Jim Mattis

It's a lot easier to stay idealistic if you don't sign two to five next-of-kin letters every day.

I don't write policy for my government.

The military can buy our diplomats some time.

We should not fight wars without a clearly defined end state... when you go to war, it can't be a half-step.

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.

You must reward the kind of behavior that you want.

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.

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.

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?

It's a lot of fun to fight.

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.

I don't think the U.S. military is conservative. It's pragmatic.

I was a Marine for 41 years, and it wasn't long enough. We enjoy putting on that uniform.

Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.

Most people know nobody in the military.

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.

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.

I would storm the gates of Hell if Third Marine Air Wing was overhead.

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.

Sometimes there are no good guys. There are no bad guys. It seems like everybody is in the middle.

The economy's always been the engine for our national security.

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

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.

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.

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.

To Marines, love of liberty is not an empty phrase... Rather, it's displayed by blood, sweat, and tears for the fallen.

I have never been bewildered for long in any fight with our enemies - I was Armed with Insight.

I have never thought it necessary to patronize the American people.

The Corps is in good hands, and it's been a privilege to serve with the Leathernecks. Now it's time to go.

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.

I'm on record that it didn't really traumatize me to do away with some people.

I would just say there is one misperception of our veterans, and that is they are somehow damaged goods. I don't buy it.

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?

We all recognize that the Mid-east is dissolving into crises, and we know terrorism did not start with 9-11.

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.

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.

There is one way to have a short but exciting conversation with me, and that is to move too slow.

There's no way that that our military power will not erode if a robust American economic revival is not part of the cards.

The example that America knows how to govern itself is one of the compelling aspects of our national security.

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.

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.

If you can't eat it, shoot it, or wear it, don't bring it.

Iran is not an enemy of ISIS; they have a lot to gain from the turmoil that ISIS creates.

I consider ISIS nothing more than an excuse for Iran to continue its mischief.

I like the enemy knowing there are a few guys like me around.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.