George S Patton Jr Quotes

It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather, we should thank God that such men lived.

May God have mercy for my enemies because I won't.

Lead me, follow me, or get the hell out of my way.

No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.

The test of success is not what you do when you are on top. Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.

The soldier is the Army. No army is better than its soldiers. The Soldier is also a citizen. In fact, the highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is that of bearing arms for one’s country

Pressure makes diamonds

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite time in the future.

Anyone in any walk of life who is content with mediocrity is untrue to himself and to American tradition.

Do your duty as you see it, and damn the consequences.

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.

No good decision was ever made in a swivel chair.

Accept the challenges so that you can feel the exhilaration of victory.

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

An active mind cannot exist in an inactive body.

...It is a proud privilege to be a soldier – a good soldier … [with] discipline, self-respect, pride in his unit and his country, a high sense of duty and obligation to comrades and to his superiors, and a self confidence born of demonstrated ability.

Give me an Army of West Point graduates and I'll win a battle... Give me a handful of Texas Aggies and I'll win a war.

Rommel, you magnificent bastard! I read your book!

A man must know his destiny… if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder… if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it.

Human beings are made up of flesh and blood, and a miracle fiber called courage.

To be a successful soldier, you must know history.

I don’t fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me which is saying, ‘Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?

Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack.

A real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor, his sense of duty to his country, and his innate manhood.

Never draw a gun on a man unless you intend to kill him. And believe me, if you do intend to kill him he will already know it. Then he will feel the cold breath of the tomb.

I am a Soldier, I fight where I am told, and I win where I fight.

You cannot be disciplined in great things and undisciplined in small things. Brave undisciplined men have no chance against the discipline and valour of other men. Have you seen a few policemen handle a crowd?

Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more

A man is not measured by how much he can take and stand but by how fast he regains once fallen.

continue to advance until you run out of ammunition. Then, dig in.

Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men

Coward: someone who in a bad situation thinks with his feet

Every man is scared in his first battle. If he says he s not he s a liar. Some men are cowards but they fight the same as the brave men or they get the hell slammed out of them watching men fight who are just as scared as they are. The real hero is the man who fights even though he is scared. Some men get over their fright in a minute under fire. For some it takes an hour. For some it takes days. But a real man will never let his fear of death overpower his honor his sense of duty to his country and his innate manhood. Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best and it removes all that is base.

Take not counsel of your fears

Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.

If we take the generally accepted definition of bravery as a quality which knows no fear, I have never seen a brave man. All men are frightened. The more intelligent they are, the more they are frightened.

There is no such thing as luck, merely opportunity meeting preparedness. George S. Patton Jr.

Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so.

Death can be more exciting than life.

A piece of spaghetti or a military unit can only be led from the front end.

Battle is an orgy of disorder.

He who sweats more in training bleeds less in battle.

Success is how high you bounce when you hit the bottom.

I am convinced that much more emphasis should be placed on history. The purpose of history is to learn how human beings react when exposed to the danger of wounds or death...

Son, only a pimp in a Louisiana whore- house carries pearl-handled revolvers. These are ivory.

Just drive down that road until you get blown up.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” —General George S. Patton, Jr. General

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.

To Hell With Compromises

I fought in many guises, Many names, but always me. And I see not in my blindness What the objects were I wrought, But as God rules o'er our bickerings It was through His will I fought. So forever in the future, Shall I battle as of yore, Dying to be born a... fighter, But to die again, once more.

Fear kills more people than death.

If everyone is thinking alike, someone isn’t thinking. —George S. Patton Jr.

I hope that in the final settlement of the war, you insist that the Germans retain Lorraine, because I can imagine no greater burden than to be the owner of this nasty country where it rains every day.

A good plan, violently executed now, is better than a perfect plan next week.” General George S. Patton, Jr.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.

A leader is a man who can adapt principles to circumstances.

We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.

Gen. George S. Patton Jr. fears no one. But now he sleeps flat on his back in a hospital bed. His upper body is encased in plaster, the result of a car accident twelve days ago. Room 110 is a former utility closet, just fourteen feet by sixteen feet. There are no decorations, pictures on the walls, or elaborate furnishings—just the narrow bed, white walls, and a single high window. A chair has been brought in for Patton’s wife, Beatrice, who endured a long, white-knuckle flight over the North Atlantic from the family home in Boston to be at his bedside. She sits there now, crochet hook moving silently back and forth, raising her eyes every few moments to see if her husband has awakened.

Just as I was leaving the hospital, I saw a soldier sitting on a box near the dressing station. I stopped and said to him, “What is the matter with you, boy?” He said, “Nothing; I just can’t take it.” I asked what he meant. He said, “I just can’t take being shot at.” I said, “You mean that you are malingering here?” He burst  into  tears and I immediately saw that he was an hysterical case.   I, therefore, slapped him across the face with my glove and told him to get up, join his unit, and make a man  of himself, which he did. Actually, at the time he was absent without leave.

If a man does his best, what else is there? — General George Patton Jr. (1885-1945)

Contents

Sicily

custom-tooled leather riding crop.

In view of such an atmosphere, it is strange that when he dressed for the half-hour trip to the center of his forces, Patton chose his “dress,” whipcord riding breeches, a custom-tailored light-khaki shirt and cavalry boots, and carried a candid camera and riding crop. More standard with Patton in combat was an item at his side, gleaming in the searing southern sun: the Colt .45 Single Action, strapped in its mahogany-bay Myres holster. Binoculars completed the showy outfit, together with helmet-liner and an old helmet.

Fixed Fortifications are monuments to the stupidity of Man. —George S. Patton, Jr. Not quite so much as fixed ideas are. —Patricio Carrera Mortal Danger is an effective antidote to fixed ideas. —Erwin Rommel

We then went to the swimming pool which is beyond the reception room. This was the finest pool I had ever seen, with red-and-green submerged lights, and a diving board in polished duraluminium.

To be a good soldier a man must have discipline, self-respect, pride in his unit and in his country, a high sense of duty and obligation to his comrades and to his superiors, and self-confidence bom of demonstrated ability.

The greatest weapon against the so-called “battle fatigue” is ridicule.

Say what you mean and mean what you say.

Now if you are going to win any battle you have to do one thing. You have to make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up. It is always tired morning, noon, and night. But the body is never tired if the mind is not tired. When you were younger, the mind could make you dance all night, and the body was never tired... You've always got to make the mind take over and keep going.

Monday, September 17, 1945 We all drove to the airfield in the morning to see Gay and Murnane off in the C-47 /belonging to the Army. Then General Eisenhower and I drove to Munich where we inspected in conjunction with Colonel Dalferes a Baltic displaced persons camp. The Baltic people are the best of the displaced persons and the camp was extremely clean in all respects. Many of the people were in costume and did some folk dances and athletic contest for our benefit. We were both, I think, very much pleased with conditions here. The camp was situated in an old German regular army barracks and they were using German field kitchens for cooking. From the Baltic camp, we drove for about 45 minutes to a Jewish camp in the area of the XX Corps. This camp was established in what had been a German hospital. The buildings were therefore in a good state of repair when the Jews arrived but were in a bad state of repair when we arrived, because these Jewish DP's, or at least a majority of them, have no sense of human relationships. They decline, when practicable, to use latrines, preferring to relive themselves on the floor. The hospital which we investigated was fairly good. They also had a number of sewing machines and cobbler instruments which they had collected, but since they had not collected the necessary parts, they had least fifty sewing machines they could not use, and which could not be used by anyone else because they were holding them. This happened to be the feast of Yom Kippur, so they were all collected in a large wooden building which they called a synagogue. It behooved General Eisenhower to make a speech to them. We entered the synagogue, which was packed with the greatest stinking bunch of humanity I have ever seen. When we got about half way up, the head rabbi, who was dressed in a fur hat similar to that worn by Henry VIII of England, and in a surplice heavily embroidered and very filthy, came down and met the General. A copy of Talmud, I think it is called, written on a sheet and rolled around a stick, was carried by one of the attending physicians. First, a Jewish civilian made a very long speech which nobody seemed inclined to translate. Then General Eisenhower mounted the platform and I went up behind him and he made a short and excellent speech, which was translated paragraph by paragraph. The smell was so terrible that I almost fainted, and actually about three hours later, lost my lunch as the result of remembering it. From here we went to the Headquarters of the XX Corps, where General Craig gave us an excellent lunch which I, however, was unable to partake of, owing to my nausea.

The unleavened bread of knowledge will sustain life, but it is dull fare unless it is leavened with the yeast of personality.

There are apparently two types of successful soldiers. Those who get on by being unobtrusive and those who get on by being obtrusive. I am of the latter type and seem to be rare and unpopular: but it is my method. One has to choose a system and stick to it; people who are not themselves are nobody.

Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way. General George S. Patton Jr.

There’s a great deal of talk about loyalty from the bottom to the top. Loyalty from the top down is even more necessary and is much less prevalent. One of the most frequently noted characteristics of great men who have remained great is loyalty to their subordinates. —General George S. Patton Jr.