H. R. McMaster Quotes

The dead cannot cry out for justice. It is a duty of the living to do so for them.

Poets speak of hope in ladies smiles, but give me a smirk any day, I say.

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.

Don't wish to be normal. Wish to be yourself. To the hilt. Find out what you're best at, and develop it, and hopscotch your weaknesses. Wish to be great at whatever you are.

I'm very interested in the impact of biotechnology on the way people live.

If you can't be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart.

Aim high. You may still miss the target, but at least you won't shoot your foot off.

Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable.

The war in Vietnam was not lost in the field, nor was it lost on the front pages of The New York Times or the college campuses. It was lost in Washington, D.C.

Since no one is perfect, it follows that all great deeds have been accomplished out of imperfection. Yet they were accomplished, somehow, all the same.

When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all.

Adversity does teach who your real friends are.

I've got forward momentum. There's no virtue in it. It's just a balancing act. I don't dare stop.

There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.

When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. When you desire a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

It's an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project. Turn it on, see if it smokes.

I need words that mean more than they mean, words not just with height and width, but depth and weight and, and other dimensions that I cannot even name.

Have you ever heard the phrase, Living well is the best revenge?" "Where I come from, someone's head in a bag is generally considered the best revenge

You try to give away what you want yourself.

I don’t duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange.

Anything worth achieving is worth overachieving.

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal.

Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure.

Change is possible.' 'Change is inevitable.

The principle difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there.

I don't confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is the higher achievement.

When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action.

If power was an illusion, wasn't weakness necessarily one also?

If you make it plain you like people, it's hard for them to resist liking you back.

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

Growing up, I have discovered over time, is rather like housework: never finished.

Power is better than revenge. Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

If you can't do what you want, do what you can.

I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.

An honor is not diminished for being shared.

I am who I choose to be. I have always been what I chose, though not always what I pleased.

A good friend of my son's is a son to me.

If you want to catch something, running after it isn't always the best way.

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible.

It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for.

Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.

Experience suggests it doesn't matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.

One step at a time, I can walk around the world. Watch me.

You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable.

When you can’t do something truly useful, you tend to vent the pent up energy in something useless but available, like snappy dressing.

A hundred objective measurements didn't sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that.

I take it as a man's duty to restrain himself.