Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I'm living the dream.
America is not in decline.
Life is a competitive endeavor.
Iraq does have many, many different tensions.
Being in combat is not unending high-five moments.
The Afghan people do not take kindly to conquerors.
Every civilian's death diminishes us, collectively.
The job of the leader is to get the big ideas right.
There is no military solution to the challenges of Syria.
A certain degree of intellectual humility is a good thing.
I will not ever run for political office. I can assure you.
ISIS is on its way to defeat but terrorism threat persists.
Counter-insurgency, as you know, is a roller-coaster affair.
Rumors of the American demise... have been greatly exaggerated.
I don't comment directly on actions or statements of candidates.
I will not ever run for political office, I can assure you of that.
Political progress will only take place if sufficient security exists.
There aren't always a hell of a lot of absolutely right answers out there.
In counterinsurgency operations, the human terrain is the decisive terrain.
We cannot kill or capture our way out of an industrial-strength insurgency.
The process to resolve post-Islamic State issues will be difficult and intense.
There were very few people who were both intercollegiate athletes and Star Men.
Don't forget Yemen, where there are also extremist elements, as we saw recently.
I refuse to use terms like 'optimist' or 'pessimist' and instead prefer 'realist.'
The idea is to go to bed every night with fewer enemies than you had in the morning.
I am not a politician, and I will never be, and I say that with absolute conviction.
The formulation of sound national policy requires finding the right overarching concepts.
Only Nixon could have gone to China. Anyone else would have been criticised from the Right.
Fighting in cities is a totally different endeavor than obviously fighting out in the open.
I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.
I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.'
We need to learn from our experiences and take responsibilities for our actions and drive on.
The Islamic State fighters in Mosul are dead men walking and I think they increasingly know it.
We cleared many of their towns and cities and rural areas of al-Qaida Iraq and other insurgents.
The bottom line is, you really have to commit to something if you're going to be successful in it.
Iraq has gone from being on the brink to being on the mend, and it clearly has some big advantages.
I think it's reality that Iran is going to have influence in Iraq. All elements of Iraq accepted that.
The fact is that Iran doesn't want to see the Taliban come back any more than do most Afghan citizens.
This cannot be the United States being the air force for Shia militias, or a Shia on Sunni Arab fight.
You have to keep on disrupting. If you let up the pressure, then al-Qaeda senior leadership will come back.
We will win again in Iraq; I do think that Iraq can definitely be handled. I think that it can be kept intact.
After being married for over 37 years, I showed extremely poor judgment by engaging in an extramarital affair.
I really started to get a sense of how, if you will, special Zarqawi was, I guess, sort of midway through 2004.
When Western politicians propose blanket discrimination against Islam, they bolster the terrorists' propaganda.
Ungoverned spaces in the Islamic world will be exploited by people who wish us ill. They will not be contained.
No greater privilege than I had as a soldier and then as a spymaster and to some degree now in the business world.
Ethno-sectarian violence is a particular concern in Iraq, as it is a cancer that continues to spread if left unchecked.
Folks really need to be very cautious about overanalyzing or overparsing what I've said to this reporter or that reporter.
At a certain point, you have to take the rearview mirrors off the bus and focus forward, and that's what we've sought to do.
I am not going to second-guess my old battlefield comrades from Iraq and Afghanistan; each has his own reason for what he has done.