17 George S. Patton Quotes on Leadership

George S. Patton quotes on leadership

2. Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains that victory.

5. When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can't run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn't fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. ... As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.

6. Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do, and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

8. I don't know what you think you're trying to do, but the krauts ought to pin a medal on you for helping them mess up discipline for us.

17. An Army is a team. It lives, sleeps, eats, and fights as a team. This individual heroic stuff is pure horse shit. The bilious bastards who write that kind of stuff for the Saturday Evening Post don't know any more about real fighting under fire than they know about fucking!

18. We have the finest food, the finest equipment, the best spirit, and the best men in the world. Why, by God, I actually pity those poor sons-of-bitches we're going up against. By God, I do.

22. Don't forget, you men don't know that I'm here. No mention of that fact is to be made in any letters. The world is not supposed to know what the hell happened to me. I'm not supposed to be commanding this Army. I'm not even supposed to be here in England. Let the first bastards to find out be the Goddamned Germans. Some day I want to see them raise up on their piss-soaked hind legs and howl, 'Jesus Christ, it's the Goddamned Third Army again and that son-of-a-fucking-bitch Patton'.

31. Always do everything you ask of those you command.

39. I'm not going to subsidize cowardice.

40. I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.

44. March toward the sound of gunfire, an easily recognizable sound that they could usually find in front of them.

47. Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.

56. We herd sheep, we drive cattle, we lead people. Lead me, follow me, or get out of my way.

58. You are always on parade.

60. You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.

62. Fail to honor people, They fail to honor you; But of a good leader, who talks little, When his work is done, his aims fulfilled, They will all say, We did this ourselves.

67. If you're a leader, you don't push wet spaghetti, you pull it. The U.S. Army still has to learn that. The British understand it. Patton understood it. I always admired Patton. Oh, sure, the stupid bastard was crazy. He was insane. He thought he was living in the Dark Ages. Soldiers were peasants to him. I didn't like that attitude, but I certainly respected his theories and the techniques he used to get his men out of their foxholes.

    Attribution disputed; shown as originally published.