactical concepts, a great coach must possess the essentials attributes of leadership which mold men into a cohesive, fighting team with an invincible will to victory.

Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.

He thus reaps the full fruits which result from his toil and labors with the incentive of free enterprise to maximize his effort to achieve increasing production. Representing over a half of Japan's total population, the agriculture workers have become an invincible barrier against the advance of socialistic ideas which would relegate all to the indignity of state servitude.

The hated system of land tenure, so contributory to general unrest in Asia, has been abolished. Every farmer is now accorded the right and dignity of ownership of the land he long has tilled.

Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.

The Puerto Ricans forming the ranks of the gallant 65th Infantry on the battlefields of Korea … are writing a brilliant record of achievement in battle and I am proud indeed to have them in this command. I wish that we might have many more like them.

The Pacific no longer represents menacing avenues of approach for a prospective invader. It assumes, instead, the friendly aspect of a peaceful lake. Our line of defense is a natural one and can be maintained with a minimum of military effort and expense.

I know that this operation will be sort of helter-skelter. But the First Marine Division is going to win the war by landing at Inchon.

Men since the beginning of time have sought peace...military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn have failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war not blots out this alternative.