Top 86 Quotes & Sayings by William Tecumseh Sherman - Page 2

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.

The war now is away back in the past, and you can tell what books cannot. When you talk, you come down to the practical realities just as they happened. You all know this is not soldiering here. There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror, but if it has to come, I am there.

Wars are not all evil, they are part of the grand machinery by which this world is governed.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.

An army to be useful must be a unit, and out of this has grown the saying, attributed to Napoleon, but doubtless spoken before the days of Alexander, that an army with an inefficient commander was better than one with two able heads.

Many and many a person in Georgia asked me why we did not go to South Carolina; and, when I answered that we were en route for that State, the invariable reply was, - Well, if you will make those people feel the utmost severities of war, we will pardon you for your desolation of Georgia.

You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm.

War is at best barbarism.

At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.

I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!

An army is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. Every enactment, every change of rule which impairs this principle weakens the army, impairs its value, and defeats the very object of its existence.

I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash-and it may be well that we become so hardened.

War's Legitimate Object Is More Perfect Peace.

Grant stood by me when I was crazy.

I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come-if alive.

Hold the fort! I am coming!

If nominated, I won't run; If elected, I won't serve.

Though I never ordered it, and never wished for it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about.

Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!

You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it. Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them?

If nominated by either party, I should peremptorily decline, and even if unanimously elected, I should decline to serve.

I see every chance of a long, confused and disorganizing civil war, and I feel no desire to take a hand therein.

I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.