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War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

— Georges Clemenceau

La guerre! C’est une chose trop grave pour la confier à des militaires.

Original text (French)

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Notes from Wikiquote

As quoted in Soixante Anneés d'Histoire Française (1932) by Georges Suarez | As quoted in Clemenceau and the Third Republic (1946) by John Hampden Jackson, p. 228; this has also become commonly paraphrased as: War is too important to be left to the generals.

Variants

War is too important a matter to be left to the military.

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War

More quotes by Georges Clemenceau

A man's life is interesting primarily when he has failed — I well know. For it's a sign that he tried to surpass himself.

To me the scene possessed only the horror of a slaughter-house.

It is easier to make war than make peace.

The quantum of a hypothetical German civilization would not take us very far, because she is to-day still too close to barbarism.

Grandeur and Misery of Victory (1930)

A man who waits to believe in action before acting is anything you like, but he’s not a man of action. It is as if a tennis player before returning a ball stopped to think about his views of the physical and mental advantages of tennis. You must act as you breathe.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Georges Clemenceau (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.