David H. Hackworth > Quotes

“If a policy is wrongheaded feckless and corrupt I take it personally and consider it a moral obligation to sound off and not shut up until it's fixed.”
― David Hackworth

“Only a foolish woman would allow her man to earn his living as a moving target.”
― David Hackworth

“Respecting your opponent is the key to winning any bout. Hold your enemy in contempt and you may miss the strategy behind his moves”
― David H. Hackworth

“Strive to do small things well. Be a doer and a self-starter—aggressiveness and initiative are two most admired qualities in a leader—but you must also put your feet up and think. Strive for self-improvement through constant self-evaluation. Never be satisfied. Ask of any project, How can it be done better? Don’t overinspect or oversupervise. Allow your leaders to make mistakes in training, so they can profit from the errors and not make them in combat. Keep the troops informed; telling them “what, how, and why” builds their confidence. The harder the training, the more troops will brag. Enthusiasm, fairness, and moral and physical courage—four of the most important aspects of leadership. Showmanship—a vital technique of leadership. The ability to speak and write well—two essential tools of leadership. There is a salient difference between profanity and obscenity; while a leader employs profanity (tempered with discretion), he never uses obscenities. Have consideration for others. Yelling detracts from your dignity; take men aside to counsel them. Understand and use judgment; know when to stop fighting for something you believe is right. Discuss and argue your point of view until a decision is made, and then support the decision wholeheartedly. Stay ahead of your boss.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“If you find yourself in a fair fight, you didn't plan your mission properly.”
― David Hackworth

“Care for your men. Maintain discipline. Always set an example. You take fewer casualties attacking than retreating: “Your job is not to die for your country but to make the other son of a bitch die for his country.” Once engaged, give no quarter. Drill, drill, drill. Stay alert, stay alive.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“...combat is no place for martinets.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“He’d fly his chopper over the Berlin lakeside beaches, for example, throwing out leaflets that read, “The handsome young man flying this helicopter is Captain Dale Le Clerc. If you would like to meet him in person, ring him at…” with, of course, his phone number and the best time to call. These things would flutter, en masse, onto the tanned bellies of the West Berlin sunbathers, and the results were mind-boggling. Once I went back to his apartment with him, only to find a line of girls waiting patiently at his door, all of them ready to live the day”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“gave as many classes personally as I could, not only for the benefit of the troops, but for myself. I found that the teacher learns as much as, if not more than, his students, and it also kept my own skills sharpened to a fine edge. It’s easy to lose touch with the basics, and you become less inclined to get them back once you’ve moved up the ladder; I’d seen too many high-ranking officers who’d stopped trying, having decided, I guessed, that they were “above all that.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“I began to think about all the generals’ proclamation concerning this war: that we’d be home before Christmas, that the Chinese would not intervene, that we’d hold here or hold there. All of it was bullshit, and I started to wonder how they could possibly make so many dumb statements when each, invariably, fell apart when put to the test. Then I thought, Well, maybe they just don’t know—we never saw a general on the front. We seldom saw a colonel, a lieutenant colonel, or a major either. And at squad level, we only on the rarest occasion saw a captain. So how could the brass know how defeated its army was if they weren’t there to see an exhausted guy lie down on the road and just give up? How could they know how cold and ill equipped we were if they weren’t there to see blue, gloveless hands stick to the frozen metal of weapons? How could they know how steep and rugged the terrain was if they never climbed a hill?”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: Odyssey Of An American Warrior

“The new battalion commander had used his eyes but not his head: he’d seen overfamiliarity, but had not taken time to think, to realize that Barney K.’s easygoing attitude with his guys came from the platoon’s and its leader’s mutual understanding, respect, and trust. With one order, the CO had destroyed it all, and my friend was heartbroken.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: Odyssey Of An American Warrior

“I learned in WW II,” he said, “that the slightest bit of excitement in a leader is transmitted to the men. You might be afraid, but the fear gets magnified in the troops. Somebody has to keep his cool. If you’re a decent leader, you don’t dare lose it—for your own good. You’ve got to keep your unit up there doing its job.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“politicians only listened to these generals, and these generals only listened to themselves.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“They weren’t a special unit— just a group of guys who thought they were good, so they were good.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: Odyssey Of An American Warrior

“Soldiers were not trained to hit moving targets. Marksmanship in the U.S. Army was taught on a known-distance (KD) range—fixed target, big bull’s-eye, plenty of time. It didn’t make a lot of sense.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“WAR stories present two problems to authors striving for The Truth. First of all, if you live long enough to tell them, and have enough of an audience to practice telling them to through the years, war stories become just that—stories. Just as time distances the storyteller from the events themselves, so do the repeated tellings. Gradually the stories are embellished in places, honed down in others until they are perfect tales, even if they bear little resemblance to what actually happened.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“Infantrymen were fighters, not writers. In one way, we prided ourselves on it; we didn’t have time for such “pussy” stuff. But the fact was that infantrymen in Korea came, as a rule, from the bottom rung of the social and economic ladder. The squads were mainly made up of poor whites, blacks, and yellows—a dispensable rainbow—uneducated, with nothing to keep us a step ahead of the point of a bayonet. And if a doughfoot got killed, his parents generally didn’t have the education to write and ask why. They’d silently, stoically wear their loss like a sad badge of honor. In Korea, a heroic, dead comrade-in-arms; at home, a gold star in a cracked window in a little house on the wrong side of the tracks.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“General Bruce Clarke’s Guidelines for the Leader and the Commander”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“Mao’s conviction, “Give me a path wide enough to move a mule and I will move an army.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“The Army isn’t what it used to be,” I lamented to General Cushman one day. “It never was,” he replied.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“...the only thing to do was not worry about it at all, and have the best damn time you could while you were around. Of course, being a leader helped. You were always too busy bringing in air and artillery, moving your people and shepherding your herd, to take time to focus in on yourself, on where you might be in a moment’s time.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: Odyssey Of An American Warrior

“The new battalion commander had used his eyes but not his head: he’d seen overfamiliarity, but had not taken tome to think, to realize that Barney K.’s easygoing attitude with his guys came from the platoon’s and its leader’s mutual understanding, respect, and trust. With one order, the CO had destroyed it all, and my friend was heartbroken.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: Odyssey Of An American Warrior

“...the slightest bit of excitement in a leader is transmitted to the men. You might be afraid, but the fear gets magnified in the troops. Somebody has to keep his cool. If you’re a decent leader, you don’t dare lose it— for your own good. You’ve got to keep your unit up there doing its job.”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: Odyssey Of An American Warrior

“But now I could see, through the Vietnam debacle, that while there was a price to be paid, it was only correct to pay it if the product—democracy—was sound. And it was not sound in the corrupt ranks of South Vietnam’s government and military, nor had it ever been, nor would it ever be, regardless of how many of America’s sons threw their lives into the pot. As a nation, we had to get out of there. I’d”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior

“Nec Aspera Terrent”
― David H. Hackworth, About Face: The Odyssey of an American Warrior