George S. Patton Quotes

I am a Soldier, I fight where I am told, and I win where I fight.

Do your duty as you see it, and damn the consequences.

...It is a proud privilege to be a soldier – a good soldier … [with] discipline, self-respect, pride in his unit and his country, a high sense of duty and obligation to comrades and to his superiors, and a self confidence born of demonstrated ability.

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.

Si todo el mundo piensa igual es que alguien no está pensando.

There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is to use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wound, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum amount of time.

We're not just going to shoot the bastards, we're going to rip out their living goddamned guts and use them to grease the treads of our tanks.

Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, "Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton".

All through your Army careers, you men have bitched about what you call "chicken shit drilling". That, like everything else in this Army, has a definite purpose. That purpose is alertness. Alertness must be bred into every soldier. I don't give a fuck for a man who's not always on his toes. You men are veterans or you wouldn't be here. You are ready for what's to come.

A man is not measured by how much he can take and stand but by how fast he regains once fallen.

I don’t fear failure. I only fear the slowing up of the engine inside of me which is saying, ‘Keep going, someone must be on top, why not you?

An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!

Anyone in any walk of life who is content with mediocrity is untrue to himself and to American tradition.

The noise against me is only the means by which the Jews and Communists are attempting and with good success to implement a further dismemberment of Germany.
I think that if I resigned as I threatened to do yesterday, it would simply discredit me to no purpose. . . This august lady [Fifteenth Army] . . . has the job of reviewing the strategy and tactics of the war to see how the former conformed to the unit plans and how the tactics changed. Were it not for the fact that it will be, so far as I am concerned, a kick up stairs, I would like it much better than being a sort of executioner to the best race in Europe. Later when people wake up to what is going on here, I can admit why I took the job. Am I weak and a coward? Am I putting my posthumous reputation above my present honor? God how I wish I knew... P.S. No one gives a damn how well Bavaria is run. All they are interested in now is how well it is ruined.

continue to advance until you run out of ammunition. Then, dig in.