Quotes by Douglas MacArthur

“Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid, one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.”

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

“People grow old only by deserting their ideals, Macarthur had written. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope as old as your despair. In the central place of every heart there is a recording chamber. So long as it receives messages of beauty, hope, cheer and courage, so long are you young. When your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then, and then only, are you grown old. And then, indeed as the ballad says, you just fade away.”

“Years wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul.”

“You are remembered for the rules you break.”

“There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.”

“Americans never quit.”

“We are not retreating. We are advancing in another direction.”

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

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

“No army has ever done so much with so little”

“A better world shall emerge based on faith and understanding.”

“Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would gladly yield every honor which has been accorded me in war”

“In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.”

“I have just returned from visiting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world!”

“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.”

“I can recall no parallel in history where a great nation recently at war has so distinguished its former enemy commander.”

“And like the old soldier in that 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 sight to see that duty.”

“Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.”

“One cannot wage war under present conditions without the support of public opinion, which is tremendously molded by the press and other forms of propaganda.”