Patton Quotes

“If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
― George S. Patton

“It is not the American soldiers duty do die for his country. It is the American soldiers duty to make the enemy die for his country.”
― Gen. George S. Patton

“When General George Patton tried to convince Eisenhower to make a push to conquer the city first, Eisenhower blithely asked, 'Well, who would want it?”
― Andrei Cherny, The Candy Bombers: The Untold Story of the Berlin Airlift and America's Finest Hour

“As I approached the field, I called the tower, identified myself, and said I would like to land and pay my respects to General Patton if that was agreeable and convenient. I was cleared to land. When I parked, there was Georgie in his famous Jeep with the three-star flags flying, his helmet reflecting the sun gloriously and his ivory-handled revolvers at his side. He rushed forward, threw his arms around me, and with great tears streaming down his face, said, "Jimmy, I'm glad to see you. I didn't think anyone would ever call on a mean old son of a bitch like me.”
― James H. Doolittle, I Could Never Be So Lucky Again

“We had our family patterns and were quite comfortable in them, which made it even more shocking when, just after his eightieth birthday, Papa began bringing up his time as a prisoner of war in Germany.

Of course, I had always known that he had served in World War II and been captured, just like I had always know the stories about my grandmother and the build of their house. It's that peculiar type of family memory, where someone has obviously told you but you were too young to remember actually hearing it, so it seems like knowledge that was instilled at birth. Papa never brought it up, and my parents said they hadn't heard him mention it once in the previous fifty years. But suddenly, he was talking.”
― Jesse Cozean

“If one can call anticipation of enemy reactions based on a lifetime of professional training and on thinking and application "intuition," he had it ... He was a professional soldier, a student of history”
― William Duggan, Napoleon's Glance: The Secret of Strategy

“Though reporters made much of the challenge of keeping up with Patton, he was never far away from the press. (...) Presiding at a ceremony to open the Roosevelt Railroad Bridge near Mainz, he was invited to cut the ribbon with a large pair of scissors. He gave them back demanding 'a goddamned bayonet' adding he wasn't 'a goddamned tailor' - as if anyone in their wildest imagination supposed he might be.”
― Barry Turner, Karl Doenitz and the Last Days of the Third Reich