Top 50 Duke of Wellington Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Wise people learn when they can; fools learn when they must.”

— Duke of Wellington

2. “Educate men without religion and you make them clever devils.”

— Duke of Wellington

3. “Publish and be damned.”

— Duke of Wellington

4. “The only thing I am afraid of is fear.”

— Duke of Wellington

5. “Next to a lost battle, nothing is so sad as a battle that has been won.”

— Duke of Wellington

6. “We always have been, we are, and I hope that we always shall be detested in France.”

— Duke of Wellington

7. “Error is ever the sequence of haste.”

— Duke of Wellington

8. “Be discreet in all things, and so render it unnecessary to be mysterious about any.”

— Duke of Wellington

9. “Being born in a stable does not make one a horse.”

— Duke of Wellington

10. “I have got an infamous army, very weak and ill-equipped, and a very inexperienced staff.”

— Duke of Wellington

11. “There is no mistake; there has been no mistake; and there shall be no mistake.”

— Duke of Wellington

12. “An extraordinary affair. I gave them their orders and they wanted to stay and discuss them.”

— Duke of Wellington

13. “I don’t know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but by God, they frighten me.”

— Duke of Wellington

14. “God deliver me from my friends! I’ll take care of my enemies myself.”

— Duke of Wellington

15. “The hardest thing of all for a soldier is to retreat.”

— Duke of Wellington

16. “My rule always was to do the business of the day in the day.”

— Duke of Wellington

17. “When other Generals make mistakes their armies are beaten; when I get into a hole, my men pull me out of it.”

— Duke of Wellington

18. “Always get over heavy ground as lightly as you can.”

— Duke of Wellington

19. “The whole art of war consists in getting at what is on the other side of the hill.”

— Duke of Wellington

20. “To define it rudely but not ineptly, engineering is the art of doing for 10 shillings what any fool can do for a pound.”

— Duke of Wellington

21. “The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.”

— Duke of Wellington

22. “Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”

— Duke of Wellington

23. “If you had seen one day of war, you would pray to God that you would never see another.”

— Duke of Wellington

24. “Rashness is oftener the resort of cowardice than of courage.”

— Duke of Wellington

25. “Troops would never be deficient in courage, if they could only know how deficient in it their enemies were.”

— Duke of Wellington

26. “Hard pounding, gentlemen. Let’s see who pounds the longest.”

— Duke of Wellington

27. “My heart is broken by the terrible loss I have sustained in my old friends and companions and my poor soldiers. Believe me, nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.”

— Duke of Wellington

28. “There is nothing on earth so stupid as a gallant officer.”

— Duke of Wellington

29. “The British soldiers are fellows who have all enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact – they have all enlisted for drink.”

— Duke of Wellington

30. “Believe me that every man you see in a military uniform is not a hero.”

— Duke of Wellington

31. “I have seen their backs before.”

— Duke of Wellington

32. “I used to say of him that his presence on the field made the difference of forty thousand men.”

— Duke of Wellington

33. “The Lord’s prayer contains the sum total of religion and morals.”

— Duke of Wellington

34. “The French system of conscription brings together a fair sample of all classes; ours is composed of the scum of the earth – the mere scum of the earth. It is only wonderful that we should be able to make so much out of them afterwards.”

— Duke of Wellington

35. “There is nothing so dreadful as a great victory – except a great defeat.”

— Duke of Wellington

36. “Today when a man gets married he gets a home, a housekeeper, a cook, a cheering squad and another paycheck. When a woman marries, she gets a boarder. To define it rudely but not ineptly, engineering is the art of doing that well with one dollar, which any bungler can do with two after a fashion.”

— Duke of Wellington

37. “It is not the business of generals to shoot one another.”

— Duke of Wellington

38. “When one begins to turn in bed, it is time to get up.”

— Duke of Wellington

39. “A great country can have no such thing as a little war.”

— Duke of Wellington

40. “There are no manifestos like cannon and musketry.”

— Duke of Wellington

41. “It is very true that I have said that I considered Napoleon’s presence in the field equal to forty thousand men in the balance. This is a very loose way of talking; but the idea is a very different one from that of his presence at a battle being equal to a reinforcement of forty thousand men.”

— Duke of Wellington

42. “I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life.”

— Duke of Wellington

43. “I have no small talk and Peel has no manners.”

— Duke of Wellington

44. “Our army is composed of the scum of the earth – the mere scum of the earth.”

— Duke of Wellington

45. “What masks are these uniforms to hide cowards!”

— Duke of Wellington

46. “I hate the whole race. There is no believing a word they say, your professional poets, I mean there never existed a more worthless set than Byron and his friends for example.”

— Duke of Wellington

47. “I am not only not prepared to bring forward any measure of this nature, but I will at once declare that, as far as I am concerned, as long as I hold any station in the Government of the country, I shall always feel it my duty to resist such measures when proposed by others.”

— Duke of Wellington

48. “When my journal appears, many statues must come down.”

— Duke of Wellington

49. “Call on a business man only at business times, and on business; transact your business, and go about your business, in order to give him time to finish his business.”

— Duke of Wellington

50. “Extra interest signifies extra risk.”

— Duke of Wellington