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.

There are no secrets to success. It is the result of preparation, hard work, and learning from failure.

Pissing people off doesn't mean you're doing the right things, but doing the right things will almost inevitably piss people off.

A dream doesn't become reality through magic; it takes sweat, determination and hard work.

None of us can change our yesterdays but all of us can change our tomorrows.

If you are going to achieve excellence in big things, you develop the habit in little matters. Excellence is not an exception, it is a prevailing attitude.

Effective leaders are made, not born. They learn from trial and error, and from experience.

The most important thing I learned is that soldiers watch what their leaders do. You can give them classes and lecture them forever, but it is your personal example they will follow.

Respect for leaders by followers can't be mandated; it must be earned. It has to be given to leaders by their followers.

Get mad, then get over it.

Being responsible sometimes means pissing people off.

..if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was ahurricane.

What is it?”“A prayer.”“For a child?”She nodded.“For me?”Another nod.“On a tree?”“Trees spend all day looking up at God.

Our worth is determined by the good deeds we do rather than by the fine emotions we feel.

Who overcomes By force hath overcome but half his foe.

Man prides himself on being the only animal who can modify his nature, yet when he chooses to do so he is called a phony.

Mothers are the most instinctive philosophers.

It's very difficult to learn not to take nasty heckles personally.

There is such seduction in a library of good books that I cannot resist the temptation to luxuriate in reading.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

Everything creepy and Southern isn't Faulknerian, just like everything annoying isn't Kafkaesque.