John Bolton Quotes

Thoughtless risks are destructive, of course, but perhaps even more wasteful is thoughtless caution which prompts inaction and promotes failure to seize opportunity.

In business, staying focused requires that you turn most opportunities down.

You are fit for something better than ... cannon fodder.

[Cost-benefit analysis is used:] ... to produce lofty academic-sounding reasons for endless inaction.

While young men stand ready to pay with their lives for the honor and interest of the American people, the son of wealthy Mr. [Henry] Ford sits at home in ignoble safety.

Weighing benefits against costs is the way most people make decisions - and the way most businesses make decisions, if they want to stay in business. Only in government is any benefit, however small, considered to be worth any cost, however large.

I'm preprogrammed emotionally and intellectually not to go down blind alleys. I don't waste the time. I automatically edit out whatever's impractical.

You have to be damn certain you're putting something better in its place.

As all entrepreneurs know, you live and die by your ability to prioritize. You must focus on the most important, mission-critical tasks each day and night, and then share, delegate, delay or skip the rest.

You have to make a decision whether it's a new product or you integrate it with an existing product. It takes time to work these things out.

People must be realistic when evaluating their business.

The effort invested in 'getting it right' should be commensurate with the importance of the decision.

True economy means the wisest expenditure of what we have, everything considered, looking at it from the broadest standpoint. It is not a good thing to save a nickel at the expenditure of twenty-five cents' worth of time.

Part of executive functions is the ability to look to a goal deadline and assess where an organization is in meeting it.

Johnson showed me how important it was to use every hour of every day to shape national policy while we had the power to do so.

Each man ... shall serve for a training and service period of 12 consecutive months unless sooner discharged, except that whenever the Congress has declared that the national interest is imperiled, such 12-month period may be extended by the President to such time as may be necessary in the interests of national defense.

Men do not take good iron to make nails or good men to make soldiers.

I succeeded in staying out of the military during the Vietnam War, and I would never assume the right to tell others to do a “duty” that I shirked.

Whosoever would not take up arms in the defense of their country, but would fight against it, were put to death.

You ought to be made to fight. We need regiments of such men as you.

Nobody wants to go to war, but the burden of service cannot fall only on volunteers who, are attracted to the military for financial reasons.

… you go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

In circumstances believe CIA must fully accept directives of policy makers and seek ways to accomplish the objectives that they seek appears to be throwing away bird in hand before we have adequately identified birds in bush, or songs they may sing.

... deployed on the sands of Saudi Arabia and facing possible extinction, are young men and women drawn, in the main, from the poorer families of our republic.

I'm not going to risk our precious military resources on an ineffective, unproductive mission.