Top 243 Quotes & Sayings by George S. Patton

Success is how high you bounce when you hit bottom.

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.

All very successful commanders are prima donnas and must be so treated.

Untutored courage is useless in the face of educated bullets.

There is a time to take counsel of your fears, and there is a time to never listen to any fear.

Better to fight for something than live for nothing.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.

If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.

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.

The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!

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

A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood.

Do your damnedest in an ostentatious manner all the time.

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

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

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

Courage is fear holding on a minute longer.

Don't tell people how to do things, tell them what to do and let them surprise you with their results.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed next week.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

Always do everything you ask of those you command.

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

Take calculated risks. That is quite different from being rash.

There is only one sort of discipline, perfect discipline.

Americans love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.

You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.

Americans play to win at all times. I wouldn't give a hoot and hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor ever lose a war.

If a man does his best, what else is there?

If you tell people where to go, but not how to get there, you'll be amazed at the results.

Battle is an orgy of disorder.

You're never beaten until you admit it

When there is fear of failure, there will be failure.

If I could have three wishes, one would be to take an '88 and shove that barrel up Hitler's ass so that cocksucker can cry like the little god-damned girl he is. And hell, after that, I wouldn't need two more wishes.

Urge all of your men to pray, not alone in church, but everywhere. Pray when driving. Pray when fighting. Pray alone. Pray with others. Pray by night and pray by day. Pray for the cessation of immoderate rains, for good weather for Battle.Pray for the defeat of our wicked enemy whose banner is injustice and whose good is oppression. Pray for victory. Pray for our Army, and Pray for Peace. We must march together, all out for God.

When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.

You just wait and see. The lily-livered b*stards in Washington will demobilize. They'll say they've made the world safe for democracy again. The Russians are not such d*mned fools. They'll rebuild; and with modern weapons.

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

To me it seems certain that the fatalistic teachings of Muhammad and the utter degradation of women is the outstanding cause for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have kept on developing.

A civil servant is sometimes like a broken cannon - it won't work and you can't fire it.

Fear kills more people than death.

Achievers are resolute in their goals and driven by determination. Discouragement is temporary, obstacles are overcome, and doubt is defeated, yielding to personal victory. You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals. Accept the challenges, so that you may feel the exhilaration of victory.

Do not try to make circumstances fit your plans. Make plans that fit the circumstances.

Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?

The supreme measure of a man, is what he would risk his life for.

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.

You cannot be disciplined in great things and undisciplined in small things.

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.

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

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

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.

The highest obligation and privilege of citizenship is bearing arms.

The more I see of Arabs the less I think of them. By having studied them a good deal I have found out the trouble. They are the mixture of all the bad races on earth, and they get worse from west to east, because the eastern ones have had more crosses.

Make the mind run the body. Never let the body tell the mind what to do. The body will always give up.

Wars are not won by fighting battles; wars are won by choosing battles

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.

There are three ways that men get what they want: by planning, by working, and by praying.

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