J. F. C. Fuller Quotations

Personally, the thrill I got out of making House of Bamboo was shooting in Japan, having a major studio budget and enough money and working counter to stereotypes. In terms of style, I wanted the wide screen and the color. I loathe this cliche vision of the underworld. Dark alleys and wet streets. I've done it. Everybody's done it. It becomes fake, and I don't like it.

He gave me a lot of encouragement as a young man, as a baseball pitcher, and he has stayed in touch with me over the years up until the present time.

The theater environment in the North Bay right now is absolutely vivid with progressive theater companies, ... It really feels a whole lot like Chicago did back when the last Chicago renaissance was starting, or like Philadelphia did in the late '70s and early '80s. There was so much amazing, interesting theater being done then, and there is something incredibly exciting going on in the North Bay right now.

Proposition 98 is symptomatic of a whole maze of school finance laws that is immensely complicated,

Compared to many homes, preschool centers are richer settings in terms of enriched language, reading and math, ... The Influence of Preschool Centers on Children's Development Nationwide: How Much Is Too Much?

You don't sue somebody if you think they're going to be complementary or helpful to you,

It's true. We've never been part of the mainstream of anything, ... But being called 'fringe' is nothing to be ashamed of. In the context of theater, fringe is good. Think of the fringe festivals that take place around the world now. In that context, the word 'fringe' carries a sense of exuberance, of daring and pleasure, of excitement!

In the World War nothing was more dreadful to witness than a chain of men starting with a battalion commander and ending with an army commander sitting in telephone boxes, improvised or actual, talking, talking, talking, in place of leading, leading, leading.

The strongest army in the world [the French] facing no more than twenty-six [German] divisions, sitting still and sheltering behind steel and concrete while a quixotically valiant ally was being exterminated!

An Army is still a crowd, though a highly organized one. It is governed by the same laws, and under the stress of war is ever tending to revert to its crowd form. Our object in peace is so to train it that the reversion will become very slow.

Air warfare is a shot through the brain, not a hacking to pieces of the enemy's body.

To me our bombing policy appears to be suicidal. Not because it does not do vast damage to our enemy, it does; but because, simultaneously, it does vast damage to our peace aim, unless that aim is mutual economic and social annihilation.

The War of the Roses in England and the Civil War in America were both intestinal conflicts arising out of similar ideas. In the first the clash was between feudalism and the new economic order; in the second, between an agricultural society and a new industrial one. Both led to similar ends; the first to the founding of the English nation, and the second to the founding of the American. Both were strangely interlinked; for it was men of the old military and not of the new economic mind--men, such as Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Walter Raleigh--who founded the English colonies in America.

Adherence to dogmas has destroyed more armies and cost more battles than anything in war.

Jackson possessed the brutality essential in war; Lee did not. He could clasp the hand of a wounded enemy, whilst Jackson ground his teeth and murmured, 'No quarter to the violators of our homes and firesides', and when someone deplored the necessity of destroying so many brave men, he exclaimed: 'No, shoot them all, I do not wish them to be brave.'

As the aeroplane is the most mobile weapon we possess, it is destined to become the dominant offensive arm of the future.

National armies fight nations, royal armies fight their like, the first obey a mob, always demented and the second a king, generally sane.

In the World War [WW1] nothing was more dreadful to witness than a chain of men starting with a battalion commander and ending with an army commander sitting in telephone boxes, improvised or actual, talking, talking, talking, in place of leading, leading, leading.

Discipline is no longer literal obedience but intelligent obedience, for discipline aims at obedience coupled with activity of will. Once discipline weakens and vanishes, as it does towards the latter stages of the fire fight, and the crowd instinct possesses the soldier, then will he, if training has formed those necessary mental reflexes, surrender himself to the will of his leader; this is where leadership supplants discipline without destroying it.

The governments of the Western nations, whether monarchical or republican, had passed into the invisible hands of a plutocracy, international in power and grasp. It was, I venture to suggest, this semi-occult power which....pushed the mass of the American people into the cauldron of World War I.

What thrust us into war were not Hitler's political teachings: the cause, this time, was his successful attempt to establish a new economy. The causes of the war were: envy, greed, and fear.

It is absolutely true in war, were other things equal, that numbers, whether men, shells, bombs, etc., would be supreme. Yet it is also absolutely true that other things are never equal and can never be equal.

Artillery conquers and infantry occupies.