Top 100 Douglas MacArthur Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A true leader has the confidence to stand alone, the courage to make tough decisions, and the compassion to listen to the needs of others. He does not set out to be a leader, but becomes one by the equality of his actions and the integrity of his intent.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Leadership Quotes

2. “Preparedness is the key to success and victory.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Victory Quotes

3. “Have a good plan, execute it violently, and do it today.”

— Douglas MacArthur

4. “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Service Quotes, Military Quotes, Memorial Day Quotes, Veteran's Day Quotes

5. “You are remembered for the rules you break.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Reputation Quotes

6. “The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle: the roar of the crowd on the one side, and the voice of your conscience on the other.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Courage Quotes, Boldness Quotes, Struggle Quotes

7. “I’ll come back as soon as I can with as much as I can. In the meantime, you’ve got to hold!”

— Douglas MacArthur

8. “There is no security on this earth; there is only opportunity.”

— Douglas MacArthur

9. “Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword obviously never encountered automatic weapons.”

— Douglas MacArthur

10. “The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.”

— Douglas MacArthur

11. “It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.”

— Douglas MacArthur

12. “I came out of Bataan and I shall return!”

— Douglas MacArthur

13. “Rules are mostly made to be broken and are too often for the lazy to hide behind.”

— Douglas MacArthur

14. “Give me ten thousand Filipino soldiers and I will conquer the world.”

— Douglas MacArthur

15. “The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Courage Quotes

16. “On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days, on other fields will bear the fruits of victory.”

— Douglas MacArthur

17. “No plan ever survives its first encounter with the enemy.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

18. “The best luck of all is the luck you make for yourself.”

— Douglas MacArthur

19. “Even when opportunity knocks, a man still has to get up off his seat and open the door.”

— Douglas MacArthur

20. “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

Featured in: Strong Quotes

21. “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

22. “Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world, and that God will preserve it always.”

— Douglas MacArthur

23. “Years wrinkle the skin. Giving up wrinkles the soul.”

— Douglas MacArthur

24. “We are not retreating – we are advancing in another direction.”

— Douglas MacArthur

25. “The nations of the world will have to unite for the next war will be an interplanetary war. The nations of Earth must some day make a common front against attack by people from other planets.”

— Douglas MacArthur

26. “For those to whom much is given, much is required. It is not whether you get knocked down, it’s whether you get up. There is no substitute for victory.”

— Douglas MacArthur

27. “Security lies in our ability to produce.”

— Douglas MacArthur

28. “A good soldier, whether he leads a platoon or an army, is expected to look backward as well as forward; but he must think only forward.”

— Douglas MacArthur

29. “No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its preservation.”

— Douglas MacArthur

30. “The scale and grandeur of the Russian effort mark it as the greatest military achievement in all history.”

— Douglas MacArthur

31. “History fails to record a single precedent in which nations subject to moral decay have not passed into political and economic decline. There has been either a spiritual awakening to overcome the moral lapse, or a progressive deterioration leading to ultimate national disaster.”

— Douglas MacArthur

32. “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 be deserting their ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up interest wrinkles the soul.”

— Douglas MacArthur

33. “Optimism is denial, so face the facts and move on.”

— Douglas MacArthur

34. “Duty, Honor, Country. Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Country Quotes

35. “A general is just as good or just as bad as the troops under his command make him.”

— Douglas MacArthur

36. “War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.”

— Douglas MacArthur

37. “From the Far East I send you one single thought, one sole idea – written in red on every beachhead from Australia to Tokyo – “There is no substitute for victory!””

— Douglas MacArthur

38. “In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory.”

— Douglas MacArthur

39. “Americans never quit.”

— Douglas MacArthur

40. “However horrible the incidents of war may be, the soldier who is called upon to offer and to give his life for his country is the noblest development of mankind.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Country Quotes

41. “I have just returned from visiting the Marines at the front, and there is not a finer fighting organization in the world!”

— Douglas MacArthur

43. “I know that this operation will be sort of helter-skelter. But the First Marine Division is going to win the war by landing at Inchon.”

— Douglas MacArthur

44. “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

45. “They died hard, those savage men – like wounded wolves at bay. They were filthy, and they were lousy, and they stunk. And I loved them.”

— Douglas MacArthur

46. “Never ask age of a woman.”

— Douglas MacArthur

47. “There are no atheists in the foxholes of Bataan...”

— Douglas MacArthur

48. “I see that the flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.”

— Douglas MacArthur

49. “Defensive strategy never has produced ultimate victory.”

— Douglas MacArthur

50. “It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.”

— Douglas MacArthur

Featured in: Country Quotes