The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war.
Norman Schwarzkopf
You learn far more from negative leadership than from positive leadership. Because you learn how not to do it. And, therefore, you learn how to do it.
The truth of the matter is that you always know the right thing to do. The hard part is doing it.
Leadership is a potent combination of strategy and character. But if you must be without one, be without the strategy.
Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion.
It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.
It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.
True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job anyhow, that's what courage is.
When placed in command, take charge.
Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.
As far as Saddam Hussein being a great military strategist, he is neither a strategist, nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general, nor is he a soldier. Other than that, he's a great military man, I want you to know that.
What people don't understand is this is something that we only have in America. There is no other country in the world where the ordinary citizen can go out and enjoy hunting and fishing. There's no other nation in the world where that happens. And it's very much a part of our heritage.
The fun of fishing is catching 'em, not killing 'em.
I prided myself on being unflappable even in the most chaotic of circumstances.
I do hunt, and I do fish, and I don't apologize to anybody for hunting and fishing.
All you have to do is hold your first soldier who is dying in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that I can't do anything about it... Then you understand the horror of war.
As young West Point cadets, our motto was 'duty, honor, country.' But it was in the field, from the rice paddies of Southeast Asia to the sands of the Middle East, that I learned that motto's fullest meaning. There I saw gallant young Americans of every race, creed and background fight, and sometimes die, for 'duty, honor, and their country.'
Generals aren't in the business of commenting on the correctness or incorrectness of the President's decisions. Anybody who thinks he should be able to do that ought to be fired on the spot.
Had the United States and the United Kingdom gone on alone to capture Baghdad, under the provisions of the Geneva and Hague conventions we would have been considered occupying powers and therefore would have been responsible for all the costs of maintaining or restoring government, education and other services for the people of Iraq.
I've managed to convince my wife that somewhere in the Bible it says, 'Man cannot have too many shotguns and fishing poles.'
Fish are a renewable resource, and one of the problems we've had is people feel obliged to catch the limit, then throw 'em in the garbage can.
A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers.
I was lucky enough to lead a very successful war.
You can't help but... with 20/20 hindsight, go back and say, 'Look, had we done something different, we probably wouldn't be facing what we are facing today.'
I can stand in a crystal stream without another human around me and cast all day long, and if I never catch a single fish, I can come home and still feel like I had a wonderful time. It's the being there that's important.
I am living proof that if you catch prostate cancer early, it can be reduced to a temporary inconvenience, and you can go back to a normal life.
I'm not proud of killing, of being responsible for the death of a single person. I never will be.
A great deal of the capability of an army is its dedication to its cause and its will to fight. You can have the best equipment in the world, you can have the largest numbers in the world, but, if you're not dedicated to your cause, if you don't have the will to fight, then, you are not going to have a very good army.
To be an effective leader, you have to have a manipulative streak - you have to figure out the people working for you and give each tasks that will take advantage of his strength.
War's a profanity because, let's face it, you've got two opposing sides trying to settle their differences by killing as many of each other as they can.
I've got to tell you what, the soldier doesn't fight very hard for a leader who is going to shoot him, okay, on his own whim. That's not what military leadership is all about.
Particularly when you're dealing with very high ranking people, you know, you have to get their attention, they are used to, by their rank, of having their own way and doing their own thing and when it's necessary to all work together on something, sometimes you have to hit the mule between the eyes with a two by four to get its attention.
Good generalship is a realization that... you've got to try and figure out how to accomplish your mission with a minimum loss of human life.
When the Normandy Invasion was planned, a very specific strategic objective was given, and that strategic objective was the basis upon which the plan for the Normandy Invasion was derived.
He is neither a strategist nor is he schooled in the operational arts, nor is he a tactician, nor is he a general. Other than that he's a great military man.
I do not want to be a pawn in a political campaign.
Carpet bombing tends to portray something that's totally indiscriminate, you know, en masse without regard to the target.
I am an environmentalist, but I'm not a wacko environmentalist. I believe that mankind and nature can live side-by-side for the mutual benefit of both.
Unfortunately, if you've ever been in southern Georgia on the beaches in a lightning storm, if you're out there, you're in great, great danger, and you can be killed very, very quickly.
There's no doubt in my mind that whichever commander ordered the blowing up of Kamisiyah did so in following the instructions that he had received.
First of all, Saddam did not win the war, even though he says he did, I mean, you know, that's a joke and everybody in the world knows it.
I hate war. Absolutely, I hate war.
I get angry at a principle, not a person.
I'd like to think I'm a caring human being.
The Patriot missile is a point defence missile. Point defence means that you put the missile at a location to defend a very specific target such as an airfield, a supply dump or a headquarters.
For the entire first part of my career, I prided myself on being unflappable even in the most chaotic of circumstances.
This gulf war syndrome thing is truly unfortunate, and I've met some of the vets who have this. These are my guys, and I feel terrible about it.
Had we taken all of Iraq, we would have been like a dinosaur in the tar pit - we would still be there, and we, not the United Nations, would be bearing the costs of that occupation.
Nobody can ever pin you down when you speculate.
What is postwar Iraq going to look like, with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites? That's a huge question, to my mind.
