“I don’t consider myself dovish and I certainly don’t consider myself hawkish. Maybe I would describe myself as owlishthat is wise enough to understand that you want to do everything possible to avoid war.”

I do hunt, and I do fish, and I don’t apologize to anybody for hunting and fishing.

I was lucky enough to lead a very successful war.

It’s the sense of duty that keeps you going sometimes when things get very, very rough. Somebody’s got to do it. And if you don’t, who will?

How do you fight someone who doesn’t care if they get killed? You accommodate them.

You can’t help someone get up a hill without getting closer to the top yourself.

Ninety-nine percent of leadership failures are failures of character.

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.

From the time I was twelve years old until I retired last year at the age of fifty-seven, the Army was my life. I loved commanding soldiers and being around people who had made a serious commitment to serve their country.

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.

True courage is being afraid, and going ahead and doing your job anyhow, that’s what courage is.

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.

Going to war without France is like going hunting without an accordion.

I get angry at a principle, not a person.

An awful lot has been written about my temper.

I admire men of character and I judge character not by how men deal with their superiors, but mostly how they deal with their subordinates. And that, to me, is where you find out what the character of a man is.

Judge your enemy based upon capabilities, not intent, you have to look at the enemy and really almost make a worst case call every time.

You can create whatever you want. You just have to know what you want and take the opportunities as they come your way. We are who we choose to be.

I wanted to show the fans that we were inside the mind of a lyrical maniacal genius

I’m shy, paranoid, whatever word you want to use. I hate fame. I’ve done everything I can to avoid it.

It is awful to want to go away and to want to go nowhere.

I want friends, not admirers. People who respect me for my character and my deeds, not my flattering smile.

I want to give people a taste of the Caribbean, and show them the fun side of me.

On the whole human beings want to be good, but not too good, and not quite all the time.

I don’t want to be Kobe, I want to be LeBron.