“So I asked him why he had poled one of his fields and not the other of his small farm. His reply showed the folly of assuming rationality in human behavior. "The Germans told us farmers to pole all our fields by June 15. My cow never liked that west field so I poled it first." In this case, the whim of a French cow was the controlling factor, not the plans of the German General Staff. As I was about to go, the farmer asked me to wait a moment, went back into the house and returned with a clip of World War I rifle ammunition. He gave it to me with the injunction "Allez me tuer un Boche."”

"Go kill me a German."
Source: Swords and Plowshares (1972), p. 80-81

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "So I asked him why he had poled one of his fields and not the other of his small farm. His reply showed the folly of as…" by Maxwell D. Taylor?

Maxwell D. Taylor41

United States general 1901–1987

Related quotes

“You have got to purge the army at the top. It will have to be a drastic purge, because the spirit of the British Army has to be regained. We have in this country five or six generals, members of other nations, Czechs, Poles, and French, all of them trained in the use of German weapons and German technique…I know it is hurtful to our pride, but would it not be possible to put some of these men temporarily in charge of our men in the field?”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

Hansard, House of Commons 5th series, vol. 381, col. 540.
Speech in the House of Commons, 2 July 1942.
1940s

“There are Germans and Poles in Europe, and they ought to live together in agreement. The Poles cannot think of Europe without the Germans and the Germans cannot think of Europe without the Poles.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

Speech in Berlin (24 October 1933), quoted in The Times (26 September 1939), p. 9
1930s

“There's the South Pole, said Christopher Robin, and I expect there's an East Pole and a West Pole, though people don't like talking about them.”

A.A. Milne book Winnie-the-Pooh

Source: Winnie-the-Pooh

“The man who sailed around his soul
From East to West, from pole to pole
With ego as his drunken captain
Greed, the mutineer, had trapped all reason in the hold”

Andy Partridge (1953) British musician

"The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul".
Skylarking (1986)

“This all came about through the discovery of a single, isolated case of mad cow disease in one Alberta cow on May 20th. The farmer — I think he was a Louisiana fish farmer who knew nothing about cattle ranching. I guess any self-respecting rancher would have shot, shovelled and shut up, but he didn’t do that. Instead he took it to an abattoir and it was discovered after testing in both Winnipeg and the U. K. that this older cow had mad cow disease.”

Ralph Klein (1942–2013) Canadian politician

Source: Ralph Klein’s most memorable quotes http://globalnews.ca/news/439807/ralph-klein-was-a-sound-bite-gold-mine/ <br class="br">Source: As quoted in "Welcome to Ralph's World: 10 of Ralph Klein's most colourful quotes" http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/welcome-to-ralph-s-world-10-of-ralph-klein-s-most-colourful-quotes-1.1216791, CTV News

“Some of my father's fellow West Pointers once asked him why I turned out so well, his secret in raising me. And he said, "I never gave him any advice, and he never asked for any." We agreed on nothing, but we never quarreled once.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

2000s, What I've Learned (2008)

“The spinor genus is due to Eichler. His early results (1952) established the theory over the rational field and also, in certain special cases, over a number field. Kneser (1956) extended this to number fields in general. At about the same time Watson obtained Eichler's results by elementary methods over the rational field.”

O. Timothy O'Meara (1928–2018) American mathematician

[Review: Integral quadratic forms by G. L. Watson, Bull. Amer. Math. Soc., 67, 1961, 536–538, 10.1090/S0002-9904-1961-10673-3] (quote from p. 537)

“When [Capt. Pascal] saw me he appeared a good deal surprised, and asked me how I came back? I answered, 'In a ship.' To which he replied dryly, 'I suppose you did not walk back to London on the water.' As I saw, by his manner, that he did not seem to be sorry for his behaviour to me, and that I had not much reason to expect any favour from him, I told him that he had used me very ill, after I had been such a faithful servant to him for so many years; on which, without saying any more, he turned about and went away.”

Olaudah Equiano (1745–1797) African abolitionist

Chap. IX
The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789)

“Sometimes you look in a field and you see a cow and you think it's a better cow than the one you've got in your own field. It's a fact. Right? And it never really works out that way.”

Alex Ferguson (1941) Scottish footballer and manager

Goal.com (20 October 2010) http://www.goal.com/en-gb/news/2914/champions-league/2010/10/20/2175638/sir-alex-ferguson-compares-rooney-situation-to-a-cow-in-a.

“When asked why he parted with his wife, Cæsar replied, "I wished my wife to be not so much as suspected."”

Plutarch book Parallel Lives

Parallel Lives, Caesar

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Maxwell D. Taylor41

Related quotes

Related topics