26 Quotes by Jean Edward Smith

Eisenhower on Patton: "Fundamentally, he is so avid for recognition as a great commander that he won't with ruthlessly suppress any habit that will jeopardize it.

...if George Washington founded the nation, John Marshall defined it.

Eisenhower and Patton, old friends and figures crucial to the Allies' upcoming success, conferred over yet another gaffe on Patton's part that could have cost him his command. Patton's head is on Ike's shoulder in gratitude, but the scene is rescued from being completely maudlin by Eisenhower's internal question as to whether Patton wears his ever-present helmet to bed.

Patton would have said a warmer goodbye to his horse, The author writes on Eisenhower's cold dismissal of his wartime lover.

The loneliness of command had made Eisenhower emotionally self-sufficient.

Author says that, while Eisenhower had other intellectual mentors, he learned how to lead men from Gen. Walter Krueger. Krueger was the first American enlisted man to rise to four-star general, and he so identified with those he led that he once invited a sentry out of the rain and gave him his own dry uniform.

John Marshall on writing: The man who by seeking embellishment hazards confusion, is greatly mistaken in what constitutes good writing. The meaning ought never to be mistaken. Indeed, the reader should never be obliged to search for it.

The Italian government, a free French newspaper tartly observed, never finished a war on the same side it started on – unless the war lasted long enough to change sides twice.

Ike was like a giant umbrella. He absorbed what was coming down from above, shielded his commanders from higher authority, and about them to fight the war without excessive second-guessing.