Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Ask yourself, how can I learn from the people around me. Often, your mentors are already in your life; you just haven't yet found a way to learn from them.
When vets come home from war they are going through a tremendous change in identity. Then the VA, and others, encourage them to view themselves as disabled.
Life is short. Life is uncertain. But we know that we have today. And we have each other. I believe that for each of us, there is a place on the frontlines.
Alone, human beings can feel hunger. Alone, we can feel cold. Alone, we can feel pain. To feel poor, however, is something we do only in comparison to others.
I came to see that it wasn't enough just to care about people. You also had to build systems in which you could ensure that there are results and accountability.
Defeating a terrorist organization is like fighting a forest fire; there's never a clear moment of victory, and even after you've won, you have to watch carefully.
Remember that deciding is not doing, and wanting is not choosing. Transformation will take place not because of what you decide you want, but because of what you choose to do.
If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them.
The people who believe in voter intimidation believe that the minute you make a political donation, that you immediately need to turn all your information over to the government.
We have a culture of political corruption in Jefferson City. We have corrupt politicians, well-paid lobbyists and special-interest insiders taking the state in the wrong direction.
I don't think that we need to raise tuition on our students. I don't think that our students should be made to pay for the mistakes of our past politicians and the promises they made.
I first started doing service, actually, as a kid, doing service projects. Later in college, I started doing international humanitarian work that brought me to places like Bosnia, Rwanda.
It's only in the act of pushing yourself, challenging yourself to make a contribution to your community, to your family, to your country, that you actually realize your full self, you know?
It certainly could be that there are prejudices around. I can only speak to what I have lived, and I have experienced that people have been incredibly welcoming to me as a Jewish Republican.
I've never been in politics before, but even in the brief time that I've been running for governor, I've been exposed to some of the worst people I've ever known. Liars, cowards, sociopaths.
One of the great things about the SEAL teams in particular, and the American military in general, is the tremendous diversity of backgrounds and experience that people bring to their service.
Federal overreach from agencies like the EPA is hurting family farms. I will fight against these crippling regulations, and always side with the hard working farmers and ranchers of Missouri.
We are not going to use money from the people of the state of Missouri for what I believe is corporate welfare. We've got far too many core priorities of government that have to be invested in.
Before I became a SEAL, I'd done humanitarian work around the world - with refugee families in Bosnia, with unaccompanied children in Rwanda, with kids who lost limbs to land mines in Cambodia.
Our firefighters, they show up every day to fight fires. If, God forbid, there's a situation where they have to fight cancer, they shouldn't have to fight bureaucrats to get the care they deserve.
In failure, children learn how to struggle with adversity and how to confront fear. By reflecting on failure, children begin to see how to correct themselves and then try again with better results.
Anyone who is willing to take a bullet for this country, anyone who is willing to serve in uniform, should at the end of their military service be given an opportunity to become an American citizen.
My parents were both Democrats and I grew up as a Democrat. Basically I was told that the Democrats were the party that cared about people. I liked people and I cared about them, so I was a Democrat.
We need to make sure we're making a distinction between violent felons who are in this country illegally and children who were brought here through no fault of their own, who have grown up here in America.
People know if you care about them. How do you show people that you care? By caring for them. By putting their needs first. By sacrificing for them. By serving them. Do that, and you'll build a great team.
When we make these decisions that we're going to commit ourselves to making a difference in the life of one person every single day, what happens is we actually build a whole generation of citizen leaders.
What matters is what you do. And this runs counter to what a lot of the culture teaches people about putting feelings first. By contrast, resilient people focus not on what they intend, but on what they achieve.
The U.S. military may well be the best-integrated large institution on the planet. You have people from every corner of the country, every ethnic background, every walk of life, and we all come together to serve.
Whenever we love or care for anything in our lives we're willing to respond with care and with compassion, but if something that we love or someone we love is threatened, we're also willing to respond with courage.
I was worried that all the corners of the earth had been explored, all the great battles fought. The famous people on TV were athletes and actresses and singers. What did they stand for? I wondered: Had the time for heroes passed?
Since Bin Laden's death, many Americans have decided that our job in Afghanistan is done. They see a victory in the counterterrorism campaign, and are tired of the corruption, confusion and dysfunction of the nation-building campaign.
So Hell Week is considered to be the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world. It is a week of continuous military training during which most classes sleep for a total of two to five hours over the course of the entire week.
I don't think many people want to say to themselves that they've quit. At the same time, we've all failed in our lives, we've all failed at different things in different ways and I think there's a lot to be said about facing that failure squarely.
It's oftentimes the case that relief workers, people who've been involved in development projects and foreign assistance, have a real understanding of foreign cultures that the military desperately needs if we're going to be able to work effectively.
The best definition I have ever heard of a vocation is that it's the place where your great joy meets the world's great need. We need all of you to find your vocation. To develop your joys, your passions, and to match them to the world's great needs.
It's really important to have role models, and a lot of the ancients always talked about this. Seneca talked about this, Aristotle talked about this, and in fact, this was my boxing coach's philosophy in college, was that you have to have role models.
Trial lawyers can sue people in the state of Missouri, and because of how broken the system is, if they win just one dollar for their client, they still get paid huge legal fees. For too long in this state, trial lawyers have picked our people's pockets.
In Missouri, we built the steamships that plied the Mississippi. It was people of Missouri who believed that a human being could fly across the Atlantic Ocean alone. And it was Missourians who built the capsule in which an American first orbited the earth.
What happens for a lot of veterans when they come home, especially when they get back to their community is that they can go to a very tough and hard place and they start to wonder, 'What's next for me?' and they ask themselves, 'Why did this happen to me?'
I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.
I think there are a couple of key lessons that come from Judaism that shaped my life. One of them is the idea we have a duty to repair the world, and all of us should play a role in our lives in trying to repair the world and to make the world better for the next generation.
I'd finished a dissertation, writing about how international humanitarian organizations worked with kids in war zones and then I made this transition from the academic world to officer candidate school and to the SEAL teams. It was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.
It's very important for us as a group of Navy SEALs, to make sure that the message that we send to the country is that we're ready to serve any commander in chief, the elected head of the armed forces, that the people of the United States elect. That is our mission, that's our duty, as Navy SEALs.
We've already seen other candidates set up these secretive super PACs where they don't take any responsibility for what they're funding... because that's how the game has always been played. I've been very proud to tell people, 'I'm stepping forward, and you can see every single one of our donors.'
I was at this dinner for Rhodes Scholars. And we were in the Rhodes mansion, which is this fancy mansion on the Oxford campus. And I remember I looked up in the rotunda, and I saw that etched into the marble were the names of Rhodes Scholars who had left Oxford, and had fought and died in World War II.
I've learned that courage and compassion are two sides of the same coin, and that every warrior, every humanitarian, every citizen is built to live with both. In fact, to win a war, to create peace, to save a life, or just to live a good life requires of us - of every one of us - that we be both good and strong.
As the Obama administration negotiates with the Karzai government and with Pakistan, we may be tempted to make commitments that, in the name of nation-building, restrict our ability to fight terrorists. If we must involve the Afghan government in every night raid, our operations will slow and targets will escape.
After four tours of duty as a Navy SEAL officer, I came home from Iraq and watched the VA - the second-biggest bureaucracy in the country - fail my friends. The VA was broken and my friends were suffering. And yet, time and again, the only 'solution' I heard from liberals was to spend more money. It made me angry.
People understand the tremendous sacrifices that veterans have made - and they instinctively want to do something for them. And that sometimes leads people to give veterans an excuse: Oh, you didn't show up for work on time. It must be that you have posttraumatic stress disorder. Oh, you're disabled. Don't even try.
Of course fear does not automatically lead to courage. Injury does not necessarily lead to insight. Hardship will not automatically make us better. Pain can break us or make us wiser. Suffering can destroy us or make us stronger. Fear can cripple us, or it can make us more courageous. It is resilience that makes the difference.