As many of you may be aware, prior to their 2012 inactivation, the Air Force Logistics Management Agency (AFLMA) offered an excellent two-volume collection of helpful, topical and often humorous logistics-related quotations entitled “Quotes for the Air Force Logistician Box Set”.

Although the box set is out of print, because so many of the quotes are both timeless and are of interest to our workforce, we maintain an archived copy of their 2006 editions of “Quotes for the Air Force Logistician (Volume 1)” and “Quotes for the Air Force Logistician (Volume 2) on our DAU Life Cycle Logistics Community of Practice (LOG CoP).

As a side note, several particularly memorable logistics quotes include:

• Logistics (is)… as vital to military success as daily food is to daily work.” – Rear Admiral Alfred Thayer Mahan, USN
• “Be nice to your mother but love your logisticians...” -- Gen Charles A. Horner, USAF
• “Logistics is traditionally an unglamorous and underappreciated activity” – Lt Gen William G. Pagonis, USA
• “Logistics must be simple—everyone thinks they’re an expert.” – Unknown
• “Amateurs worry about strategy. Dilettantes worry about tactics. Professionals worry about logistics.” – Unknown
• “You will not find it difficult to prove that battles, campaigns, and even wars have been won or lost primarily because of logistics.” – General Dwight D. Eisenhower
• “I don’t know what the hell this logistics is that (Gen) Marshall is always talking about, but I want some of it.” – Admiral E. J. King, USN
• “Logisticians are a sad, embittered race of people, very much in demand in war, who sink resentfully into obscurity in peace…” – Rear Admiral Isaac Campbell Kidd, USN
• “My logisticians are a humorless lot . . . they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.” – Alexander the Great (Attributed)