Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Norman Schwarzkopf - Page 2

Hey, I'm not a politician. I'm a ham. I love to give speeches.

I'm not a type-B personality who knows I have a cancer growing inside of me and can live with the knowledge. I go into a kung-fu attack position when I go through the door of a hospital.

With a chemical alarm, you're going to build one that is oversensitive because you would rather the alarm go off and give you a false alarm than to err on the other side.

Fish are a renewable resource, and one of the problems we've had is people feel obliged to catch the limit, then throw 'em in the garbage can.

Well, unfortunately, I have always regretted the fact that I have a temper, but I also have, you know, have great love and respect for all of the people that have worked for me. I think like everything else, this is one of those things that has been blown out of proportion.

I can't even begin to visualize myself as a five-star general... When I think of the people who are five-star generals, I can't even see myself standing in their shadow.

I'm not proud of killing, of being responsible for the death of a single person. I never will be.

I like to say I'm not a hero.

I'd like to think I'm a caring human being.

This gulf war syndrome thing is truly unfortunate, and I've met some of the vets who have this. These are my guys, and I feel terrible about it.

I prided myself on being unflappable even in the most chaotic of circumstances.

Generals aren't in the business of commenting on the correctness or incorrectness of the President's decisions. Anybody who thinks he should be able to do that ought to be fired on the spot.

But I would defy anyone to go back over the years and tell me anyone whose career I've ruined, anyone whom I've driven out of the service, anyone I've fired from a job.

What is postwar Iraq going to look like, with the Kurds and the Sunnis and the Shiites? That's a huge question, to my mind.

It is God's job to forgive Osama Bin Laden. It is our job to arrange a face to face meeting.

I don't consider myself dovish and I certainly don't consider myself hawkish. Maybe I would describe myself as owlishthat is wise enough to understand that you want to do everything possible to avoid war.

If we invade Iraq and the regime is very close to falling, I'm very, very concerned that the Iraqis will, in fact, use weapons of mass destruction.

How do you fight someone who doesn't care if they get killed? You accommodate them.

Do what is right, not what you think the high headquarters wants or what you think will make you look good.

Choose to win Get mad, then get over it.

Leadership consists of character and strategy. If you can't have both, opt for character.

From the time I was twelve years old until I retired last year at the age of fifty-seven, the Army was my life. I loved commanding soldiers and being around people who had made a serious commitment to serve their country.

Particularly when you're dealing with very high ranking people, you know, you have to get their attention, they are used to, by their rank, of having their own way and doing their own thing and when it's necessary to all work together on something, sometimes you have to hit the mule between the eyes of the two by four to get its attention.

Fear will keep you alive in a war. Fear will keep you alive in business. There's nothing wrong with fear.

I like to say I'm not a hero. I was lucky enough to lead a very successful war.

I can't say enough about the two Marine divisions. If I use words like 'brilliant,' it would really be an under description of the absolutely superb job that they did in breaching the so-called 'impenetrable barrier.' It was a classic- absolutely classic- military breaching of a very very tough minefield, barbed wire, fire trenches-type barrier.

I believe that forgiving them is god's function, our job is to arrange the meeting.

Judge your enemy based upon capabilities, not intent, you have to look at the enemy and really almost make a worst case call every time.

What people don't understand is this is something that we only have in America. There is no other country in the world where the ordinary citizen can go out and enjoy hunting and fishing. There's no other nation in the world where that happens. And it's very much a part of our heritage.

With a chemical alarm, you're going to build one that is oversensitive because you would rather the alarm go off and give you a false alarm than to err on the other side

A very great man once said you should love your enemies and that's not a bad piece of advice. We can love them but, by God, that doesn't mean we're not going to fight them.

You can't help someone get up a hill without getting closer to the top yourself.

It's the sense of duty that keeps you going sometimes when things get very, very rough. Somebody's got to do it. And if you don't, who will?

In a recent interview, General Norman Schwartzkof was asked if he thought there was room for forgiveness toward the people who have harboured and abetted the terrorists who perpetrated the 9/11 attacks on America. His answer..."I believe that forgiving them is God's function. Our job is simply to arrange the meeting.

More than 200 ships from 13 nations conducted over 10,000 flawless intercepts, which formed a steel wall around the waters leading to Iraq. And these operations continue today. Thanks to these superb efferts not one cargo hold, not one crate, not even one pallet of seaborne contraband even touched Saddam Hussein's shores. The result: Iraq lost 90% of its imports, 100% of its exports, and had its gross national product cut in half.

Success is sweet, but the secret is sweat.

I have seen competent leaders who stood in front of a platoon and all they saw was a platoon. But great leaders stand in front of a platoon and see it as 44 individuals, each of whom has aspirations, each of who wants to live, each of whom wants to do good.

I admire men of character and I judge character not by how men deal with their superiors, but mostly how they deal with their subordinates. And that, to me, is where you find out what the character of a man is.

I am quite confident that in the foreseeable future armed conflict will not take the form of huge land armies facing each other across extended battle lines, as they did in World War I and World War II or, for that matter, as they would have if NATO had faced the Warsaw Pact on the field of battle.

Ninety-nine percent of leadership failures are failures of character.