“The first duty of a leader is opti­mism. How does your sub­or­di­nate feel after meet­ing with you? Does he feel uplifted? If not, you are not a leader.”

As God once said, and I think rightly.

Air power is indivisible. If you split it up into compartments, you merely pull it to pieces and destroy its greatest asset – its flexibility.

On the eve of this great adventure I send my best wishes to every soldier in the Allied team. To us is given the honour of striking a blow for freedom which will live in history; and in the better days that lie ahead men will speak with pride of our doings.

Im my profession you have to mystify the enemy.

If we lose the war in the air we lose the war and lose it quickly.

The harder the fighting and the longer the war, the more the infantry, and in fact all the arms, lean on the gunners.

I was well beaten myself, and I am better for it.

Every soldier must know, before he goes into battle, how the little battle he is to fight fits into the larger picture, and how the success of his fighting will influence the battle as a whole.

My own definition of leadership is this: The capacity and the will to rally men and women to a common purpose and the character which inspires confidence.

Let no man surrender so long as he is unwounded and can fight.

Decisions! And a general, a commander in chief who has not got the quality of decision, then he is no good.

A Marine should be sworn to the patient endurance of hardships, like the ancient knights; and it is not the least of these necessary hardships to have to serve with sailors.

A censure would put an indelible scar on the president’s place in history, .. Monica Lewinsky is not Watergate. Let he who has no sin in this chamber cast the first stone.

All artists are protected by copyright… and we should be the first to respect copyright.

You know, as you get older, the first thing you lose is memory. It seems to be happening with me.

Ask not first what the system does; ask what it does it to!

I started out as a very traditional actor. The first thing I ever did in terms of performance was singing.

A motto I’ve adopted is, if at first you don’t succeed, hide all evidence that you ever tried.

Most of the time I am sunk in thought, but at some point on each walk there comes a moment when I look up and notice, with a kind of first-time astonishment.

How many of us have been first attracted to reason, first learned to think, to draw conclusions, to extract a moral from the follies of life, by some dazzling aphorism from Rochefoucauld or La Bruyere.