H: Hackett – Horner Military Quotes and Quotations
“The power of example is very important to people under stress.”
– General Sir John Hackett, British Army
“The warning message we sent the Russians was a calculated ambiguity that would be clearly understood.”
– Alexander Haig
“The problem with sports and war is that God is on everyone’s side.”
– Duane Alan Hahn
“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.”
– Nathan Hale
“There can be no peace but that which is forced by the sword.”
– Henry Halleck, nineteenth-century American military writer and inept Civil War general
I never trust a fighting man who doesnt smoke or drink.”
– Admiral William Halsey
“There are no extraordinary men… just extraordinary circumstances that ordinary men are forced to deal with.”
– Admiral William Halsey
“Peacekeeping is not a job for soldiers, but only soldiers can do it.”
– Dag Hammarskjöld, Former UN Secretary-General
“The pursuit of peace and progress cannot end in a few years in either victory or defeat. The pursuit of peace and progress, with its trials and its errors, its successes and its setbacks, can never be relaxed and never abandoned.”
– Dag Hammarskjöld, Former UN Secretary-General
“Everything will be all right – you know when? When people, just people, stop thinking of the United Nations as a weird Picasso abstraction and see it as a drawing they made themselves.”
– Dag Hammarskjöld, Former UN Secretary-General
“Democracy has no convictions for which people would be willing to stake their lives.”
– Dr. Ernst Hanftstaengl
”We will either find a way or make one.”
– Hannibal (247-183 BC), Carthaginian general.
“War will cease when men refuse to fight.”
– Fridtjof Hansen
“Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.”
– Salvor Hardin
“Victory, speedy and complete, awaits the side that employs air power as it should be employed”
– Marshal of the Royal Air Force Sir Arthur Harris (1892-1984)
“God take away your alms. For as you live by charity, so do I by war, and to me it is as genuine a vocation as yours.”
– Sir John Hawkwood,
upon being greeted by two friars with the words, “God give you peace.”
Sir John Hawkwood was a 14th Century English mercenary general, who has inspired many of our modern mercenary tales, including “The White Company” by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Hawkwood’s White Company fought for and against most of the Italian city states located in Northern Italy over a thirty year period without once breaking a contract.
“Peace is an extension of war by political means.”
– Robert Heinlein
“Always keep your clothes and your weapons where you can find them in the dark”
– Robert Heinlein
“The highest generalship is to compel the enemy to disperse his army, and then to concentrate superior force against each fraction in turn.”
– Col. Henderson, George Francis Robert (1854-1903),
British soldier and military writer
“The rules of strategy are few and simple. They may be learned in a week. They may be taught by familiar illustrations or a dozen diagrams. But such knowledge will no more teach a man to lead an army like Napoleon than a knowledge of grammar will teach him to write like Gibbon.”
– Col. Henderson, George Francis Robert
“The line of supply may be said to be as vital to the existence of an army as the heart to the life of a human being. Just as the duelist who finds his adversary’s point menacing him with certain death, and his own guard astray, is compelled to conform to his adversary’s movements, and to content himself with warding off his thrusts, so the commander whose communications are suddenly threatened find s himself in a false position, and he will be fortunate if he has not to change all his plans, to split up his force into more or less isolated detachments, and to fight with inferior numbers on ground which he has not had time to prepare, and where defeat will not be an ordinary failure, but will entail the ruin or surrender of his whole army.”
– Col. Henderson, George Francis Robert
“The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave…”
– Patrick Henry
1736–99, political leader in the American Revolution
“Give me liberty or give me death”
– Patrick Henry
“Guard with jealous attention to the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force.”
– Patrick Henry
“Discipline is simply the art of making the soldiers fear their officers more than the enemy.”
– Helvetius
“War is the mother of everything.”
– Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (535-475BC)
“Out of every 100 men, ten shouldn’t even be there,
Eighty are just targets,
Nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle.
Ah, but the one,
One is a warrior,
And he will bring the others back.”
– Heraclitus
“In peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons.”
– Heroditus, greek historian c. 484-425 B.C.
“History is marked by alternating movements across the imaginary line that separates East from West in Eurasia.”
– Heroditus
“Force has no place where there is need of skill.”
– Heroditus
“A war put off is not a war avoided.”
– Charlton Heston
“The enemy bombards our front not only with a drumfire of artillery, but also with a drumfire of printed paper. Besides bombs, which kill the body, his airmen also throw down leaflets which are intended to kill the soul.”
– Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg, 1847-1934
Head of German army in First World War
“In war, only the simple succeeds.”
– Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg
“We have resolved to endure the unendurable and suffer what is insufferable.”
– Emperor Hirohito
“I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.”
– Abbie Hoffman
“Sometimes it is entirely appropriate to kill a fly with a sledge hammer.”
– Major Holdridge
“Yes, we love peace, but we are not willing to take wounds for it, as we are for war”
– John Andrew Holmes
“The proof of battle is action, proof of words, debate. No time for speeches now, it’s time to fight”
– Homer, The Iliad (c. 800BC)
“Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow, and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.”
– Herbert Hoover, speech, 1944
“A ship in port is safe, but that’s not what ships are built for.”
– Rear adm. Grace Murray Hopper
“If it’s a good idea, go ahead and do it. It’s much easier to apologize than it is to get permission.”
– Rear adm. Grace Murray Hopper
“I have always regarded the forward edge of battle as the most exclusive club in the world.”
– Lt.Gen Sir Brian Gwynne Horrocks (1895-1995)
(“A Full Life” 1960)
“Come on, Lakotas! It’s a good day to die!”
– Crazy Horse, June 1876.
When he rallied the Lakota warriors to defend their camp on
the Little Big Horn River against Custer’s attack.
“I just don’t think nuclear weapons are usable… I’m not saying that we military disarm. I’m saying that I have a nuclear weapons, and you’re North Korea and you have a nuclear weapon. You can use yours. I can’t use mine. What am I going to use it on? What are nuclear weapons good for? Busting cities. What president of the United States is going to take out Pyongyang?”
– General Charles Horner
“I want to go to zero, and I’ll tell you why: If we and the Russians can go to zero nuclear weapons, then think what that does for us in our efforts to counter the new war… Think how intolerant we will be of nations that are developing nuclear weapons if we have none. Think of the high moral ground we secure by having none… It’s kind of hard for us to say to North Korea, ‘You are terrible people, you’re developing a nuclear weapons,’ when we have oh, 8,000.”
– General Charles Horner
“Nuclear deterrence doesn’t work outside of the Russian-U.S. context; Saddam Hussein showed that.”
– General Charles Horner
“The nuclear weapon is obsolete. I want to get rid of them all.”
– General Charles Horner
“There are some people that will be deterred by the fact that we have nuclear weapons… But those people are the folks we can deal with anyway.”
– General Charles Horner
I can’t guarantee that these quotations are correct or true, but I have tried to verify as many of the quotes as possible. Please contact me if you find any errors in the quotes, have some additional information about the quotes or if you know any more quotations that are not listed here.
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