“But now, instead of discussion and argument, brute force rises up to the rescue of discomfited error, and crushes truth and right into the dust. "Might makes right," and hoary folly totters on in her mad career escorted by armies and navies.”
— Adin Ballou, Christian Non-Resistance: In All its Important Bearings, Illustrated and Defended (1846).
“Some day there is going to be a man sitting in my present chair who has not been raised in the military services and who will have little understanding of where slashes in their estimates can be made with little or no damage. If that should happen while we still have the state of tension that now exists in the world, I shudder to think of what could happen in this country.”
— Dwight D. Eisenhower, letter to Everett E. ("Swede") Hazlett, August 20, 1956.—William Bragg Ewald, Jr., Eisenhower the President, p. 248 (1981). Date of the letter provided by the Eisenhower Library, Abilene, Kansas.
“I could as easily bail out the Potomac River with a teaspoon as attend to all the details of the army.”
— Attributed to President Abraham Lincoln by General James B. Fry. Allen Thorndike Rice, Reminiscences of Abraham Lincoln (1886), chapter 22, p. 393. This supposedly had been part of Lincoln's response to a young volunteer soldier who had come to Lincoln's office asking his help with a grievance. The story has been repeated in numerous books on Lincoln: Alexander K. McClure, "Abe" Lincoln's Yarns and Stories (1904), p. 162; Ida M. Tarbell, The Life of Abraham Lincoln (1917), vol. 2, p. 153; and Caroline T. Harnsberger, The Lincoln Treasury (1950), p. 14.
“Every time the Secretary of Defense tries to get a hand on his many intelligence programs, we hear warnings about the dire consequences to liberty. When you look behind those warnings, what you really see is the CIA trying to preserve its perks.”
“An Army raised without proper regard to the choice of its recruits was never yet made good by length of time; and we are now convinced by fatal experience that this is the source of all our misfortunes.”
— Vegetius, [Concerning Military Matters] (5th century) as quoted by , Irregular army (2012)
“With willing hearts and skillful hands, the difficult we do at once; the impossible takes a bit longer.”
— Author unknown. Inscription on the memorial to the Seabees (U.S. Naval Construction Batallions), between Memorial Bridge and Arlington Cemetery. "The difficult we do immediately. The impossible takes a little longer." Motto of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers during World War II, according to The Home Book of American Quotations, ed. Bruce Bohle, p. 35 (1967), which says that other branches of the service also used this slogan. Newsweek, March 8, 1943, p. 34, attributes this "cocky slogan" to the Army Air Forces. A higher comparative, "The impossible we do at once; the miraculous takes a little longer," was said to be the motto of the Army Service Forces. The New York Times (November 4, 1945), p. 2E, 6E. This echoes a remark attributed to Charles-Alexandre de Calonne, Louis XVI's minister of finance. Marie Antoinette asked him something in a tone that brooked no refusal, adding that perhaps it would be difficult. He replied, "If it is only difficult, it is done; if it is impossible, we shall see." J. F. Michaud, Biographie Universelle, vol. 6, p. 427.
Quotes via Wikiquote (CC BY-SA), each with its original source.
