Ferdinand Foch
From Wikiquote
Ferdinand Foch OM GCB (1851-10-02 – 1929-03-20) was a French soldier and writer. During the final months of the First World War he was the supreme commander of Allied forces.
[edit] Sourced
- Mon centre cède, ma droite recule, situation excellente, j'attaque.
- My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking.
- Quoted in Raymond Recouly Foch: Le Vainqueur de la Guerre (1919), chap. 6.
- Spoken during the First Battle of the Marne, September 1914.
- The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.
- As quoted in The 32d Infantry Division in World War II (1957) by Harold Whittle Blakeley, p. 3
- I am conscious of having served England as I served my own country.
- As engraved on the statue of Ferdinand Foch on Grosvenor Square, London.
- A radish will never stand in the way of victory.
- As quoted in M*A*S*H season 3 episode 1, "The General Flipped At Dawn"
- This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.
- Said after the Treaty of Versailles
- Paul Reynaud, Memoires (1963), vol. 2, p. 457
- In tactics, action is the governing rule of war.
- Precepts and Judgments, 1919
- One does simply what one can in order to apply what one knows.
- The Principles of War, 1913
- The laurels of victory are at the point of the enemy bayonets. They must be plucked there; they must be carried by a hand-to-hand fight if one really means to conquer.
- Precepts and Judgments, 1919
- A beaten general is disgraced forever.
- Precepts and Judgments, 1919
- There is but one means to extenuate the effects of enemy fire: it is to develop a more violent fire oneself.
- Precepts and Judgments, 1919
- None but a coward dares to boast that he has never known fear.
- Encarta Book of Quotations - Page 338 by Bill Swainson, Anne H. Soukhanov - Reference - 2000
- The will to conquer is the first condition of victory.
- The Book of Positive Quotations - Page 370 by John Cook, Steve Deger, Leslie Ann Gibson - Self-Help - 2007
- Les avions sont des jouets intéressants mais n'ont aucune utilité militaire
- Airplanes are interesting toys, but of no military value.
- Said in 1911 and referenced in "Time: A Traveler's Guide - Page 249 by Clifford A. Pickover - Science - 1998
