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You people speak so lightly of war you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!

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
Speak
Thing
People
Lightly
Terrible
Talking
War

More quotes by 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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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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A battery of field artillery is worth a thousand muskets.
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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I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come-if alive.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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I want peace, and believe it can only be reached through union and war, and I will ever conduct war with a view to perfect an early success.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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If you don't have my army supplied, and keep it supplied, we'll eat your mules up, sir.
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
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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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If I had my choice I would kill every reporter in the world, but I am sure we would be getting reports from Hell before breakfast.
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 way to success is strategically along the way of least expectation and tactically along the line of least resistance.
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
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This war differs from other wars, in this particular. We are not fighting armies but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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I hate newspapermen. They come into camp and pick up their camp rumors and print them as facts. I regard them as spies, which, in truth, they are.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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Many and many a person in Georgia asked me why we did not go to South Carolina and, when I answered that we were en route for that State, the invariable reply was, - Well, if you will make those people feel the utmost severities of war, we will pardon you for your desolation of Georgia.
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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Though I never ordered it, and never wished for it, I have never shed any tears over the event, because I believe that it hastened what we all fought for, the end of the war.
William Tecumseh Sherman
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Some of you young men think that war is all glamour and glory, but let me tell you, boys, it is all hell!
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