Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) was an American military general who attained widespread fame for his military leadership in the Pacific during World War II and the Cold War.
Born to a military family in Little Rock, Arkansas, MacArthur graduated from the United States Military Academy (West Point) in 1903. He served as a divisional commander in World War I, became army chief of staff in 1930, and military adviser to the Philippines in 1935, retiring from the U.S. Army in 1937.
MacArthur returned to service as the commander of the U.S. forces, and later Supreme Allied Commander, in the south-western Pacific during the Second World War. Following the atomic bombing over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, MacArthur formally accepted Japan’s surrender in 1945. Given complete control of the Allied occupation of Japan, MacArthur reformed and modernized the Japanese government and economy.
MacArthur became commander of the United Nations (U.N.) forces on the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950. He halted the North Korean advance into South Korea, but when the U.N. forces drove deep into North Korea in a counterattack, the Chinese army crossed the border into North Korea and pushed the U.N. forces back to South Korea. Infuriated, MacArthur called for an all-out war with communist China, using nuclear weapons if necessary. President Harry S. Truman refused, fearing World War III. In April 1951, accusing MacArthur of defying presidential authority, Truman removed MacArthur from command. Truman returned home to a hero’s welcome and delivered an emotional address to Congress.
In retirement, MacArthur became an icon of right-wing politics. He failed at winning the Republican presidential nomination in 1952.
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Defensive strategy never has produced ultimate victory.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Risk
It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Dedication, Commitment, Risk, Courage, Enthusiasm, Win, Success, Warfare
Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but victories.
—Douglas MacArthur
I have known war as few men now living know it. It’s very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: War
Last, but by no means least, courage-moral courage, the courage of one’s convictions, the courage to see things through. The world ;is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle-the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your ;conscience on the other.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Courage, Bravery
No army has ever done so much with so little.
—Douglas MacArthur
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear — kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor — with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant funds demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Propaganda, Change
By profession I am a soldier and take pride in that fact. But I am prouder — infinitely prouder — to be a father. A soldier destroys in order to build; the father only builds, never destroys. The one has the potentiality of death; the other embodies creation and life. And while the hordes of death are mighty, the battalions of life are mightier still. It is my hope that my son, when I am gone, will remember me not from the battle field but in the home repeating with him our simple daily prayer, “Our Father Who Art in Heaven.”
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Fathers
There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Opportunity
We are not retreating — we are advancing in another direction.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Defeat
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.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Aging, Age
By profession I am a Soldier and take pride in that fact, but I am prouder to be a father.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Pride
Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Death, Courage, Dying
The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.
—Douglas MacArthur
There is not one incident in the history of humanity in which defeatism led to peace which was anything other than a complete fraud.
—Douglas MacArthur
Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.
—Douglas MacArthur
Age wrinkles the body. Quitting wrinkles the soul.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: One liners, Soul
There is no security in life, only opportunity.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Courage, Opportunity, Life, Risk
Like the old soldier of the ballad, I now close my military career and just fade away, an old soldier who tried to do his duty as God gave him the light to see that duty. Goodbye.
—Douglas MacArthur
Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.
—Douglas MacArthur
Worry, doubt, fear and despair are the enemies which slowly bring us down to the ground and turn us to dust before we die.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Worry
You are remembered for the rules you break.
—Douglas MacArthur
There’s no security on this earth, only opportunity.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Security, Nature, Opportunity
In war there is no substitute for victory.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Dedication, Commitment, War
There is no substitute for victory.
—Douglas MacArthur
A Prayer For My Son: Build me a son, O Lord, who will be strong enough to know when he is weak, and brave enough to face himself when he is afraid; one who will be proud and unbending in honest defeat, and humble and gentle in victory.
—Douglas MacArthur
The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Luck
It must be of the spirit if we are to save the flesh.
—Douglas MacArthur
I see that old flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: War
I promise to keep on living as though I expected to live forever. Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years. People grow old only by deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Youth, People, Ideal, Age, Ideals, Live, Worry, Idealism, Aging, Soul
A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.
—Douglas MacArthur
There is no security on this earth. Only opportunity.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Opportunities, Courage, Security, Opportunity
Part of the American dream is to live long and die young. Only those Americans who are willing to die for their country are fit to live.
—Douglas MacArthur
And in the end, through the long ages of our quest for light, it will be found that truth is still mightier than the sword. For out of the welter of human carnage and human sorrow and human weal the indestructible thing that will always live is a sound idea.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Truth
I realize that advice is worth what it costs–that is, nothing.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Advice
No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.
—Douglas MacArthur
Topics: Blessings, Freedom
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