An interesting collection of trite, insightful, well worn and interesting (to me) new formulations of wisdom. It might be useful to look at the source documents cited to see if we can understand something about the works/authors who have had an impact on these contributors. It appears that the works of Sir Winston Churchill and T.R. Fehrenbach's _This Kind of War_ seem to be the most frequently quoted modern sources (my impression, not a statistical analysis).

“Winter winds howling?” Too bad for you poor souls that must live back east in slush, mud and ice listening to your furnaces roar while watching road salt eat your cars alive – it’s absolutely gorgeous here in sunny Tucson. :-)

One of my favorites:

"It's not enough that we do our best; sometimes we have to do what's required."
-Sir Winston Churchill

and relevant today:

“Why do states fight on when the stakes involved seem questionable, or the prospects of victory remote? Clausewitz, of course, got right to the heart of the matter - war, he argued, involves the passion of the people, and their leaders too. What's more, while politics permeates war to its very core, the direction is not always one-way: war and the politics that underpins it are in a dynamic relationship. The very act of fighting shapes the goals you seek, the stakes you perceive and your resolution to continue the fight. All very psychological, and Clausewitz certainly understood that war was a psychological phenomenon: it's right there in his concepts of genius, friction and the trinity. What's more, this business of conflict termination is central to his ideas about the culminating point of victory.”
-Kenneth Payne

I'm going to go out drinking and post some good ones to my Twitter feed. I've got more witty one-liners than Moltke and Clausewitz combined.

Some of my favorite quotes

On change...

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries … and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it. - Machiavelli

On the challenge of engineering compromise...

"While in France in 1918, I was directed to report on the military value of a machine going by the euphonious name of the 'moving fort and trench destroyer'. An elaborate set of blueprints accompanied the description of the horrid instrument. Those prints depicted a caterpillar propelled box of generous proportions covered with two inch armor and bearing in it's bosom six '75's', 20 machine guns, and a flame thrower while in the middle was a rectangular box 6x3x2 feet in size with the pathetic epitaph 'engine not yet devised'. I do not know if atom bursting was known at that date, but if it was, I feel certain that an engine actuated by that sort of power must have been intended as no other form of power occupying so small a space could have propelled the 200 tons of estimated weight of the 'fort'." - Patton

Nature or nuture?...

“By perseverance, study, and eternal desire, any man can become great.” - Patton

Life, the universe and everything...

“I went into the woods because I wanted to live deliberately. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life...to put to rout all that was not life; and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” - Henry David Thoreau

“ To laugh often and much, to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children. To leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition. To know that even one life has breathed easier because you have lived, this is to have succeeded.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Truthsayers...

I never did give anybody hell. I just told the truth and they thought it was hell – Harry S. Truman

In the spirit of the collection Tom posted above, I submit one of many quotes I will undoubtedly find this weekend:

"Wars not make one great." Yoda, The Empire Strikes Back

"War destroys without regard to what’s fair or just. This isn’t a new or terribly profound revelation, but witnessing it, and sometimes participating in it, makes it seem like both. In a professional military, the entire point of training is to minimize the nature of chance in combat. But all the training in the world will never eliminate happenstance in war, or even render it negligible."

Matt Gallagher, 'Pilgram's Progress', NYTimes Opinionator, 1/19/11

“Every man who loves peace, every man who loves his country, every man who loves liberty, ought to have it ever before his eyes, that he may cherish in his heart a due attachment to the Union of America, and be able to set a due value on the means of preserving it.”
James Madison Federalists 41

The 1st panacea of a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the 2nd is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; a permanent ruin.

~Ernest Hemingway

I was just curious about one of the quotes, it's attributed to Teddy Roosevelt.

"True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made."
Teddy Roosevelt

I understood that this quote was actually Franklin Roosevelt during his speech where he presented what he called the "economic bill of rights".

Anyone know which is which? Or did FDR quote Teddy for that speech?