William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

The scenes on this field would have cured anybody of war.

War is hell.

War is the remedy that our enemies have chosen, and I say let us give them all they want.

War is too serious a matter to leave to soldiers.

In our Country . . . one class of men makes war and leaves another to fight it out.

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell.

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. If I killed them all there would be news from Hell before breakfast.

You may as well say, 'That's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.'.

Newspaper correspondents with an army, as a rule, are mischievous. They are the world's gossips, pick up and retail the camp scandal, and gradually drift to the headquarters of some general, who finds it easier to make reputation at home than with his own corps or division. They are also tempted to prophesy events and state facts which, to an enemy, reveal a purpose in time to guard against it. Moreover, they are always bound to see facts colored by the partisan or political character of their own patrons, and thus bring army officers into the political controversies of the day, which are always mischievous and wrong. Yet, so greedy are the people at large for war news, that it is doubtful whether any army commander can exclude all reporters, without bringing down on himself a clamor that may imperil his own safety. Time and moderation must bring a just solution to this modern difficulty.

I intend to make Georgia howl.".

Hold the fort! I am coming!

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.

You may as well say, 'That's a valiant flea that dare eat his breakfast on the lip of a lion.

War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

If nominated, I will not accept; if drafted, I will not run; if elected, I will not serve.

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.

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.

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell.

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.

There's many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory but it is all hell.

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.

War is at its best barbarism.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

A battery of field artillery is worth a thousand muskets.