Oliver North Quotes
-
I never considered myself a fall guy. I know what I did. I know why I did it. I'm not ashamed of it.
-
I was authorized to do everything that I did.
-
Writers are storytellers. So are readers.
-
As a Marine officer in combat, I was responsible for the lives and safety of all the Marines who served with me.
-
I came here to tell you the truth, the good, the bad and the ugly.
-
In uniform, I had to make judgments about the best course of action in combat when the only choices were 'bad' or 'worse.' As a member of the media, I only had to decide how to get the best 'shot' - preferably without getting shot.
-
A Commander-in-Chief needs to do two things. One - tell us who the enemy is. And two - say we are fighting to win.
-
My mom told me a long time ago, 'Never get in a fight with a lady.'
-
When you're told to go brief a United States senator on a covert operation, you go do it. And you trust the information isn't going to leak.
-
God knows, we don't want prayer.
-
We've been in the nation-building business since World War I, and especially since WWII. The goal is not a Jeffersonian Democracy in Afghanistan, but a representative government that respects human rights, protects its own people, and is a friend of the West. These are very realistic - and necessary - goals.
-
The lesson of Pearl Harbor ought never to be forgotten, and of course the motto that came from that, 69 years ago, the war which my dad fought, was 'Remember Pearl Harbor, never again.' We need to keep that to mind.
-
The National Security Council's real role is to coordinate the various activities of the government of the United States in the furtherance of American foreign policy.
-
The American people need to tell their member of Congress that we need a strong defense to protect us and to prevent wars. We can't get away with simply leading from behind and gutting our defenses.
-
There's the assumption being made by the national security advisers to the Obama administration that the North Korean leadership is not suicidal, that they know they will be obliterated if they attacked the United States. But I would point that everything in South Korea and Japan is well within range of what they might want to do.
-
We've got a very difficult situation created by this embrace of the so-called Arab Spring. And that's not getting better. It's getting worse. The carnage for the people of Syria is horrific, and it's quite frankly too little, too late to reverse a lot of that.
-
I'm still in touch with a lot people who continue to serve our country well.
-
The United Nations passed so-called sanctions again on North Korea, and they've said they 'will exercise their preemptive right to a nuclear attack.' I don't think this ought to be taken kindly.
-
I can remember as a young lieutenant being sent into the DMZ in the divided Vietnam, from North Vietnam.
-
I want to make it clear that I honestly answered every question put to me during the so-called Iran-Contra hearings. But if they didn't ask me about something, I wasn't about to reveal things that would put other people in jeopardy.
-
The terrorists that we are up against today do not rely upon cell phones and SAT phones and emails. They rely on couriers. You cannot intercept what a courier is telling somebody.
-
One of the great upsides to a national book tour is the chance to break out of television's cocoon and interact directly with the American people.
-
I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version.
-
My wife said to me... you never understood what we were going through back home, did you? And I didn't. And I have to confess that.