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. 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 by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.

A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or an army, is expected to look backward as well as forward; but he must think only forward.

I address you with neither rancor nor bitterness in the fading twilight of life, with but one purpose in mind: to serve my country.

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

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

I had learned one of the bitter lessons of life: never try to regain the past, the fire will have become ashes.