Top 53 Quotes & Sayings by Jim Webb

It's a very tough thing to run for office, but it's also the way the American people get to know you.

The function of combat is not merely to perpetrate violence, but to perpetrate violence on command, instantaneously and reflexively. The function of the service academies is to prepare men for leadership positions where they may someday exercise that command.

The injustices endured by black Americans at the hands of their own government have no parallel in our history, not only during the period of slavery but also in the Jim Crow era that followed.

I learned long ago on the battlefields of Vietnam that in a crisis, there is no substitute for clear-eyed leadership.

The frustration of the Senate is that it's slow. It looks like an aquarium.

If a minister can lead the Senate in prayer every day... what is so wrong with beginning every day of school with an ecumenical prayer?

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

There is nothing that's been in any of my novels that, in my view, hasn't been either illuminating surroundings or defining a character or moving a plot.

I walk fast. I have an aversion to wasting time. My sense of constant motion is one of the reasons that my eldest daughter, Amy, nicknamed me 'the Tasmanian Devil' when she was in her teens.

From the time I left the Marine Corps after serving as an infantry platoon and company commander in Vietnam, I decided that I would focus on immediate goals that inspired me to devote all of my energy to them, rather than putting together the more cautious and traditional building blocks of a predictable career.

I was raised with the notion that there is no greater honor than to find a way to serve your country.

Throughout the world, our insistence on individual freedom and opportunity has been at the bottom of what people think when they hear the very word 'American.'

One of the issues that I've raised on the Foreign Relations Committee, and I raised it when Secretary Locke came for his confirmation hearing, is, you know, it is in our benefit to develop a workable, positive formula with China.

I left the Democratic Party basically on issues of national security during the end of the Vietnam War.

Your first six months in the Senate, you spend a lot of time wondering how the hell you got here. After that, you look around at your colleagues and wonder how the hell any of them got here.

I was counsel on the full veterans committee, the first Vietnam veteran to serve as a full-committee counsel in Congress. It stunned me that there was a 600,000-case backlog of claims. During my time in the Senate, it became 900,000.

Contrary to assumptions in the law, white America is hardly a monolith.

The Senate floor is and always has been the great arena of our democracy. I spent eight years in my younger life as a boxer, and sometimes when I enter the chamber, I think, 'This is the ring. The American people can see us here and listen to our arguments. This is where the fights matter.'

I'm probably more comfortable inside a Marine Corps rifle company than I am anywhere in my life.

I have strong reasons for being a Democrat. Basically if you want true fairness in society, you want to give a voice in the corridors of power for the people who otherwise would not have it, I believe that will come from the Democratic Party.

I have proudly spent several periods in government, but I'm not a career politician. I come from a family of 'citizen soldiers.'

I was the principal negotiator for the Department of Defense, when I was secretary of the Navy, on the issue of Toshiba technology concerns with American submarines.

I believe anger is a wasted emotion, and I don't like to waste emotions.

It's hard for me to think about this, but I first went to Southeast Asia as a Marine more than 40 years ago, as a young Marine. I was on Okinawa and then in Vietnam. I've returned in many different hats, which I think has helped me to form my own views about policy out there. I've spent a good bit of time in this region as a journalist.

History shows that you can't - you can't have security in Southeast Asia without security in Northeast Asia. It's just the reality.

World War II brought the Greatest Generation together. Vietnam tore the Baby Boomers apart.

The venerable Robert E. Lee has taken some vicious hits, as dishonest or misinformed advocates among political interest groups and in academia attempt to twist yesterday's America into a fantasy that might better service the political issues of today.

I'm a Democrat, and I have strong reasons for being a Democrat.

I fought as an infantry Marine on one of the Vietnam War's harshest battlefields. After leaving the Marine Corps, I studied law and found a fulfilling career as an author and journalist. But again and again, I came back to the personal fulfillment that can only come from public service.

Ronald Reagan came in - he was a leader. Some of my Democratic friends don't like it when I say that. He had a vision where he wanted to take the country, and things started moving again.

When my father went back into the military in 1947 and was gone for 3-1/2 years, my mother was 24 years old with four kids in a town she didn't know that well with no military services available, no family services available through the military, and that was the norm.

On any given vote, on any given day, a smart senator who has taken a bold or controversial position can reach far more media outlets between the elevator and the Senate chamber than he or she could garner in a full press conference back home.

Events such as the 1991 Tailhook debacle have been seized upon and used by feminists to attack the military culture and bring about major concessions.

It is good to see women doctors and lawyers and executives. I can visualize a woman president. If I were British, I would have supported Margaret Thatcher. But no benefit to anyone can come from women serving in combat.

I have dedicated my political career to bringing fairness to America's economic system and to our work force, regardless of what people look like or where they may worship.

Some of my Democratic friends don't like it when I say that, but Ronald Reagan was once a Democrat and still a leader. He brought strong people around him, and he had a vision for where he wanted to take the country.

If I do commit myself to something, I will commit myself 100 percent.

I just like the people and the culture of Southeast Asia.

Affirmative action was designed to recognize the uniquely difficult journey of African-Americans. This policy was justifiable and understandable, even to those who came from white cultural groups that had also suffered in socio-economic terms from the Civil War and its aftermath.

I have decided to launch an Exploratory Committee to examine whether I should run for President in 2016.

I'm a combative person, I know I am, and the greatest thing about law school was I learned to fight with my brain. I clarified something to myself. No matter how much you want to live in the white man's world, you either live by what you believe in, or you die.

The NAACP believes the Tea Party is racist. The Tea Party believes the NAACP is racist.

I cannot conjure up an ounce of respect for Bill Clinton when it comes to the military. Every time I see him salute a Marine, it infuriates me. I don't think Bill Clinton cares one iota about what happens in a military unit.

Secretary Clinton and I have worked well together, but the Arab Spring is a different question... This administration, collectively, made some very bad decisions, and they now have to climb out of a deep hole.

When I left the Senate in January 2013, I decided to take a full year away from all media interviews, editorial articles, and direct political activities.

The POW camps of North Vietnam were packed with Air Force and Naval Academy graduates. The six midshipmen in my Naval Academy class of 1968 who served as liaisons between the Marine Corps and the Brigade of Midshipmen later suffered nine Purple Hearts in Vietnam, and one man killed in action.

I am not convinced the Clean Air Act was ever intended to regulate or classify as a dangerous pollutant something as basic and ubiquitous in our atmosphere as carbon dioxide.

I am a junior senator, ninety-fifth on the seniority list, and so by Senate standards, my office in the Russell Senate Office Building is less than splendid.

My father served 26 years in the Air Force as a pilot and a pioneer in our missile programs. I learned early about the sacrifices a family makes when a member is repeatedly deployed, and also the fulfillment that comes from serving our country. My brother, my son and I all became Marines.

A typical day in the Senate requires several trips to the Senate floor and back, although the journey is usually underground so that on some days, once I arrive at work, I never see the sun.

I know of no scholar more dedicated to bringing a thorough and accurate portrayal of America's involvement in Vietnam than Mark Moyar. Everyone who is interested in a full picture of that oft-misunderstood war should be grateful for his effort.

And all of these together, as much as any campaign the Marine Corps has ever pursued, have brought an unrelenting, never-ceasing pride to all of us who have ever claimed the title of United States Marine

The wealth of a society isn't measured at the top, but at the bottom