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.

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.

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??

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

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.

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.