Now from a distance, I look back on what the Corps taught me: to think like men of action, and to act like men of thought!
We should not fight wars without a clearly defined end state... when you go to war, it can't be a half-step.
I have never been bewildered for long in any fight with our enemies - I was Armed with Insight.
By reading, you learn through others' experiences, generally, a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.
No one gives a damn what Iran thinks on any significant issue. The only reason Iran is at the big boys' table is because of their nuclear weapons program.
Treachery has existed as long as there's been warfare, and there's always been a few people that you couldn't trust.
It's very hard to live with yourself if you don't stick with your moral code.
If you can't eat it, shoot it, or wear it, don't bring it.
Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.
The Army was always big on Clausewitz, the Prussian; the Navy on Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American; and the Air Force on Giulio Douhet, the Italian. But the Marine Corps has always been more Eastern-oriented. I am much more comfortable with Sun-tzu and his approach to warfare.
Don't create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.
Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates or reassuring the enemy that we will not use certain capabilities like our ground forces should be avoided.
For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.
What we achieved was a nuclear pause, not a nuclear halt.
The military can buy our diplomats some time.
As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries for our units: how can we coach anything if we don't know a hell of a lot more than just the TTPs?
I can't tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I'd done so much reading.
The Marines have landed, and we now own a piece of Afghanistan.
In a country with millions of people and cars going everywhere, the enemy is going to get a car bomb out there once in awhile.
There are a lot of self-imposed restrictions by people who somehow believe they have to fall in with a certain military cant. There was always a sense that we had to put things into words that would touch our troops' hearts, not just their heads.
