No plan ever survives its first encounter with the enemy.

We have known the bitterness of defeat and the exultation of triumph, and from both we have learned there can be no turning back. We must go forward to preserve in peace what we won in war.

The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.

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

War's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.

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.

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?