Douglas MacArthur Quotes

In the last fifteen days of the war, my Fifth and Seventh Air Forces flew 6,732 sorties against Kyushu alone. Thus, with a deafening roar of blasting bombs, Kenney's Far East air forces culminated their blows against Japan. During the last seven and a half months of the war, their planes destroyed 2,846,932 tons of shipping and 1,375 enemy aircraft, dropped 100,000 tons of bombs, and flew over 150,00 sorties.

The history of failure in war can almost be summed up in two words: 'Too late.' Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in realizing the mortal danger; too late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance, too late in standing with one's friends. Victory in war results from no mysterious alchemy or wizardry but depends entirely upon the concentration of superior force at the critical points of combat.

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

Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.

Last, but by no means least, courage of one's convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It's the age-old struggle_ the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other.

If there is anything that makes my blood boil it is to see our allies in Indochina and Java deploying Japanese troops to reconquer the little people we promised to liberate. It is the most ignoble kind of betrayal.

Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won...
A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war.
Men since the beginning of time have sought peace... Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations, all in turn have failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door. The problem basically is theological and involves a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that will synchronize with our matchless advances in science, art, literature and all material and cultural developments of the past two thousand years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.

While I was not consulted prior to the President's decision to intervene in support of the Republic of Korea, that decision from a military standpoint, proved a sound one, as we hurled back the invader and decimated his forces. Our victory was complete, and our objectives within reach, when Red China intervened with numerically superior ground forces.

Roosevelt is dead: a man who would never tell the truth when a lie would serve him just as well.

Give me ten thousand Filipino soldiers and I will conquer the world.

There is no substitute for victory.

People of the Philippines: I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God our forces stand again on Philippine soil — soil consecrated in the blood of our two peoples. We have come dedicated and committed to the task of destroying every vestige of enemy control over your daily lives, and of restoring upon a foundation of indestructible strength, the liberties of your people.

The enemy is in front of us, the enemy is behind us, the enemy is to the right and to the left of us. They can't get away this time!

Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.

China, up to 50 years ago, was completely non-homogenous, being compartmented into groups divided against each other. The war-making tendency was almost non-existent, as they still followed the tenets of the Confucian ideal of pacifist culture. At the turn of the century, under the regime of Chang Tso Lin, efforts toward greater homogeneity produced the start of a nationalist urge. This was further and more successfully developed under the leadership of Chiang Kai-Shek, but has been brought to its greatest fruition under the present regime to the point that it has now taken on the character of a united nationalism of increasingly dominant, aggressive tendencies.