It is good if your enemy underestimates you. The dumber they think you are the more surprised they are when you kill them.

You have to comply, you have to obey - or you'd better resign and leave. But that is also the mark of a great leader - somebody who, in the presence of inner conflict, will do the right thing.

Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand.

If you get the dirty end of the stick, sharpen it and turn it into a useful tool.

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

President Kennedy didn't negotiate out of the Cuban missile crisis simply because he and Khrushchev got along well. Khrushchev didn't have the cards.

Leadership is all about people … and getting the most out of people.