Douglas MacArthur Quotes (60 Quotes)


    If you must fire do a good job-a few casualties become martyrs, a large number an object lesson. ...When a mob starts to move keep it on the run. ...Use a bayonet to encourage its retreat. If they are running, a few good wounds in the buttocks will encourage them. If they resist, they must be killed.

    One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.

    No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation


    The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.


    Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

    Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind



    The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.

    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.

    In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.


    Expect only five percent of an intelligence report to be accurate. The trick of a good commander is to isolate the five percent.

    I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.



    We are bound no longer by the straitjacket of the past and nowhere is the change greater than in our profession of arms. What, you may well ask, will be the end of all of this I would not know But I would hope that our beloved country will drink deep from the chalice of courage.



    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.

    They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.


    I suppose, in a way, this has become part of my soul. It is a symbol of my life. Whatever I have done that really matters, I've done wearing it. When the time comes, it will be in this that I journey forth. What greater honor could come to an American, and a soldier?

    Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.

    Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live.


    By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder -- infinitely prouder -- to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle field but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, ''Our Father Who Art in Heaven.''

    A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.

    Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.


    People grow old only by deserting their ideals, Macarthur had written. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear as young as your hope as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away.

    a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past.

    Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear - kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor - with the cry of grave national emergency.





    The inescapable price of liberty is an ability to preserve it from destruction.

    And like the old soldier in that 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 sight to see that duty.

    I can recall no parallel in history where a great nation recently at war has so distinguished its former enemy commander.

    Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.



    I see that old flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.

    The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.

    Last, but by no means least, courage - moral courage, the courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle - the roar of the crowd on one side and the


    It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

    I realize that advice is worth what it costs -- that is, nothing.


    More Douglas MacArthur Quotations (Based on Topics)


    War & Peace - World - Courage - Success - Fear - Countries - Youth - Soul - Soldiers - Life - Duty - Opportunity - Security - Honor - Cry - Past - Belief & Faith - Liberty & Freedom - Home - View All Douglas MacArthur Quotations

    Related Authors


    Robert Jenkins - Quintus Tullius Cicero - Paul von Hindenburg - Norman Schwarzkopf - Lord Amherst - Karl Von Clausewitz - George S. Patton - George C. Marshall - Erwin Rommel - Daniel Waters


Page 1 of 2 1 2

Authors (by First Name)

A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - I - J - K - L - M
N - O - P - Q - R - S - T - U - V - W - X - Y - Z

Other Inspiring Sections