“You stay teachable most by reading books. By reading what other people went through.”
― Jim Mattis
“We know that in tough times, cynicism is just another way to give up, and in the military, we consider cynicism or giving up simply as forms of cowardice.”
― Jim Mattis
“Be the hunter, not the hunted.”
― Jim Mattis
“There are hunters, and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience, and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.”
― Jim Mattis
“The Army was always big on Clausewitz, the Prussian; the Navy on Alfred Thayer Mahan, the American; and the Air Force on Giulio Douhet, the Italian. But the Marine Corps has always been more Eastern-oriented. I am much more comfortable with Sun-tzu and his approach to warfare.”
― Jim Mattis
“I’ve always found, give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I do better with that than I do with torture.”
― Jim Mattis
“PowerPoint makes us stupid.”
― Jim Mattis
“You must reward the kind of behavior that you want.”
― Jim Mattis
“In this age, I don’t care how tactically or operationally brilliant you are: if you cannot create harmony – even vicious harmony – on the battlefield based on trust across service lines, across coalition and national lines, and across civilian/military lines, you need to go home, because your leadership is obsolete.”
― Jim Mattis
“If you read enough biography and history, you learn how people have dealt successfully or unsuccessfully with similar situations or patterns in the past. It doesn’t give you a template of answers, but it does help you refine the questions you have to ask yourself.”
― Jim Mattis
“For a sitting U.S. president to see our allies as freeloaders is nuts.”
― Jim Mattis
“I’ve lived a very colorful life, and I’ve said some things, But not once have I taken them back, and I’ve never apologized for them – and I won’t.”
― Jim Mattis
“There is no God-given right to victory on the battlefield. You win that through the skill and the devotion, the valor and the ferocity of your troops.”
― Jim Mattis
“Read about history, and you become aware that nothing starts with us.”
― Jim Mattis
“Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.”
― Jim Mattis
“There are a lot of self-imposed restrictions by people who somehow believe they have to fall in with a certain military cant. There was always a sense that we had to put things into words that would touch our troops’ hearts, not just their heads.”
― Jim Mattis
“I don’t lose any sleep at night over the potential for failure. I cannot even spell the word.”
― Jim Mattis
“There’s no way that that our military power will not erode if a robust American economic revival is not part of the cards.”
― Jim Mattis
“Since coming back from overseas, this is more of a foreign country than the places overseas. I don’t understand it. It’s like America has lost faith in rational thought.”
― Jim Mattis
“Putin goes to bed at night knowing he can break all the rules, and the West will follow all the rules.”
― Jim Mattis
“Most people know nobody in the military.”
― Jim Mattis
“By reading, you learn through others’ experiences, generally, a better way to do business, especially in our line of work where the consequences of incompetence are so final for young men.”
― Jim Mattis
“To Marines, love of liberty is not an empty phrase… Rather, it’s displayed by blood, sweat, and tears for the fallen.”
― Jim Mattis
“Marines don’t know how to spell the word ‘defeat’.”
― Jim Mattis
“So long as our Corps fields such Marines, America has nothing to fear from tyrants, be they Fascists, Communists or Tyrants with Medieval Ideology. For we serve in a Corps with no institutional confusion about our purpose: To fight! To fight well!”
― Jim Mattis
“There’s an urgent need to stop reacting to each immediate vexing issue in isolation. Such response often creates unanticipated second-order effects and even more problems for us.”
― Jim Mattis
“Iran is not a nation-state; it’s a revolutionary cause devoted to mayhem.”
― Jim Mattis
“For whatever trauma came with service in tough circumstances, we should take what we learned – take our post-traumatic growth – and, like past generations coming home, bring our sharpened strengths to bear, bring our attitude of gratitude to bear.”
― Jim Mattis
“Wherever the enemy wants to fight, we will follow him to the ends of the Earth. We’ll adapt, we’ll train, we’ll advise, we’ll mentor, and we’ll fight, and we’ll fight well.”
― Jim Mattis
“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.”
― Jim Mattis
“I don’t worry about stress. I create it.”
― Jim Mattis
“It’s not an easy course. It’s not designed to be. We’re not here to get you in touch with your inner child.”
― Jim Mattis
“I don’t think the U.S. military is conservative. It’s pragmatic.”
― Jim Mattis
“Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed… It doesn’t give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.”
― Jim Mattis
“The economy’s always been the engine for our national security.”
― Jim Mattis
“The most important 6 inches on the battlefield is between your ears.”
― Jim Mattis
“For the mission’s sake, for our country’s sake, and the sake of the men who carried the Division’s colors in past battles – carry out your mission and keep your honor clean.”
― Jim Mattis
“I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn’t waste their lives because I didn’t have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.”
― Jim Mattis
“Some people feel affronted when something they thought to be true doesn’t happen. If that’s the case, then your sense of risk is much higher, and that leads to risk aversion. You need to be able to be comfortable in uncertainty.”
― Jim Mattis
“Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.”
― Jim Mattis
“There is no room for military people, including our veterans, to see themselves as victims, even if so many of our countrymen are prone to relish that role.”
― Jim Mattis
“Treachery has existed as long as there’s been warfare, and there’s always been a few people that you couldn’t trust.”
― Jim Mattis
“Now from a distance, I look back on what the Corps taught me: to think like men of action, and to act like men of thought!”
― Jim Mattis
“It’s very hard to live with yourself if you don’t stick with your moral code.”
― Jim Mattis
“Basically, Islamic State is a combined al Qaeda and Lebanese Hezbollah on steroids, destabilizing the region, dissolving borders/changing the political geography in the Mid-east, and hardening political positions that make Mid-east peace-building more remote by the day.”
― Jim Mattis
“Don’t create more enemies than you take out by some immoral act.”
― Jim Mattis
“There are many people who do not know if the U.S. Army has 60,000 men or 6 million. They do not have a clue about that.”
― Jim Mattis
“Iran is not an enemy of ISIS; they have a lot to gain from the turmoil that ISIS creates.”
― Jim Mattis
“We all recognize that the Mid-east is dissolving into crises, and we know terrorism did not start with 9-11.”
― Jim Mattis
“It’s a lot of fun to fight.”
― Jim Mattis
“In an interconnected age when opportunistic adversaries can work in tandem to destroy stability and prosperity, our country needs to regain its strategic footing. We need to bring the clarity to our efforts before we lose the confidence of the American people and the support of potential allies.”
― Jim Mattis
“There are going to be good days and bad days. Bottom line.”
― Jim Mattis
“I was a Marine for 41 years, and it wasn’t long enough. We enjoy putting on that uniform.”
― Jim Mattis
“There is one way to have a short but exciting conversation with me, and that is to move too slow.”
― Jim Mattis
“Prime Minister Maliki, released from American restraint, acted on his worst instincts, creating enormous distrust in Iraq’s Kurdish population and deeply embittering Sunnis in western Iraq’s Al Anbar, who lost any confidence in a Baghdad government they saw as adversarial.”
― Jim Mattis
“As commanders and staff officers, we are coaches and sentries for our units: how can we coach anything if we don’t know a hell of a lot more than just the TTPs?”
― Jim Mattis
“I’m on record that it didn’t really traumatize me to do away with some people.”
― Jim Mattis
“I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.”
― Jim Mattis
“I would just say there is one misperception of our veterans, and that is they are somehow damaged goods. I don’t buy it.”
― Jim Mattis
“We should not fight wars without a clearly defined end state… when you go to war, it can’t be a half-step.”
― Jim Mattis
“What we achieved was a nuclear pause, not a nuclear halt.”
― Jim Mattis
“The Iranian regime, in my mind, is the single most enduring threat to stability and peace in the Middle East.”
― Jim Mattis
“It’s a lot easier to stay idealistic if you don’t sign two to five next-of-kin letters every day.”
― Jim Mattis
“No one gives a damn what Iran thinks on any significant issue. The only reason Iran is at the big boys’ table is because of their nuclear weapons program.”
― Jim Mattis
“You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway.”
― Jim Mattis
“The fundamental question I believe is, ‘Is political Islam in our best interest?’ If not, what is our policy to authoritatively support the countervailing forces?”
― Jim Mattis
“Notifying the enemy in advance of our withdrawal dates or reassuring the enemy that we will not use certain capabilities like our ground forces should be avoided.”
― Jim Mattis
“It is not scientifically possible to accurately predict the outcome of an action. To suggest otherwise runs contrary to historical experience and the nature of war.”
― Jim Mattis
“In a country with millions of people and cars going everywhere, the enemy is going to get a car bomb out there once in awhile.”
― Jim Mattis
“There is only one ‘retirement plan’ for terrorists.”
― Jim Mattis
“Gains achieved at great cost against our enemy in Afghanistan are reversible.”
― Jim Mattis
“In my line of work, the enemy gets a vote.”
― Jim Mattis
“Ultimately, a real understanding of history means that we face nothing new under the sun.”
― Jim Mattis
“The military can buy our diplomats some time.”
― Jim Mattis
“I don’t write policy for my government.”
― Jim Mattis
“Fight with a happy heart.”
― Jim Mattis
“No war is over until the enemy says it’s over.”
― Jim Mattis
“I like the enemy knowing there are a few guys like me around.”
― Jim Mattis
“I consider ISIS nothing more than an excuse for Iran to continue its mischief.”
― Jim Mattis
“What is the one country in the Middle East that has not been attacked by ISIS? One. That is Iran. That is more than happenstance, I’m sure.”
― Jim Mattis
“If you can’t eat it, shoot it, or wear it, don’t bring it.”
― Jim Mattis
“I would storm the gates of Hell if Third Marine Air Wing was overhead.”
― Jim Mattis
“There is nothing better than getting shot at and missed. It’s really great.”
― Jim Mattis
“I don’t have the best track record with quotes.”
― Jim Mattis
“I can’t tell you the number of times I looked down at what was going on on the ground, or I was engaged in a fight somewhere, and I knew within a couple of minutes how I was going to screw up the enemy. And I knew it because I’d done so much reading.”
― Jim Mattis
“The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.”
― Jim Mattis
“The U.S. military is not war weary. Our military draws strength from confronting our enemies when clear policy objectives are set and we are fully resourced for the fight.”
― Jim Mattis
“No matter how bad any situation, cynicism has no positive impact. Watching the news, you might notice that cynicism and victimhood often seem to go hand-in-hand, but not for veterans.”
― Jim Mattis
“Perhaps if you are in support functions waiting on the warfighters to spell out the specifics of what you are to do, you can avoid the consequences of not reading. Those who must adapt to overcoming an independent enemy’s will are not allowed that luxury.”
― Jim Mattis
“While victimhood in America is exalted, I don’t think our veterans should join those ranks.”
― Jim Mattis
“The Corps is in good hands, and it’s been a privilege to serve with the Leathernecks. Now it’s time to go.”
― Jim Mattis
“The Marines have landed, and we now own a piece of Afghanistan.”
― Jim Mattis
“Demonstrate to the world, there is ‘No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy’ than a U.S. Marine.”
― Jim Mattis
“Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.”
― Jim Mattis
“I have never been bewildered for long in any fight with our enemies – I was Armed with Insight.”
― Jim Mattis
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