Richard Marcinko Quotes

Shoot first and ask questions not at all

Have character, but don't be a character.

Change hurts. It makes people insecure, confused, and angry. People want things to be the same as they've always been, because that makes life easier. But, if you're a leader, you can't let your people hang on to the past.

What drives me? In every mission I'm on, the thing that drives me most is the desire to find my limits-and extend them.

Call it a character flaw -- when under attack, I counter attack. Always.

For the past weeks I'd been reacting. That was no way to win. To win, you take the initiative. You instigate the action. You make the opponent react to you.

Knives are like credit cards; don't leave home without 'em and always carry several

The combat of WAR and an economic WAR have a lot of similarities. You do have to be skilled, aggressive, know your enemy and your strong attributes and limitations. Both skills are needed although one may be more natural.

Conventional wisdom is no wisdom at all. Conventional wisdom is taking somebody else's word for the way things are It's the followers of this world who rely on assumption. Not the leaders.

Popularity is not leadership.

The rules of war and business are the same. Victory and success are the same. In one it's life and/or death in the other it is success or failure. There really is little room for compromise of "gray matter".

Pain was their body's way of telling them that they'd pushed themselves to their limits - which was exactly where they were supposed to be.

I don't follow the thought; "Winning is not important, playing the game is". If that is in fact true; then why do we keep score??

When you fight, you don't fight for abstract values like the flag, or the nation, or democracy. You fight for your buddy. You fight to keep him alive, and he fights to keep you alive, and you go on that way, day after day, battle after battle. And when one of your buddies dies, something inside you dies as well. But you go on. You fight, so that his death isn't meaningless, his sacrifice isn't for nothing.

The more thou sweateth in training, the less thou bleedeth in combat.

I ask my children (all of them) to be what they want to be; just be the best they can at what they choose.

There is only one kind of failure I cannot tolerate: the failure to risk failure.