Jason Kander Quotes

In the army, we do two things every day. We train our soldiers, and then we grow them into leaders, because frankly, we don't hire out. We grow our own leaders.

The military does very well taking average people and making them very good leaders.

I joined the Marines, passed Special Forces selection, and became a young leader in the military.

After I graduated from school, I enrolled in the military college, a cadet school. This is the first stage of military training; it instills discipline and various qualities required for military life.

I spent four years in the United States Army between 1985 and 1989, and I certainly learned how to survive out in the woods.

The function of combat is not merely to perpetrate violence, but to perpetrate violence on command, instantaneously and reflexively. The function of the service academies is to prepare men for leadership positions where they may someday exercise that command.

The People there are very Skilful in the use of Fire-Arms, being all their Lives accustom’d to shoot in the Woods. This, together with a little exercising would soon make the Militia little inferior to Regular Troops.

No American officer was a proven commander when we entered the First Word War I…. No one had ever commanded a large body of troops. General Pershing, who was selected, had only commanded a brigade in the Mexican war.

I was raised in the paratroopers.

When I was in the Army, 100 percent of our effort was to really be sharp, and soldiers, we were under live fire all the time.

To expect ... the same service from raw and undisciplined recruits, as from veteran soldiers, is to expect what never did and perhaps never will happen. Men, who are familiarized to danger, meet it without shrinking; whereas troops unused to service often apprehend danger where no danger is.

These kids today, they want to be men, they want to be foxhole guys, but they’re not being allowed to do that. Imagine if these computer geeks who are running baseball now were allowed to run a war? They’d be telling our soldiers: ‘That’s enough. You’ve fired too many bullets from your rifle this week!’

We had times in '66 and '67 when we would pick up a platoon of privates out of the receiving barracks the week before we even graduated the platoon that we were on!

Back in the old Corp, we weren't training those privates to infiltrate into the peacetime Marine Corp. We were training those privates to go to Vietnam.

A handful of men, inured to war, proceed to certain victory, while on the contrary, numerous armies of raw and undisciplined troops are but multitudes of men dragged to the slaughter.

I am a general. My soldiers are the keys and I have to command them.

I spent one semester in Air Force ROTC, as I wanted to be a pilot.

Before they deploy, they train for the specific operations, but there is a danger that the Army is not retaining the core of its full capabilities.

It takes 15,000 casualties to train a major general.

The Marine Corps is supposed to be the toughest and most rigorous of its class.

The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses.

He is a butcher, and is not fit to be at the head of an army.

We have good soldiers but crummy generals.

They are pretty good officers now, and after a while they will make excellent soldiers too. They only need reducing to the ranks.

Our magnificent cadre of military officers have the kind of performance at military procurement as our magnificent cadre of business executives would have if they did the fighting—terrible!