William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes
-
I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting — its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation.
→ -
You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing!
→ -
The young bloods of the South: sons of planters, lawyers about towns, good billiard-players and sportsmen, men who never did any work and never will... They are splendid riders, first-rate shots and utterly reckless. These men must all be killed or employed by us before we can hope for peace.
→ -
You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end.
→ -
...[We] must stop these swarms of Jews who are trading, bartering and robbing.
→ -
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.
→ -
I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the city of Savannah.
→ -
There will soon come an armed contest between capital and labor. They will oppose each other, not with words and arguments, but with shot and shell, gun-powder and cannon. The better classes are tired of the insane howling of the lower strata and they mean to stop them.
→ -
A battery of field artillery is worth a thousand muskets.
→ -
War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.
→ -
I make up my opinions from facts and reasoning, and not to suit any body but myself. If people don't like my opinions, it makes little difference as I don't solicit their opinions or votes.
→ -
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.
→ -
We can make war so terrible and make them so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it.
→ -
I would make this war as severe as possible, and show no symptoms of tiring till the South begs for mercy.
→ -
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.
→ -
I knew wherever I was that you thought of me, and if I got in a tight place you would come-if alive.
→ -
War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.
→ -
You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.
→ -
I intend to make Georgia howl.
→ -
I found so many Jews and speculators here trading in cotton, and secessionists had become so open in refusing anything but gold, that I have felt myself bound to stop it. The gold can have but one use - the purchase of arms and ammunition... Of course, I have respected all permits by yourself or the Secretary of the Treasury, but in these new cases (swarms of Jews), I have stopped it.
→ -
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.
→ -
I will not accept if nominated, and will not serve if elected.
→ -
If nominated by either party, I should peremptorily decline, and even if unanimously elected, I should decline to serve.
→ -
In our Country... one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.
→ -
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.
→ -
The war now is away back in the past, and you can tell what books cannot. When you talk, you come down to the practical realities just as they happened. You all know this is not soldiering here. 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, but if it has to come, I am there.
→ -
My aim, then, was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us. Fear is the beginning of wisdom.
→ -
To secure the safety of the navigation of the Mississippi River I would slay millions. On that point I am not only insane, but mad... I think I see one or two quick blows that will astonish the natives of the South and will convince them that, though to stand behind a big cottonwood and shoot at a passing boat is good sport and safe, it may still reach and kill their friends and families hundreds of miles off. For every bullet shot at a steamboat, I would shoot a thousand 30-pounder Parrots into even helpless towns on Red, Ouachita, Yazoo, or wherever a boat can float or soldier march.
→ -
Courage - a perfect sensibility of the measure of danger, and a mental willingness to endure it.
→ -
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
- Born: February 8, 1820
- Died: February 14, 1891
- Occupation: U.S. General
Related Authors
-
Joseph Hooker Military Officer -
Winfield Scott General officer commanding -
P. G. T. Beauregard Military officer -
Stonewall Jackson Military Commander -
Jefferson Davis Former President of the Confederate States of America -
-
Tecumseh Tribal chief -
James Longstreet Military Commander -
George B. McClellan Former Governor of New Jersey -
George Pickett Major -
Joseph E. Johnston Senior officer
-
George Meade Officer commanding -
Clara Barton Nursing -
John Sherman Former American senator -
John Bell Hood Military Commander -
John Wilkes Booth Actor -
Abraham Lincoln 16th U.S. President -
Robert E. Lee Military Officer -
Ulysses S. Grant 18th U.S. President -
Philip Sheridan Major