Keith Kellogg Quotes

As not infrequently happens in the affairs of war, it is easier to point out mistakes after they are committed, than to see and avoid them amid the difficulties and dangers by which the military commander is at the moment surrounded.

I try to look at problems very clearly and think, 'How do we get out of this? What will work? What will be the consequences for the people involved?'

That is what a good manager does - you study and think and discuss, and you come up with a model of playing.

All managers make decisions, and sometimes they are right, and sometimes people say they are wrong.

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.

I'm a problem-solver.

One of the things I learned in the military is sometimes you don't know what mistakes you make for a long time. But as you go through a campaign, there's lots of decision points you make, and you don't know whether those are gonna be the right decision points or not.

General Petraeus is not a miracle worker. He can not be successful unless the president creates greater confidence within his own team about the decisions which the president has himself made.

I want to make smart choices.

Writing tends to be very deliberate. A novelist could probably run a military campaign with some success. They could certainly run a country.

I like to study the question or the problem or the opportunity in hand, work with the team to come with the right answer, make a decision, and act upon it. Some people have said that, actually, today they pretty much like their bankers dull.

Making good decisions is a crucial skill at every level.

I usually have pretty good intuition on projects that I work on.

I really try at least to come back and answer the question as to whether that was really the best way to do that and was I really thinking straight and how did my opponents behave and how did the judges behave was needed.

A good general always makes you search for his weaknesses.

The whole art of war consists of guessing at what is on the other side of the hill.

I know how to make decisions, and I know how to lead.

Successful organizations, including the Military, have learned that the higher the risk, the more necessary it is to engage everyone's commitment and intelligence.

People (political and military leaders) much prefer to speak of what they are going to do rather than what the outcome will be.

Military decisions are much more difficult and more often wrong than civilian decisions.

The President has full responsibility, which cannot be shared, for military decisions in a world in which the difference between safety and cataclysm can be a matter of hours or even minutes.

Our managers need to have a strong integration of managerial skills and technical understanding. One cannot substitute for the other.

What I'm saying is it is our responsibility to exercise due diligence, to ask the tough questions, to get the evidence before we make those very costly decisions about how and when and where our military is used.

A businessman can be as military as any politician.

People laugh at my analogy in most cases - I go, 'Yeah, everything looks awesome on paper until you stick six guys in a submarine and go, 'Okay, go out and conquer America.''