Quotes from Harold G. Moore

On those occasions when one of my people did not perform as expected, I found that in many cases at least half the fault was my own. I had either not put out clear, clean instructions or I had not trained that person sufficiently, or I had given him a task with little or no possibility of accomplishment.

In war, truth is the first casualty. —AESCHYLUS

To be a leader, you must be willing to be a lifelong learner.

No job is ever "beneath" you. In whatever you do, do it to the best of your abilities.

One cannot answer for his courage when he has never been in danger. —FRANÇOIS, DUE DE LA ROCHEFOUCAULD, Maximes, 1665

Leadership is a highly personal, individual matter. Each leader must establish his own approach based on an internal compass using a method geared to his personality, his capabilities but always oriented towards accomplishing the mission while knowing and taking care of his men.

There are only three principles of warfare: Audacity, Audacity, and AUDACITY!

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. —WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

War is a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead. —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

A quarter-century later, General Norm Schwarzkopf would date the birth of his famous hot temper to those days, when he begged and pleaded on the radio for someone to evacuate his wounded South Vietnamese soldiers, while American helicopters fluttered by without stopping.

I told Sergeant Major Plumley that he had unrestricted access to me at any time, on any subject he wished to raise.

Many of our countrymen came to hate the war we fought. Those who hated it the most—the professionally sensitive—were not, in the end, sensitive enough to differentiate between the war and the soldiers who had been ordered to fight it. They hated us as well, and we went to ground in the cross fire, as we had learned in the jungles.

We discovered in that depressing, hellish place, where death was our constant companion, that we loved each other. We killed for each other, we died for each other, and we wept for each other. And in time we came to love each other as brothers.

It was the final act of a North Vietnamese soldier who was killed. Before he died he took a hand grenade and held it against the stock of his weapon. Then he had gotten on his knees and bent over double. If anybody tried to get his weapon they were going to activate that hand grenade. When I saw the dedication of those two Vietnamese with their hand grenades, I said to myself: We are up against an enemy who is going to make this a very long year.

We need leaders of principle, courage, character, wisdom, and discipline, and yet we seem trapped by a system of choosing our presidents that pushes those who possess those traits aside in favor of others who look good on television, are skilled at slandering and demonizing their opponents in a campaign, and are able to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars required to ensure election at any cost.

You had to get on the ground with your troops to see and hear what was happening. You have to soak up firsthand information for your instincts to operate accurately. Besides, it's too easy to be crisp, cool, and detached at 1, 500 feet; too easy to demand the impossible of your troops; too easy to make mistakes that are fatal only to those souls far below in the mud, the blood, and the confusion.

He who controls the Central Highlands controls South Vietnam. —Vietnamese military maxim

When you identify a toxic subordinate leader, remove them. If you cannot remove them, reassign them to a role where their toxicity can be minimized.

We Were Soldiers Once…and Young

When a member of a unit (military or non-military) loses his life, or when a member has a death in the family, it's the duty of the leader to take sincere action in expressing personal condolences, sympathy or any other appropriate steps considering the circumstances.

Their style emphasized four bedrock principles: Surprise Aggressiveness Deception The leader's personal presence in the battle.

good leadership revolves around good judgment. That is the defining characteristic of a good leader.

this act is engraved in my mind deeper than any other experience in my two tours in Vietnam. A huge black enlisted man, clad only in shorts and boots, hands bigger than dinner plates, reached into my helicopter to pick up one of the dead white soldiers. He had tears streaming down his face and he tenderly cradled that dead soldier to his chest as he walked slowly from the aircraft to the medical station.

Moore also realized that a good leader is also a good listener.