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Generals who are terribly busy all day and half the night, who fuss round, posting platoons, and writing march tables, wear out not only their subordinates but themselves. Nor have they, when the real emergency comes, the reserve of vigor that will enable them, for days if necessary, to do with little rest or sleep.

— William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim Defeat Into Victory (1961)

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More quotes by William Slim, 1st Viscount Slim

Private armies, and for that matter private air forces- are expensive, wasteful, and unnecessary.

Defeat Into Victory (1961)

He would have been a brave American who would have stood up to Joe Stilwell to his face.

Defeat Into Victory (1961)

The more modern war becomes, the more essential appear the basic qualities that from the beginning of history have distinguished armies from the mobs. The first of these is discipline.

Defeat Into Victory (1961)

...any Japanese officer wishing to commit suicide would be given every facility.

Defeat Into Victory (1961)

Patterson-Knight, my "Q" staff officer, who had been at Shwegyin for some days supervising embarkation and was a conspicuous figure in his exquisitely cut, but by now somewhat soiled, jodhpurs, took a tommy gun and went into the fray. About an hour later he came back and exchanged the tommy-gun for a rifle, explaining that "The little yellow baskets are a bit farther off now!"

Defeat Into Victory (1961)

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