“A very great man once said you should love your enemies and that’s not a bad piece of advice. We can love them but, by God, that doesn’t mean we’re not going to fight them.”

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.

I’d like to think I’m a caring human being.

With a chemical alarm, you’re going to build one that is oversensitive because you would rather the alarm go off and give you a false alarm than to err on the other side

I wouldn’t give myself any advice, because advice is kinda bullshit. Take a deep breath and don’t take any of it too seriously.

Never have more children than you have car windows.

As my Sicilian grandfather used to say, you get more flies with honey than with vinegar, right?

Don’t follow any advice, no matter how good, until you feel as deeply in your spirit as you think in your mind that the counsel is wise.

Don’t make decisions too far in advance, particularly ones you’re not even conscious you’re making.

As with narrow-necked bottles; the less they have in them, the more noise they make in pouring out.

As the twig is bent, so grows the tree.

When looking for a life partner, my advice to women is date all of them: the bad boys, the cool boys, the commitment-phobic boys, the crazy boys. But do not marry them. The things that make the bad boys sexy do not make them good husbands.