Douglas MacArthur

I am closing my fifty-two years of military service. When I joined the army, even before the turn of the century, it was the fulfillment of all my boyish hopes and dreams. The world has turned over many times since I took the oath on the plain at West Point, and the hopes and dreams have long since vanished, but I still remember the refrain of one of the most popular barracks ballads of that day which proclaimed most proudly that old soldiers never die; they just fade away. And like the old soldier of that 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. Good-bye. Show less «

The powers in charge keep us in a perpetual state of fear, keep us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exorbitant sums demanded. Yet, in retrospect, these disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real. Show less «

Duty, honor, country... they teach us to be proud and unbending in failure but humble and gentle in success.

[March 9, 1948] I have been informed that petitions have been in Madison signed by many of my fellow citizens of Wisconsin, presenting my name to the electorate for consideration at the primary on April 6th. No man could fail to be profoundly stirred by such a public movement. I can say, with due humility, that I would be recreant to all my concepts of good citizenship were I to shrink because of the hazards and responsibilities involved from accepting any public duty to which I might be called by the American people. Show less «

[from radio broadcast to the US from the USS Missouri after accepting the Japanese surrender that ended World War II on September 2, 1945] Today the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death--the seas bear only commerce--men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world is quietly at peace . . . And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way . . . A new era is upon us. Even the lesson of victory itself brings with it profound concern, both for our future security and the survival of civilization. The destructiveness of the war potential, through progressive advances in scientific discovery, has in fact now reached a point which revises the traditional concepts of war . . . We have had our last chance. If we do not now devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door . . . My fellow countrymen, today I report to you that your sons and daughters have served you well and faithfully with the calm, deliberate, determined fighting spirit of the American soldier and sailor . . . Their spiritual strength and power has brought us through to victory. They are homeward bound - take care of them. Show less «