Talk:George S. Patton

Moved because the full name+M.I. is more common.

Unsourced

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• It is the cold glitter of the attacker's eye not the point of the questing bayonet that breaks the line. (Moved to main page, suitably referenced).
• Hold'em by the nose and kick'em in the pants.
• It seems to me a certainty that the fatalistic teachings of Mohammed and the utter degradation of the Arab women are the outstanding causes for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have been developing.
• I don't care what color you are, so long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sons-of-bitches!
• I am in the pay of the United States government. If I vote against the administration I am voting against my commander-in-chief. If I vote for the administration in office I am being bought.
• If a man has done his best, what else is there?
• If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
• I'm a soldier, I fight where I am told, and I win where I fight.
• I'm not going to subsidize cowardice.
• I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.
• Just drive down that road until you get blown up.
  • Instructions to reconnaissance troops
• Kill all the Germans you can, but do not kill them when they are up against a wall ready to surrender. Do your killing in the fields. We are to honor the Rules of Land Warfare at all times. If a German surrenders, he is to be treated with respect as a prisoner of war, the same treatment you would hope to get as a prisoner if you are unlucky enough to be captured by the enemy. Americans are not savages. Americans do not kick people in the face if they have been knocked down.
• March toward the sound of gunfire, an easily recognizable sound that they could usually find in front of them.
• May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I sure as hell won't.
  • 'May God have mercy on our enemies; they will need it.' The Patton Papers 1940-1945, 1972, Martin Blumenson, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
  • This is similar to a remark made by Elizabeth I of England.
  • This quote appears in Ken Burns' The Civil War TV series, and is attributed to Maj Gen Joseph Hooker in 1863 when he assumed command of the Union Army of the Potomac; he very shortly thereafter got the sh!t kicked out of him at the Battle of Chancelllorsville.
• Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.
• Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.
• Son, only a pimp in a Louisiana whore house carries pearl handled revolvers, these are ivory.
  • Upon being asked by an American reporter where he got his "pearl" handled revolvers.
• Take calculated risks. This is quite different from being rash. My personal belief is that if you have a 50% chance, take it!
• There's only one proper way for a professional soldier to die: the last bullet of the last battle of the last war.
• You are always on parade.
• You are never beaten until you admit it.
• You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.
• The M1 rifle is the finest battle implement ever devised.

Misattributed? George S. Patton's speech to the Third Army

Why this quote is listed as miattributed? "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." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton's_speech_to_the_Third_Army

"Your job is not to die for your country. Your job is to get the other poor sonofabitch to die for his country." Ben Bova sez he.Civic Cat (talk) 18:01, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

It certainly wasn't coined by the movie Patton as the article seems to suggest. The earliest reference I can find to it is from 1958 in War and Peace in the Space Age, by James M. Gavin, p 64, where he claims to have heard it in Africa. I'm not sure if this book is available online, but it if almost certainly where the movie took it from.

Robert Hannsen

w:Robert Hannsen would quote Patton, "The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit." [1] Is there a reason it's not listed here George_S._Patton#Speech_to_the_Third_Army_(1944)2600:387:F:5618:0:0:0:A 16:07, 8 June 2023 (UTC)