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If nominated, I won't run If elected, I won't serve.

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
Nominated
Elected
Serve
Running

More quotes by 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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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.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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It's a disagreeable thing to be whipped.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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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.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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If nominated by either party, I should peremptorily decline, and even if unanimously elected, I should decline to serve.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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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.
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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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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...[We] must stop these swarms of Jews who are trading, bartering and robbing.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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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.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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If forced to choose between the penitentiary and the White House for four years, I would say the penitentiary, thank you.
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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After all, I think Forrest was the most remarkable man our Civil War produced on either side.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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I see every chance of a long, confused and disorganizing civil war, and I feel no desire to take a hand therein.
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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War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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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.
William Tecumseh Sherman