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

William Tecumseh Sherman

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William Tecumseh Sherman
Age: 71 †
Born: 1820
Born: February 8
Died: 1891
Died: February 14
Banker
Lawyer
Military Officer
U.S. General
William T. Sherman
General Sherman
Results
War
Easy
Humiliated
Every
Humiliation
Make
Attempt
Disaster
Result
Safe

More quotes by William Tecumseh Sherman

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We must act with vindictive earnestness against the Sioux, even to their extermination, men, women and children... during an assault, the soldiers cannot pause to distinguish between male and female, or even discriminate as to age.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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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.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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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.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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If the people raise a great howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war, and not popularity seeking.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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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?
William Tecumseh Sherman
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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.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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I intend to make Georgia howl.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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...[We] must stop these swarms of Jews who are trading, bartering and robbing.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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You may as well say, 'That's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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The young bloods of the South: sons of planters, lawyers about towns, good billiard-players and sportsmen, men who never did any work and never will... They are splendid riders, first-rate shots and utterly reckless. These men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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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.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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The whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak violence upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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There's many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory but it is all hell.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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We cannot change the hearts of the people of the South, but we can make war so terrible that they will realize the fact that however brave and gallant and devoted to their country still they are mortal and should exhaust all peaceful remedies before they fly to war.
William Tecumseh Sherman