I've always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I do better with that than I do with torture.

PowerPoint makes us stupid.

I've had some 'riotous excursions of the human spirit' alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it's time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way - they earned their stripes in combat.

You must reward the kind of behavior that you want.

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.

I don't have the best track record with quotes.

Wherever the enemy wants to fight, we will follow him to the ends of the Earth. We'll adapt, we'll train, we'll advise, we'll mentor, and we'll fight, and we'll fight well.

There is one way to have a short but exciting conversation with me, and that is to move too slow.

Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.

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.

I'm on record that it didn't really traumatize me to do away with some people.

The Marines have landed, and we now own a piece of Afghanistan.

There is only one 'retirement plan' for terrorists.

You stay teachable most by reading books. By reading what other people went through.

We all recognize that the Mid-east is dissolving into crises, and we know terrorism did not start with 9-11.

I would storm the gates of Hell if Third Marine Air Wing was overhead.

Gains achieved at great cost against our enemy in Afghanistan are reversible.

The U.S. military is not war weary. Our military draws strength from confronting our enemies when clear policy objectives are set and we are fully resourced for the fight.

For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.

Putin goes to bed at night knowing he can break all the rules, and the West will follow all the rules.

Don't create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.

Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed... It doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn't give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.

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.

The Corps is in good hands, and it's been a privilege to serve with the Leathernecks. Now it's time to go.

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.

There's an urgent need to stop reacting to each immediate vexing issue in isolation. Such response often creates unanticipated second-order effects and even more problems for us.

What we achieved was a nuclear pause, not a nuclear halt.

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?

The economy's always been the engine for our national security.

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.

It's a lot easier to stay idealistic if you don't sign two to five next-of-kin letters every day.

Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn't happen. If that's the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn't wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain't got no manhood left anyway.

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.

There's no way that that our military power will not erode if a robust American economic revival is not part of the cards.

There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.

Since coming back from overseas, this is more of a foreign country than the places overseas. I don't understand it. It's like America has lost faith in rational thought.

I was a Marine for 41 years, and it wasn't long enough. We enjoy putting on that uniform.

There are many people who do not know if the U.S. Army has 60,000 men or 6 million. They do not have a clue about that.

Fight with a happy heart.

It's very hard to live with yourself if you don't stick with your moral code.

I would just say there is one misperception of our veterans, and that is they are somehow damaged goods. I don't buy it.

Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy's will are not allowed that luxury.

I have never been bewildered for long in any fight with our enemies - I was Armed with Insight.

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!

Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq's Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq's Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.