Now I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. (June, 1944)

May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I sure as hell won't.

I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.

Just drive down that road until you get blown up. Instructions to reconnaissance troops.

We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

There is one great thing that you men will all be able to say after this war is over and you are home once again. You may be thankful that twenty years from now when you are sitting by the fireplace with your grandson on your knee and he asks you what you did in the great World War II, you won't have to cough, shift him to the other knee and say, "Well, your Granddaddy shoveled shit in Louisiana." No, Sir, you can look him straight in the eye and say, "Son, your Granddaddy rode with the Great Third Army and a Son-of-a-Goddamned-Bitch named Georgie Patton!

When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. ... As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.

Sure, we want to go home. We want this war over with. The quickest way to get it over with is to go get the bastards who started it. The quicker they are whipped, the quicker we can go home. The shortest way home is through Berlin and Tokyo. And when we get to Berlin, I am personally going to shoot that paper hanging son-of-a-bitch Hitler. Just like I'd shoot a snake!

A pint of sweat will save a gallon of blood. Letter (1944-04-03)

A good plan today is better than a perfect plan tomorrow.

There are four hundred neatly marked graves somewhere in Sicily. All because one man went to sleep on the job. But they are German graves, because we caught the bastard asleep before they did.

Remember that the enemy is just as frightened as you are, and probably more so. They are not supermen.

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory. Cavalry Journal (September 1933)