To all my friends who felt like a picnicker at Bull Run last night:
I try my best to avoid using profanity, Gen. Patton believed that when engaged in serious conflict he had to step outside the bounds of the norms and rough people up a bit so they could hear the message. I’m sure it was uncomfortable to his men at times too. Have heard many times that even St Jerome, who’s feast we celebrate today would as well become verbally colorful when defending the faith. Sometimes life is messy and discomfort is needed to shake complacency. Great leaders know this.
“When I want my men to remember something important, to really make it stick, I give it to them double dirty. It may not sound nice to some bunch of little old ladies at an afternoon tea party, but it helps my soldiers to remember. You can’t run an army without profanity; and it has to be eloquent profanity. An army without profanity couldn’t fight its way out of a piss-soaked paper bag. … As for the types of comments I make, sometimes I just, By God, get carried away with my own eloquence.”
-Gen. George S Patton.
Remark to his nephew about his copious profanity, quoted in The Unknown Patton (1983) by Charles M. Province, p. 184
Shackle Free 