From the Preface: The number one aim of this book is to supply Airmen with useful thoughts that might help them meet their known responsibilities and the unknown challenges their service will bring. The most capable Airmen are judicious in finding the best material to put into their "clue bags." They continue a long tradition. Nearly three hundred years ago, Frederick the Great searched the best of military thought trying to "acquire perfect knowledge and experience."The materials in this book are offered as candidates for your clue bag. Some of the quotations were selected for their irony, humor, or incendiary effect. I'm confident that readers will know good sense from nonsense.This book contains many "old, dead guy" quotations for several reasons. First, they're good. No one has improved on Sun Tzu in 2,500 years. Second, time has graded their work and put them at the head of the class. Third, they wrote clearly.To identify the sources of quotes, I've used two military principles—brevity and simplicity. Rank abbreviations reflect the official usage of parent services (i.e., Lt Gen for the Air Force, LtGen for the Marine Corps, and LTG for the Army). Those who should be household names are treated as such (e.g., Commanding General of the US Army Air Forces and, later, the first and only General of the Air Force, Henry H. Arnold, is simply Hap Arnold).Alexander Graham Bell Benjamin Franklin Brig. General Charles E. "Chuck" Yeager Carl von Clausewitz Colin Powell Douglas MacArthur Dwight D. Eisenhower General Bernard "Bernie" Schriever General Charles A. "Chuck" Horner General Curtis E. LeMay General Norman Schwarzkopf General Wesley K. Clark George Washington H. G. Wells Hap Arnold Henry Kissinger Hoyt S. Vandenberg John Foster Dulles Lyndon B. Johnson Mao Tse-tung Napoleon Saddam Hussein Donald Rumsfeld Sun Tzu Thomas Aquinas Winston Churchill
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