Trying to get everyone to like you is a sign of mediocrity.

Everybody makes bad decisions. I am sure I have made my share of them over 40 years of service. Or I have made good decisions and have been overruled. The real challenge, when you are overruled, is to remember who the boss is and don't take it personally.

Let it [racism] be a problem to someone else... Let it drag them down. Don't use it as an excuse for your own shortcomings.

I don't want to spend the rest of my life giving speeches.

The best leaders are those who break that mission down into the organization's constituent parts, so that everybody understands their role and how it all builds into the whole.

Generally you should act somewhere between P40 and P70, as I call it. Sometime after you have obtained 40 percent of all the information you are liable to get, start thinking in terms of making a decision. When you have about 70 percent of all the information, you probably ought to decide, because you may lose an opportunity in losing time.

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.