Quotes by General Douglas MacArthur


No man is enitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.
– General Douglas MacArthur
A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
– General Douglas MacArthur
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.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Americans never quit.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Could I have but a line a century hence crediting a contribution to the advance of peace, I would yield every honor which has been accorded by war.
– General Douglas MacArthur
I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.
– General Douglas MacArthur
I can recall no parallel in history where a great nation recently at war has so distinguished its former enemy commander.
– General Douglas MacArthur
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?
– General Douglas MacArthur
I've looked that old scoundrel death in the eye many times but this time I think he has me on the ropes.
– General Douglas MacArthur
In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield.
– General Douglas MacArthur
In war, you win or lose, live or die-and the difference is just an eyelash.
– General Douglas MacArthur
It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.
– General Douglas MacArthur
It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Last, but by no means least, courage-moral courage, the 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.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Life is a lively process of becoming.
– General Douglas MacArthur
My first recollection is that of a bugle call.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Never give an order that can't be obeyed.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. 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.
– General Douglas MacArthur
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.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.
– General Douglas MacArthur
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.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live.
– General Douglas MacArthur
The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.
– General Douglas MacArthur
The outfit soon took on color, dash and a unique flavor which is the essence of that elusive and deathless thing called soldiering.
– General Douglas MacArthur
The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
– General Douglas MacArthur
There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.
– General Douglas MacArthur
They died hard, those savage men - like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.
– General Douglas MacArthur
We are bound no longer by the straitjacket of the past and nowhere is the change greater than in our profession of arms. What, you may well ask, will be the end of all of this? I would not know! But I would hope that our beloved country will drink deep from the chalice of courage.
– General Douglas MacArthur
We are not retreating - we are advancing in another direction.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.
– General Douglas MacArthur
You are remembered for the rules you break.
– General Douglas MacArthur
A Prayer For My Son: 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…Give him humility, so that he may always remember the simplicity of true greatness, the open mind of true wisdom, and the meekness of true strength. Then I, his father, will dare to whisper, I have not lived in vain.
– General Douglas MacArthur
There is not one incident in the history of humanity in which defeatism led to peace which was anything other than a complete fraud.
– General Douglas MacArthur
In war there is no substitute for victory.
– General Douglas MacArthur
I have known war as few men now living know it. It's very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.
– General Douglas MacArthur
Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.
– General Douglas MacArthur
A better world shall emerge based on faith and understanding.
– General Douglas MacArthur