General Douglas MacArthur

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. - General Douglas MacArthur

We are not retreating - we are advancing in another Direction. - General Douglas MacArthur

It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh. - General Douglas MacArthur

Old soldiers never die; they just fade away. - General Douglas MacArthur

Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul. - General Douglas MacArthur

Youth is not entirely a time of life; it is a state of mind. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old by deserting their ideals. You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair. - General Douglas MacArthur

Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brillance of metaphor to tell you all what they mean.... You are the leaven which binds together the entire fabric of our national system of defense. From your ranks come the great captains who hold the nation's destiny in their hands the moment the war tocsin sounds. The Long Gray Line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses thundering those magic words - Duty - Honor - Country. This does not mean that you are war mongers. On the contrary, the soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war. But always in our ears ring the ominous words of Plato, that wisest of philosophers: 'Only the dead have seen the end of war.' The shadows are lengthening for me. The twilight is here. My days of old have vanished tone and tint; they have gone glimmering through the dreams of things that were. Their memory is one of wondrous beauty, watered by tears, and coaxed and caressed by the smiles of yesterday. I listen vainly for the witching melody of faint bugles blowing reveille, of far drums beating the long roll. In my dreams I hear again the crash of guns, the rattle of musketry, the strange, mournful mutter of the battlefield. But in the evening of my memory always I come back to West Point. Always there echoes and re-echoes Duty - Honor - Country. Today marks my final roll call with you, but I want you to know when I cross the river my last conscious thoughts will be of The Corps, and The Corps, and The Corps. (speech, May 12, 1962, United States Military Academy at West Point) - General Douglas MacArthur