Rutherford B. Hayes Quotes

You know, my dad was a lieutenant colonel at Ft. Lewis on the 3rd of March, 1941. Fifteen months later, he was commanding a theater of war.

I'm blessed to be in a command position in a Navy this good

I'm a four star general in this thing, and you don't rise to the ranks of a four star general by hanging about the house being the perfect dad.

My goal was to make first lieutenant. I never spent a lot of time worrying about what came after that.

In the summer of 1952, when I was 30, the Army assigned me to an infantry unit fighting in Korea. Meanwhile, though, there was other news in my family: My father had become the Republican presidential nominee. As an ambitious young major, I refused any offers for other assignments.

The only kind of movement you could make in the Navy was to be a platoon leader or one of those kinds of things as you got more senior in your Navy career.

An army to be useful must be a unit, and out of this has grown the saying, attributed to Napoleon, but doubtless spoken before the days of Alexander, that an army with an inefficient commander was better than one with two able heads.

I always said my favorite position was company commander in the Paratroop Brigade.

My father volunteered in early 1941, before Pearl Harbor, and became an officer in the U.S. Navy. As I was growing up, he taught me the responsibility of command: A leader is ultimately responsible for every aspect of the welfare of people under his or her care. That was a deeply felt obligation in his generation.

Leading the coalition military effort during the surge in Iraq in 2007 and 2008 was the most important endeavor - and greatest challenge - of my 37 years in uniform.

Maybe it was because my resignation letter was well written, and this attracted the attention of the factory supervisor. They kept me on and gave me a promotion to head up my own newly created department.

Despite what some people think, I never asked to leave. I'd just been made captain of Leeds which in my eyes is a big, big deal.

Nicknamed 'Mad-Dog Mattis' by his men, he was a command warrior in the old George Patton mode. He wasn't an armchair general by any definition of that much-maligned term. If a Marine re-upped at a location where he was present, he would personally go to that Marine and thank him or her for rejoining.

I graduated boot camp with meritorious promotion.

We have the finest officers in the world, but it seems like once they become generals it is a self-licking ice cream cone of who gets promoted and who gets approved to join that club. No one thinks outside the box.

I've had some 'riotous excursions of the human spirit' alongside the young Sailors and Marines, and it's time to leave the stage to the young leaders who got their rank the old-fashioned way - they earned their stripes in combat.

It is an honor of a lifetime to be appointed secretary of defense and to lead the greatest military in history.

It's something I take very seriously as a commander: the lives of our young men and women.

I started my career in the U.S. military. Traditionally, in the military... you either start with a technical background or a more leadership-focused one. I took the leadership path.

A brave captain is as a root, out of which, as branches, the courage of his soldiers doth spring.

The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them.

He'll sit there are he'll say "Do this! Do that!" and nothing will happen. Poor Ike - it won't be a bit like the army.

To win that war [with radical Islamic extremists] we need a commander-in-chief, not a professor of law standing at the lectern.

The higher you go up in rank, usually the longer you can dance.

I think Bush came back because Colin Powell was there. Hey, I'm the brigadier general, baby.