A Quote by John F. Kelly

Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat. — © John F. Kelly
Marines dying or being seriously wounded is commonplace in combat.
Combat is my profession and fighting was a great way to maintain a combat mindset while preparing to lead Marines in war.
Marines have a cynical approach to war. They believe in three things; liberty, payday and that when two Marines are together in a fight, one is being wasted. Being a minority group militarily, they are proud and sensitive in their dealings with other military organizations. A Marine's concept of a perfect battle is to have other Marines on the right and left flanks, Marine aircraft overhead and Marine artillery and naval gunfire backing them up.
As a Marine officer in combat, I was responsible for the lives and safety of all the Marines who served with me.
All Marines, sailors and civilian Marines, regardless of sexual orientation, are Marines first. Every Marine is a valued member of our war-fighting team.
We ceased to deal seriously with mobile combat. We relegated to oblivion the fundamentals of combat-in-depth tactics and of combined arms maneuvers which had been widespread before the Finnish campaign.
They (Women Marines) don't have a nickname, and they don't need one. They get their basic training in a Marine atmosphere, at a Marine Post. They inherit the traditions of the Marines. They are Marines.
I would not trade you a billion dollars for the kids I led to combat in Vietnam or in fact any of the Marines that I served with for a quarter of a century.
The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will.
If the Marines are abolished half the efficiency of the Navy will be destroyed. They are as necessary to the well being of a ship as the officers. Instead of decreasing the Corps, I would rather hope to see a large increase, for we feel the want of Marines very much.
The Marines fought almost solely on esprit de corps, I was certain. It was inconceivable to most Marines that they should let another Marine down, or that they could be responsible for dimming the bright reputation of their Corps. The Marines simply assumed that they were the world's best fighting men.
I learned to assemble a rifle in the dark and was trained as a sniper so that I could hit the center of the target time after time. As it happened, I never did get into actual combat, but that didn't prevent my being severely wounded. I almost lost both my feet as a result of a bombing attack on Jerusalem.
People always say it's harder to heal a wounded heart than a wounded body. Bullshit. It's exactly the opposite—a wounded body takes much longer to heal. A wounded heart is nothing but ashes of memories. But the body is everything. The body is blood and veins and cells and nerves. A wounded body is when, after leaving a man you’ve lived with for three years, you curl up on your side of the bed as if there’s still somebody beside you. That is a wounded body: a body that feels connected to someone who is no longer there.
My family is heavily involved in the Marines and close-combat training, and I was raised doing Japanese sword training, so I've always been of the mentality that you have to be able to defend yourself.
As far as me being inspirational to other combat-wounded guys, I would say that it's the opposite. To see guys at Walter Reed that I recovered with every day and they were missing every single one of their limbs - that is what I would say is inspiring.
If you're coming from America to Iraq, then how are you supposed to be objective? I mean, you could pay lip service to being objective, but how are you going to objective when you're embedded with the Marines? The Marines are saving your life every day and they're protecting you.
When I first arrived here, after spending years as a competitive fighter and training U.S. Marines in hand-to-hand combat, Hollywood is the last place I would have expected to find such blatant bias and discrimination.
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