I am the commander in chief of the United States armed forces, and Iraq is gonna have to ultimately provide for its own security.

I remember at the age of five travelling on a trolley car with my mother past a group of women on a picket line at a textile plant, seeing them being viciously beaten by security people. So that kind of thing stayed with me.

Al Qaeda is still a threat. We cannot pretend somehow that because Barack Hussein Obama got elected as president, suddenly everything is going to be OK.

It seems strange that bears, so fond of all sorts of flesh, running the risks of guns and fires and poison, should never attack men except in defense of their young. How easily and safely a bear could pick us up as we lie asleep! Only wolves and tigers seem to have learned to hunt man for food, and perhaps sharks and crocodiles.

An army marches on its stomach.

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.

Bobby Knight told me this: ‚There is nothing that a good defense cannot beat a better offense.‘ In other words a good offense wins.

Quite frankly, Russian aggression in Ukraine and its illegal occupation of Crimea remind us that we still have a good deal more work to do to guarantee the strategic vision of a Europe whole, free and at peace.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

We sleep safe in our beds because rough men stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm.

Education is the cheap defense of nations.

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

I am concerned for the security of our great Nation; not so much because of any threat from without, but because of the insidious forces working from within.

The security of Israel is a moral imperative for all free peoples.

It was not a religion that attacked us that September day. It was al-Qaeda. We will not sacrifice the liberties we cherish or hunker down behind walls of suspicion and mistrust.

I think one of the great things about the United States has been our ability to maintain a distinction between our military and domestic law enforcement.

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

Nobody ever defended anything successfully, there is only attack and attack and attack some more.

A large majority of Americans believe that the U.N., not the U.S., should take the lead in working with Iraqis to transfer authentic sovereignty as well as in economic reconstruction and maintaining civic order.

The U.S. has strategic and economic interests in Southeast Asia that must be secured. Holding Indochina is essential to securing these interests. Therefore, we must hold Indochina.

The United States was seriously defeated in Iraq by Iraqi nationalism – mostly by nonviolent resistance. The United States could kill the insurgents, but they couldn’t deal with half a million people demonstrating in the streets.

The only defensible war is a war of defense.

We, the People, recognize that we have responsibilities as well as rights; that our destinies are bound together; that a freedom which only asks what’s in it for me, a freedom without a commitment to others, a freedom without love or charity or duty or patriotism, is unworthy of our founding ideals, and those who died in their defense.

God’s first line of defense – and offense – for every situation is prayer.

When you decide to get involved in a military operation in a place like Syria, you’ve got to be prepared, as we learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, to become the government, and I’m not sure any country, either the United States or I don’t hear of anyone else, who’s willing to take on that responsibility.

The invasion of Iraq, particularly, gave a big shot in the arm to the jihadi extremists.

Part of the reason there’s an injunction to the truth, for example, is that if you’re in a circumstance of extreme uncertainty, your best weapon, let’s say, or your best tool or your best defense is the truth, because it keeps things simpler.

As far as U.S. intelligence knows, Iran is developing nuclear capacities, but they don’t know if they are trying to develop nuclear weapons or not. Chances are they’re developing what’s called ‚nuclear capability,‘ which many states have. That is the ability to have nuclear weapons if they decide to do it. That’s not a crime.

I hope I’m wrong, but I am afraid that Iraq is going to turn out to be the greatest disaster in American foreign policy – worse than Vietnam, not in the number who died, but in terms of its unintended consequences and its reverberation throughout the region.

Saddam Hussein is a homicidal dictator who is addicted to weapons of mass destruction.

Some of the generals are saying, ‚We’re making progress. We are clearing an area.‘ But you really don’t defeat the Taliban by clearing an area. They move.

That’s what I do this for, to secure my family’s future. I don’t care about anything else. I’m able to spoil people, and that’s the best thing.

Qatar-based ‚Al-Jazeera,‘ the most important news channel in the Arab world, was harshly criticized by high U.S. officials for having ‚emphasized civilian casualties‘ during the destruction of Falluja. The problem of independent media was later resolved when the channel was kicked out of Iraq in preparation for free elections.

Hillary doesn’t play. She has more experience and exposure to the presidency than any candidate in our lifetime – yes, more than Barack, more than Bill. So she is absolutely ready to be Commander-in-Chief on day one. And, yes, she happens to be a woman.

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.

When soldiers have been baptized in the fire of a battle-field, they have all one rank in my eyes.

The Army will take its lessons learned. They’re excellent at looking into themselves and reflecting on what did we do right, what did we do wrong.

Kindness and faithfulness keep a king safe, through kindness his throne is made secure.

I don’t want everybody to see exactly where I live, what my sofa or my fireplace looks like.

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.

I’m not an expert on the arms race.

War is the continuation of politics by other means.

It takes a great deal of character strength to apologize quickly out of one’s heart rather than out of pity. A person must possess himself and have a deep sense of security in fundamental principles and values in order to genuinely apologize.

I suppose your security is your success and your key to success is your fine palate.

NATO was constructed on the – with the reason, whether one believes it or not, that it was going to defend Western Europe from Russian assault. Once the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union was beginning to collapse, that reason was gone. So, first question: why does NATO exist?

The more a person seeks security, the more that person gives up control over their life.

Ninety percent of the cases of polio are in security-vulnerable areas.

Demonstrate to the world, there is ‚No Better Friend, No Worse Enemy‘ than a U.S. Marine.

Today, India is a nuclear weapons state.

Most people want security in this world, not liberty.

Our growing softness, our increasing lack of physical fitness, is a menace to our security.

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

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.

Nothing can be more hurtful to the service, than the neglect of discipline; for that discipline, more than numbers, gives one army the superiority over another.

The magic of America is that we’re a free and open society with a mixed population. Part of our security is our freedom.

At the end of 2003, my game was complete. Shooting, defense, using the dribble, transition, midrange stuff was all there. Then it was about fine-tuning and trying to improve in each area.

In November 2007, the White House issued a Declaration of Principles demanding that U.S. forces must remain indefinitely in Iraq and committing Iraq to privilege American investors.

The power of an air force is terrific when there is nothing to oppose it.

The Marines have landed, and we now own a piece of Afghanistan.

The army is the true nobility of our country.

Nothing is more dangerous to one’s own faith than the work of an apologist. No doctrine of that faith seems to me so spectral, so unreal as one that I have just successfully defended in a public debate.