James Mattis Quotes
- All Quotes
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I don't write policy for my government.
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Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.
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It's not an easy course. It's not designed to be. We're not here to get you in touch with your inner child.
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I like the enemy knowing there are a few guys like me around.
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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.
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To Marines, love of liberty is not an empty phrase... Rather, it's displayed by blood, sweat, and tears for the fallen.
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If you can't eat it, shoot it, or wear it, don't bring it.
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Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.
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You must reward the kind of behavior that you want.
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Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.
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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.
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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.
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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!
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I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.
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For whatever trauma came with service in tough circumstances, we should take what we learned - take our post-traumatic growth - and, like past generations coming home, bring our sharpened strengths to bear, bring our attitude of gratitude to bear.
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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.
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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.
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For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.
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There is no God-given right to victory on the battlefield. You win that through the skill and the devotion, the valor and the ferocity of your troops.
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In this age, I don't care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are: if you cannot create harmony - even vicious harmony - on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.
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I don't think the U.S. military is conservative. It's pragmatic.
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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.
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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.
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Treachery has existed as long as there's been warfare, and there's always been a few people that you couldn't trust.