"Should hostilities once break out between Japan and the United States, it is not enough that we take Guam and the Philippines, nor even Hawaii and San Francisco. To make victory certain, we would have to march into Washington and dictate the terms of peace in the White House. I wonder if our politicians, among whom armchair arguments about war are being glibly bandied about in the name of state politics, have confidence as to the final outcome and are prepared to make the necessary sacrifices."

"Yamamoto was an aggressive and inspiring officer, but he made the error of dividing his huge force five ways and of thinking that his foe would behave in a predictable way. After his crushing defeat on Midway, he ordered a general retreat and took ill in his cabin. U.S. naval intelligence again was his undoing. When he took off on an inspection tour from Rabaul, American fighter planes were up and waiting for him."

"In the wake of Pearl Harbor, a single word favored above all others by Americans as best characterizing the Japanese people was "treacherous," and for the duration of the war the surprise attack on the U.S. Pacific fleet remained the preeminent symbol of the enemy's inherent treachery. The attack also inspired a thirst for revenge among Americans that the Japanese, with their own racial blinders, had failed to anticipate. In one of his earliest presentations of the plan to attack Pearl Harbor, even Admiral Yamamoto Isoroku, who presumedly knew the American temperament firsthand from his years as a naval attache in Washington, expressed hope that shattering opening blow against the Pacific Fleet would render both the U.S. Navy and the American people "so dispirited that they will not be able to recover.""

"You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass."

"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

"The fiercest serpent may be overcome by a swarm of ants."

"In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success."

"Our task in conjunction with the Merchant Navies of the United Nations, and supported by the Allied Air Forces, is to carry the Allied Expeditionary Force to the Continent, to establish it there in a secure bridgehead and to build it up and maintain it at a rate which will outmatch that of the enemy. Let no one underestimate the magnitude of this task."

"Dlatego więc piszę niniejszą petycję,"

"During the first 3 years at Auschwitz, 2 million people were killed. Over the next 2 years, 3 Million."

"I've been trying to live my life so that in the hour of my death I would rather feel joy, than fear."

"So they didn't let anybody else off. I can't live anymore, they've done me. Auschwitz was just a child's play."

"I was not a[n intelligence] resident, only a Polish officer. I carried out my orders until arrested. I had no sense that I was a spy, and I ask that this be taken into account in deciding my verdict."

"The game which I was now playing in Auschwitz was dangerous. This sentence does not really convey the reality; in fact, I had gone far beyond what people in the real world consider dangerous."

"If Józef Cyrankiewicz finds out I'm here, I'm dead."

"I found a joy in myself, coming from the awareness that I want to fight."

"When the situation is obscure, attack."

"It's simply our duty to save these people, and we still have time to remove them! But it's useless to sacrifice men in this senseless way. It's high time! We must evacuate those soldiers at once!"

"Hitler might have waged his war against the Soviet Union more intelligently. Again, he might have listened to the experts (Halder and Guderian among them), who advised him to concentrate German efforts on capturing Moscow rather than diverting Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt's Army Group southwards towards Kiev. In a similar vein, Hitler might not have squandered his 6th Army so profligately at Stalingrad; Alan Brooke's fear was that Paulus might instead conquer the Caucasus, opening the way to the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oilfields."

"The good news for Liddell Hart was that his work was hugely influential. The bad news was that it was hugely influential not in Britain but in Germany. With the notable exception of Major-General J. F. C. Fuller, senior British commanders like Field Marshal Earl Haig simply refused to accept that 'the aeroplane, the tank [and] the motor car [would] supersede the horse in future wars', dismissing motorized weapons as mere 'accessories to the man and horse'. Haig's brother concurred: the cavalry would 'never be scrapped to make room for the tanks'. By contrast, younger German officers immediately grasped the significance of Liddell Hart's work. Among his most avid fans was Heinz Guderian, commander of the 19th German Army Corps in the invasion of Poland. As Guderian recalled, it was from Liddell Hart and other British pioneers of 'a new type of warfare on the largest scale' that he learned the importance of 'the concentration of armour'."

"New weapons require new tactics. Never put new wine into old bottles."

"Fahrkarte bis zur Endstation."

"If the tanks succeed, then victory follows."

"Logistics is the ball and chain of armored warfare."

"Nicht Kleckern sondern Klotzen!"

"The moral and intellectual condition of a nation may certainly prove of decisive importance on its own account, but all due attention must also be paid to material considerations. When a nation has to reckon with a struggle against superior forces on several fronts, it must neglect nothing that may conduce to the betterment of its situation."

"Actions speak louder than words. In the days to come the Goddess of Victory will bestow her laurels only on those who prepared to act with daring."

"We have severely underestimated the Russians, the extent of the country and the treachery of the climate. This is the revenge of reality."

"To imitate the ostrich in political matters has never been a satisfactory method of avoiding danger; yet this is what Hitler, as well as his more important political, economic and even military advisers, chose to do over and over again. The consequences of this deliberate blindness in the face of hard facts were devastating; and it was we who now had to bear them."

"It has been deduced from Hitler's great power over the masses that the Germans are an unusually suggestible race. But in all countries and at all times men have succumbed to the suggestive powers of unusual personalities, even if the wielders of those powers were not always good men in the Christian sense."

"Es gibt keine verzweifelten Lagen, es gibt nur verzweifelte Menschen."

"Man schlägt jemanden mit der Faust und nicht mit gespreizten Fingern."

"Der Motor des Panzers ist ebenso seine Waffe wie die Kanone."