Retired General Quotes

“Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.”

“There's not going to be a World War III, because there is no one to have World War III with.”

“90 percent of my time is spent on 10 percent of the world.”

“I happen to hold a bachelor of science degree in geology... And my greatest contribution to the field of science is that I never entered it.”

“The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.”

“It's really not a number I'm terribly interested in.”

“The most effective means of ensuring the government's accountability to the people is an aggressive, free, challenging, untrusting press.”

“All children need a laptop. Not a computer, but a human laptop. Moms, Dads, Grannies and Grandpas, Aunts, Uncles - someone to hold them, read to them, teach them. Loved ones who will embrace them and pass on the experience, rituals and knowledge of a hundred previous generations. Loved ones who will pass to the next generation their expectations of them, their hopes, and their dreams.”

“There is no such thing as an unimportant person in an organization.”

“What we would be committed to would be a representative government where all the Iraqi people decide who should lead their nation, and lead it in a way that keeps it together as a single nation and where all parts of the nation - Shia, Sunni and Kurds - are able to live free and in peace and believe that their interests are represented by the government.”

“Great leaders are those who are able to look reality in the face, however painful it may be, and deal with it.”

“In the military, we are also taught to only use one third of the available decision-making time, so that our subordinates have time to go through their own decision processes when they learn what we want them to do.”

“Failure is a part of life and you have to learn to deal with it. Failure is something that is part of life's cycle and it's from failure that you gain life experience.”

“The United States is not looking for a way to launch war.”

“I would not presume from this distance, nor would America presume to say who should be the leader of the Iraqi nation.”

“It is the US government's desire for the Iraqi people to lead themselves, not for any outside power to be the leadership for Iraq in the future. There may be some transition period where the international community would have to help the Iraqi people put in place a representative government. But that is the goal, not for the United States, or any other nation, for that matter, who might be in such a coalition, if one is formed, to serve as the leader of the Iraqi nation.”

“Throughout my career, I learned plenty about war on the battlefield, but I learned even more about the importance of finding peace. And that is what the State Department and U.S.A.I.D. do: prevent the wars that we can avoid so that we fight only the ones we must.”

“Each of us must work to become a hardheaded realist, or else we risk wasting our time and energy on pursuing impossible dreams. Yet constant naysayers pursue no less impossible dreams. Their fear and cynicism move nothing forward. They kill progress. How many cynics built empires, great cities, or powerful corporations?”

“Even though the numbers are down with respect to favorability ratings, at every embassy and consular office tomorrow morning that we have, people will be lined up, and they'll all say the same thing, "We want to go to America." So we're still the leader of the world that wants to be free. We are still the inspiration of the rest of the world. And we can come back.”

“When we are debating an issue, loyalty means giving me your honest opinion, whether you think I'll like it or not. Disagreement, at this state, stimulates me. But once a decision is made, the debate ends. From that point on, loyalty means executing the decision as if it were your own.”

“Nobody is ready to leave Iraq to be interviewed.”

“It is not the role of the United States to dictate change, but to enter into discussions with our friends.”

“Leadership is solving problems.”

“We have to start thinking of America as a family. We have to stop screeching screeching at each other, stop hurting each other, and instead start caring for, sacrificing for and sharing with each other ... We cannot move forward if cynics and critics swoop down and pick apart anything that goes wrong, to a point where we lose sight of what is right, decent and uniquely good about America.”

“We are not shrinking from talking to Saudis or anyone else in the region, but it is up to each nation in the region to decide on its own how it will proceed and at what pace. There are other nations in the region that had similar policies to Saudi Arabia that are starting to make changes, such as Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Morocco. And so it takes time but when you see the need for such changes, then changes tend to follow.”