James Mattis Quotes
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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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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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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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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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Marines don't know how to spell the word 'defeat'.
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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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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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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.
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For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.
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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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I don't write policy for my government.
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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.
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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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I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.
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No war is over until the enemy says it's over.
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There's no way that that our military power will not erode if a robust American economic revival is not part of the cards.
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I consider ISIS nothing more than an excuse for Iran to continue its mischief.
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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.
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Iran is not a nation-state; it's a revolutionary cause devoted to mayhem.
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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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I don't think the U.S. military is conservative. It's pragmatic.
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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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There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It's really great.
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Be the hunter, not the hunted.