“The French covering army would have blown us to bits.”
This quote was made about World War II regarding Hitler's army and how the French army would have been able to easily defeat the German army yet the French chose not to attack the Germans.
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Alfred Jodl 10
German general 1890–1946Related quotes

“Thank God for the French army.”
When we read about Germany, when we watch with surprise and distress the tumultuous insurgence of ferocity and war spirit, the pitiless ill-treatment of minorities, the denial of the normal protections of civilised society to large numbers of individuals solely on the ground of race—when we see that occurring in one of the most gifted, learned, scientific and formidable nations in the world, one cannot help feeling glad that the fierce passions that are raging in Germany have not found, as yet, any other outlet but upon themselves. It seems to me that, at a moment like this, to ask France to halve her army while Germany doubles hers...to ask France to halve her air force while the German air force remains whatever it is...such a proposal, it seems to me, is likely to be considered by the French Government at present, at any rate, as somewhat unseasonable.
Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1933/mar/23/european-situation#S5CV0276P0_19330323_HOC_299 in the House of Commons (23 March 1933) shortly after Hitler became Chancellor
The 1930s

“I have promised the Tunisian people that the French army will go, If I fail, I will be swept away.”
[TUNISIA: The Accused, TIME, Monday, Feb. 24, 1958, 2, http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,862990-2,00.html, September 6, 2011]

Winston Churchill, We Shall Fight on the Beeches, 4 June 1940

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

On his country's order of F-16 fighter aircraft (June 2014), as quoted in BBC News http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-28042302.

"A Conversation with the Inspector of Taxes about Poetry" (1926); translation from Chris Jenks Visual Culture (London: Routledge, 1995) pp. 86-7

in a letter from Sandviken to Gustave Geffroy, 26 February 1895 (L. 1274); as cited in: Steven Z. Levine, Claude Monet (1994), Monet, Narcissus, and Self-Reflection: The Modernist Myth of the Self. p. 93
1890 - 1900