Terry Goodkind Quotes

He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight.

I will be as careful as I can in making the most significant decisions any president and commander-in-chief can make about sending our men and women into harm's way.

No ruler should put troops into the field merely to gratify his own spleen; no general should fight a battle simply out of pique.

Obama's decision to leave, to not sustain the victory that resulted after eight years of fighting, from 2003 to 2011 in Iraq, was another incredibly stupid decision. It was totally based on politics, not based on any notion of national security. It's a nightmare for our national security. And then you have the Libya intervention.

I was never able to convince myself that there was a cost-free alternative course, as from 1961, or that any of the different strategies since proposed, especially those involving stronger military action, would have made sense.

War room

A steady hand in military affairs is more requisite than in peace, because an error committed in war may prove irremediable.

President Bush admitted that the United States went to war in Iraq based on bad intelligence. But he says knowing what we know now he would still do it again. So at least we're learning from our mistakes.

A people [America] that does not prepare to fight should then be morally prepared to surrender. To fail to prepare soldiers and citizens for limited, bloody ground action, and then to engage in it, is folly verging on the criminal.

My skill didn't lie in planning battles, only in fighting them.

Fighting is about knowledge, knowledge is a very important part of it.

It has been said that one bad general is better than two good ones, and the saying is true if taken to mean no more than that an army is better directed by a single mind, though inferior, than by two superior ones at variance and cross-purposes with each other.

It was interesting watching the Afghanistan war review deliberations, this three-month process where Barack Obama did the most thorough foreign policy review ever by a modern American president. Compare that to Libya. For a month he said we weren't going to do anything, then suddenly changed his mind and did it on the fly. My view is that it's not how long or quick you take to make a decision, it's whether you make the right one.

A good general not only sees the way to victory; he also knows when victory is impossible.

For every man who has learned to fight in arms will desire to learn the proper arrangement of an army, which is the sequel of the lesson.

I believe that one can't command sitting on one's ass in the rear. One has to up among the forward brigade commanders, even as far as battalion commanders, especially if one is fighting a defensive action. One simply has to know what is going on.

I use game theory to help myself understand conflict situations and opportunities.

A war was coming either way. Now all I had to do was choose my opponent

There is always hazard in military activity, but we must decide between the positive loss of inactivity and the risk of action.

If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.... I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.

In life and business, there are two cardinal sins, the first is to act precipitously without thought, and the second is to not act at all. Unfortunately the board of directors and top management of Times Warner already committed the first sin by merging with AOL, and we believe they are currently in the process of committing the second; now is not a time to move slowly and suffer the paralysis of inaction.

Going to war is an easy decision.

General, unless he offers us honorable terms, come back and let us fight it out!

In great affairs we ought to apply ourselves less to creating chances than to profiting from those that offer.

Unlike Hillary Clinton, who voted for the war without knowing what she was doing, I would not have had our people in Iraq. Iraq was disaster.