Quotes About Military

Armed forces were no longer primarily feudal levies serving under a vassal's obligation who went home after forty days; they were recruited bodies who served for pay.

Political balance among the competing groups was unstable because the king had no permanent armed force at his command.

Can the military art be learned in the games and hunts in which you pass your youth?" The

Command, deprived of personal judgment, can win no battles.

Nevertheless, Schlieffen decided, in the event of war, to attack France by way of Belgium.

Within the army, field officers despised Staff officers as "having the brains of canaries and the manners of Potsdam," but both groups were as one in their distaste for interference by civilian ministers who were known as "the frocks." The civil arm in its turn referred to the military as "the boneheads.

In this atmosphere of doubt why was the extreme risk approved? Partly because exasperation at the failure of all her efforts at intimidation had led to an all-or-nothing state of mind and a helpless yielding like Bethmann's by the civilians to the military.

The risk of leaving East Prussia, hearth of Junkerdom and the Hohenzollerns, to be held by only nine divisions was hard to accept, but Frederick the Great had said, "It is better to lose a province than split the forces with which one seeks victory," and nothing so comforts the military mind as the maxim of a great but dead general.

Anything that protracted a campaign Clausewitz condemned. "Gradual reduction" of the enemy, or a war of attrition, he feared like the pit of hell.

One corps had run out of wire altogether and was relying on mounted orderlies. The VIth Corps did not possess the key to the cipher used by the XIIIth. Consequently, Samsonov's orders were issued by wireless in clear.

The lesson was not yet clear in the 18th century, as America was to learn to her cost in our own century, that the presence of disunity in the military about method and strategy, and among the nation's people about the rightness of the war aim, makes it impossible for a war of any duration to be fought effectively and won.

Moltke closed upon that rigid phrase, the basis for every major German mistake, the phrase that launched the invasion of Belgium and the submarine war against the United States, the inevitable phrase when military plans dictate policy—"and once settled it cannot be altered.

the French, who had put large expectations in the abasement of Britain that American success would cause, had been disappointed by the weakness of the American military effort. Instead of an aggressive ally, they were tied to a dependent client, unable to establish a strong government and requiring transfusions of men-at-arms and money to keep its war effort alive.

Joffre was adept at taking advice, and submitted more or less consciously to the reigning doctrinaires of the Operations Bureau. They formed what a French military critic called "a church outside which there was no salvation and which could never pardon those who revealed the falsity of its doctrine.

Nevertheless Sir John French next day sent Joffre definitive notice that the British Army would not be in condition to take its place in the line "for another ten days." Had he asked for ten days' time out when fighting with his back to London he would not have survived in command. As it was, Sir John French remained Commander in Chief for another year and a half.

The early removal from school of future officers of Britain's seapower, leaving them unacquainted with the subject matter and ideas of the distant and recent past, may account for the incapacity of no military thinking in a world that devoted itself to military action. With little thought of strategy, no study of the theory of war or of planned objective, war's glorious art may have been glorious, but with individual exceptions, it was more or less mindless.

Growing up in a military family perhaps cultivates a certain kind of imagination that makes it easier to engage in the subject of war.

All we had aboard the ship that morning was one Annapolis graduate and three reserves.

Why is being in the military like a blow job? The closer you get to discharge, the better you feel.

You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.

The best way to support the troops is to not send them off to die in the first place. And the second best way to support them only to send them off to die when you absolutely have to. And the only way to know that you've done that is to talk about it, debate it, examine it, and make damn sure.

There is no more effective way to destroy the leadership potential of young officers and noncommissioned officers than to deny them opportunities to make decisions appropriate for their assignments.

the Internet! You knew the Mad Scientists invented the World Wide Web, right? Yep, back in the 1970s, the "Net" was a project designed to help with military communication. And here's the beauty of DARPA's mad scientists: they share their inventions whenever they can. Whenever DARPA comes up with an invention that will help society, they give it away. So, we ALL get to use the Internet. Thanks, DARPA!

When the campaign had opened the scales were heavily weighted and steeply tilted on the side of Antigonus. Rarely has the balance of fortune so dramatically changed. It would seem clear that Antigonus's balance had been upset by the indirect approach which Cassander planned. This dislocated the mental balance of Antigonus, the moral balance of his troops and his subjects, and the physical balance of his military dispositions.