Best 50 quotes of William Tecumseh Sherman on MyQuotes

A battery of field artillery is worth a thousand muskets.

An army is a collection of armed men obliged to obey one man. Every enactment, every change of rule which impairs this principle weakens the army, impairs its value, and defeats the very object of its existence.

An army to be useful must be a unit, and out of this has grown the saying, attributed to Napoleon, but doubtless spoken before the days of Alexander, that an army with an inefficient commander was better than one with two able heads.

At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail.

But, my dear sirs, when peace does come, you may call on me for any thing. Then will I share with you the last cracker, and watch with you to shield your homes and families against danger from every quarter.

Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.

Grant stood by me when I was crazy.

He belonged to that army known as invincible in peace, invisible in war.

I begin to regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash-and it may be well that we become so hardened.

I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.

I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.

If nominated by either party, I should peremptorily decline, and even if unanimously elected, I should decline to serve.

If you don't have my army supplied, and keep it supplied, we'll eat your mules up, sir.

I intend to make Georgia howl.

I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come-if alive.

I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.

I'm a damned sight smarter than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does; but I'll tell you where he beats me and where he beats the world. He don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight but it scares me like hell.

I see every chance of a long, confused and disorganizing civil war, and I feel no desire to take a hand therein.

It's a disagreeable thing to be whipped.

I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.

I will accept no commission that would tend to create a rivalry with Grant. I want him to hold what he has earned and got. I have all the rank I want.

I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy.

My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.

Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!

The carping and bickering of political factions in the nation's capital reminds me of two pelicans quarreling over a dead fish.

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror.

There's many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory but it is all hell.

There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them.

The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war.

The voice of the people is the voice of humbug.

The war now is away back in the past, and you can tell what books cannot. When you talk, you come down to the practical realities just as they happened. You all know this is not soldiering here. There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror, but if it has to come, I am there.

The way to success is strategically along the way of least expectation and tactically along the line of least resistance.

This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.

Though I never ordered it, and never wished for it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.

To secure the safety of the navigation of the Mississippi River I would slay millions. On that point I am not only insane, but mad... I think I see one or two quick blows that will astonish the natives of the South and will convince them that, though to stand behind a big cottonwood and shoot at a passing boat is good sport and safe, it may still reach and kill their friends and families hundreds of miles off. For every bullet shot at a steamboat, I would shoot a thousand 30-pounder Parrots into even helpless towns on Red, Ouachita, Yazoo, or wherever a boat can float or soldier march.

War is at best barbarism.

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.

War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.

Wars are not all evil, they are part of the grand machinery by which this world is governed.

War's Legitimate Object Is More Perfect Peace.

...[We] must stop these swarms of Jews who are trading, bartering and robbing.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.

You may as well say, 'That's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

You might as well appeal against the thunderstorm.

You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it. Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them?

You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about.

You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!

I hereby state, and mean all that I say, that I never have been and never will be a candidate for President; that if nominated by either party, I should peremptorily decline; and even if unanimously elected I should decline to serve.