Jim Mattis Quotes

If you haven't read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren't broad enough to sustain you.

You don’t always control your circumstances, but you can always control your response.

The first is competence. Be brilliant in the basics. Don’t dabble in your job; you must master it.

By traveling into the past, I enhance my grasp of the present.

any general who isn’t connected spiritually to his troops is not a combat leader.

I’ll tell you what leadership is,” he said. “It’s persuasion and conciliation and education and patience. It’s long, slow, tough work. That’s the only kind of leadership I know.

Business management books often stress “centralized planning and decentralized execution.” That is too top-down for my taste. I believe in a centralized vision, coupled with decentralized planning and execution. In

recruit for attitude and train for skills.

Be polite, be professional, but have a plan to kill everybody you meet.

you can’t talk freely with the most junior members of your organization, then you’ve lost touch.

listen, learn, and help, then lead,

Attitudes are caught, not taught.

The details you don’t give in your orders are as important as the ones you do. With all hands aligned to your goals, their cunning and initiative unleashed, you need only transparent sharing of information (What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?) to orchestrate, as opposed to “control” or “synchronize,” a coordinated team.

PowerPoint is the scourge of critical thinking. It encourages fragmented logic by the briefer and passivity in the listener.

By doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled, and by doing brave acts, we become brave.

I was out to win their coequal “ownership” of the mission: it wasn’t my mission; rather from private through general, it was our mission.

If the risk takers are punished, then you will retain in your ranks only the risk averse.

If you haven’t read hundreds of books, you are functionally illiterate, and you will be incompetent, because your personal experiences alone aren’t broad enough to sustain you,

It now became even more clear to me why the Marines assign an expanded reading list to everyone promoted to a new rank: that reading gives historical depth that lights the path ahead.

State your flat-ass rules and stick to them. They shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. At the same time, leaven your professional passion with personal humility and compassion for your troops.

Reading is an honor and a gift from a warrior or historian who—a decade or a thousand decades ago—set aside time to write. He distilled a lifetime of campaigning in order to have a “conversation” with you.

How do you prepare your men for the shock of battle? For one thing, you need to make sure that your training is so hard and varied that it removes complacency and creates muscle memory—instinctive reflexes—within a mind disciplined to identify and react to the unexpected.

Trust is the coin of the realm for creating the harmony, speed, and teamwork to achieve success at the lowest cost.

What do I know? Who needs to know? Have I told them?

But having a plan counts for nothing unless those above you are made confident that you can execute. As the leader, you maintain communications connectivity up, not just down.

Yet over the course of my career, every time I made a mistake—and I made many—the Marines promoted me. They recognized that those mistakes were part of my tuition and a necessary bridge to learning how to do things right.

The 2009 debate over Afghanistan troop levels both typified and further fueled the mutual mistrust between the White House and senior military officials.

Never advantage yourself at the expense of your comrades.

If you don’t like problems, stay out of leadership.

After a rebellion…power tends to flow to those most organized, not automatically to the most idealistic.

The Taliban had left their back door open. Memo to young officers: I can appear brilliant if I fight enemy leaders dumber than a bucket of rocks.

You cannot allow your passion for excellence to destroy your compassion for them as human beings.

If there's something you don't want people to see, you ought to reconsider what you're doing.

As Churchill noted, “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on.” In our age, a lie can get a thousand times around the world before the truth gets its pants on.

Leaders at all ranks, but especially at high ranks, must keep in their inner circle people who will unhesitatingly point out when a leader’s personal behavior or decisions are not appropriate

Today, many senior military officials complain of feeling baffled and shut out by a White House that combines micromanagement with a near total inability to articulate coherent strategic goals.

the Corps, I was taught to use the concept of “command and feedback.” You don’t control your subordinate commanders’ every move; you clearly state your intent and unleash their initiative. Then, when the inevitable obstacles or challenges arise, with good feedback loops and relevant data displays, you hear about it and move to deal with the obstacle.

Well it seems to me that there are books that tell stories, and then there are books that tell truths...," I began. "Go on," she said "The first kind, they show you life like you want it to be. With villains getting what they deserve and the hero seeing what a fool he's been and marrying the heroine and happy ending and all that. Like Sense and Sensibility or Persuasion. But the second kind, they show you life more like it is. Like in Huckleberry Finn where Huck's pa is a no-good drunk and Jim suffers so. The first kind makes you cheerful and contented, but the second kind shakes you up." "People like happy ending, Mattie. They don't want to be shaken up." "I guess not, ma'am. It's just that there are no Captain Wentworths, are there? But there are plenty of Pap Finns. And things go well for Anne Elliot in the end, but they don't go well for most people." My voice trembled as I spoke, as it did whenever I was angry. "I feel let down sometimes. The people in the books-the heroes- they're always so...heroic. And I try to be, but..." "...you're not," Lou said, licking deviled ham off her fingers. "...no, I'm not. People in books are good and noble and unselfish, and people aren't that way... and I feel, well... hornswoggled sometimes. By Jane Austen and Charles Dickens and Louisa May Alcott. Why do writers make things sugary when life isn't that way?" I asked too loudly. "Why don't they tell the truth? Why don't they tell how a pigpen looks after the sow's eaten her children? Or how it is for a girl when her baby won't come out? Or that cancer has a smell to it? All those books, Miss Wilcox," I said, pointing at a pile of them," and I bet not one of them will tell you what cancer smells like. I can, though. It stinks. Like meat gone bad and dirty clothes and bog water all mixed together. Why doesn't anyone tell you that?" No one spoke for a few seconds. I could hear the clock ticking and the sound of my own breathing. Then Lou quietly said, "Cripes, Mattie. You oughtn't to talk like that." I realized then that Miss Wilcox had stopped smiling. Her eyes were fixed om me, and I was certain she'd decided I was morbid and dispiriting like Miss Parrish had said and that I should leave then and there. "I'm sorry, Miss Wilcox," I said, looking at the floor. "I don't mean to be coarse. I just... I don't know why I should care what happens to people in a drawing room in London or Paris or anywhere else when no one in those places cares what happens to people in Eagle Bay." Miss Wilcox's eyes were still fixed on me, only now they were shiny. Like they were the day I got my letter from Barnard. "Make them care, Mattie," she said softly. "And don't you ever be sorry.

The problem has become so acute that successive secretaries of defense have asked Congress to provide the necessary funds for the Department of State. Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, before he took on that role, famously stated that “if you don’t fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition.

data show a worrisome trend toward distrust of the military among elites—especially self-described “very liberal” elites—

Is there tension between a self-regarding “only 1 percent serve” attitude among the military and a “you signed up for this” attitude among the public?

The perception is widespread in the military that civilians are insensitive to its culture—more than insensitive: intolerant.

Reading sheds light on the dark path ahead. By traveling into the past, I enhance my grasp of the present.

I may not have come up with many new ideas, but I’ve adopted or integrated a lot from others.

Note to all executives over the age of thirty: always keep close to you youngsters who are smarter than you.

Wise leadership requires collaboration; otherwise it will lead to failure.

I learned then and I believe now that everyone needs a mentor or to be a mentor—and that no one needs a tyrant. At the same time, there’s no substitute for

Allowing bad processes to stump good people is intolerable.

You make mistakes, or life knocks you down; either way, you get up and get on with it. You deal with life. You don’t whine about it. I

Slowly but surely, we learned there was nothing new under the sun: properly informed, we weren’t victims—we could always create options.

In keeping with George Washington’s approach to leadership, I would listen, learn, and help, then lead.

But doctrine is the last refuge of the unimaginative

E pluribus unum.

a leader’s role is problem solving. If you don’t like problems, stay out of leadership. Smooth sailing teaches nothing,

Acting without orders…yet always within the overall intention.

Men who are familiarized to danger meet it without shrinking; whereas troops unused to service often apprehend danger where no danger is.

Risk aversion will damage the long-term health, even survival, of the organization, because it will undercut disciplined but unregimented thinking.

A life is not important except in its impact on other lives.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, Director of the National Economic Council Gary Cohn, and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson had grown alarmed over the first six months of the Trump administration by gaping holes in the president’s knowledge of history and of the alliances forged in the wake of World War II that served as the foundation of America’s strength in the world.

From Slim to Fulford—both promoted to four-star general—came the same message: at the executive level, your job is to reward initiative in your junior officers and NCOs and facilitate their success.

The trinity of chance, uncertainty, and friction [will] continue to characterize war,” Clausewitz wrote, “and will make anticipation of even the first-order consequences of military action highly conjectural.

Others were now recruited and, despite their obvious impressions of the man, agreed to sign on. Jim Mattis, a retired four-star general, one of the most respected commanders in the U.S. armed forces; Rex Tillerson, CEO of ExxonMobil; Scott Pruitt and Betsy DeVos, Jeb Bush loyalists—all of them were now focused on the singular fact that while he might be a peculiar figure, even an absurd-seeming one, he had been elected president

Instillation of personal initiative, aggressiveness, and risk-taking doesn’t spring forward spontaneously on the battlefield. It must be cultivated for years and inculcated, even rewarded, in an organization’s culture.

Without mavericks, we are more likely to find ourselves at the same time dominant and irrelevant, as the enemy steals a march on us. Further, calculated risk taking is elemental to staying at the top of our competitive game.

They do identify a large increase in civilian ignorance or apathy about military issues and also in civilian deference to the military on conduct of the wars, which they consider may be connected to decline in trust of civilian leadership.

What is the present state of my understanding? For here lies all indeed. As for all other things, they are outside the compass of my own will; and if outside the compass of my will, then they are as dead things to me, and as it were, mere smoke.

Problems which bear directly on the future of our civilization cannot be disposed of by general talk or vague formulae—by what Lincoln called ‘pernicious abstractions,’ ” he stated. “They require concrete solutions for definite and extremely complicated questions.

Living in history builds your own shock absorber, because you’ll learn that there are lots of old solutions to new problems. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead.

The first is competence. Be brilliant in the basics. Don’t dabble in your job; you must master it. That applies at every level as you advance. Analyze yourself. Identify weaknesses and improve yourself. If you’re not running three miles in eighteen minutes, work out more; if you’re not a good listener, discipline yourself; if you’re not swift at calling in artillery fire, rehearse. Your troops are counting on you. Of course you’ll screw up sometimes; don’t dwell on that. The last perfect man on earth died on a cross long ago—just be honest and move on, smarter for what your mistake taught you.

Field Marshal Slim wrote in World War II: “As officers,” he wrote, “you will neither eat, nor drink, nor sleep, nor smoke, nor even sit down until you have personally seen that your men have done those things. If you will do this for them, they will follow you to the end of the world. And, if you do not, I will break you.

Esper had not directly criticized the commander in chief, but his predecessor, Jim Mattis, finally delivered the rebuke of Trump he had held in for years. “Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people—does not even pretend to try. Instead, he tries to divide us,” Mattis told the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg, before invoking “the Nazi slogan for destroying us . . . ‘Divide and Conquer.’ “We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort,” Mattis went on. “We are witnessing the consequences of three years without mature leadership. We can unite without him, drawing on the strengths inherent in our civil society.

At U.S. Central Command with hundreds of thousands of troops assigned to me, I had in my command group a U.S. Army Ranger sergeant major and a U.S. Navy admiral who didn’t give a damn what I thought of them: if they thought that I had made a bad call, with door closed they would quickly make their point loud and clear. I trusted them to do this, and they never let me down.

There is also among some civilians the temptation to treat warfare as just another arena of politics, with public indifference giving latitude for the imposition of social choices—conservative or progressive—uninformed by the grim exigencies and atavistic demands of warfare. This can translate into a perceived lack of respect by civilians in a military culture steeped in respect.

Attempts to “buy” veterans with generous entitlements is likely to fail. The best way to gain or retain the trust of veterans is to ensure that they receive “genuine gratitude. Not sympathy or pedestals; but real gratitude. . . . Every civilian should understand that the veteran has done nothing less, and also nothing more, than what is sometimes required to maintain liberty.”[46]

Critics of the military often contend that people join the military because they have no other economic options, but it is more likely the case that most in the military are motivated by some degree of patriotism and a sense of service. Those who do are more likely to possess or seek the traditional virtues normally associated with military service in the public mind: discipline, loyalty, courage, honor, and self-sacrifice.

The key to healthy civil-military relations is trust on both the civilian and military sides of the negotiation: the civilians must trust the military to provide its best and most objective advice but then carry out any policy that the civilian decision makers ultimately choose. The military must trust the civilians to give a fair hearing to military advice and not reject it out of hand, especially for transparently political reasons. Civilians must also understand that dissent is not the same as disobedience.

there’s no substitute for constant study to master one’s craft. Living in history builds your own shock absorber, because you’ll learn that there are lots of old solutions to new problems. If you haven’t read hundreds of books, learning from others who went before you, you are functionally illiterate—you can’t coach and you can’t lead. History lights the often dark path ahead; even if it’s a dim light, it’s better than none. If you can’t be additive as a leader, you’re just like a potted plant in the corner of a hotel lobby: you look pretty, but you’re not adding substance to the organization’s mission.

Whatever they think of the wars our country is fighting, Americans no longer blame their military as many did during the Vietnam War.

the broader society reflects the distinction prevalent in the military itself between personal judgments about a war and the commitment to fighting it. Choosing war is the business of elected politicians in America; fighting war is the business of our military.

the military remains an important source of upward mobility for many Americans, and particularly for women and minorities. Contrary to much popular mythology about dysfunctional vets, most veterans do pretty well economically—better than comparable nonveterans.

Veterans are overrepresented among the homeless, for instance, and post-9/11 veterans have above-average unemployment rates—though this may simply reflect transition issues.[27] Transition issues are, unfortunately, common: according to the 2011 Pew survey, 44 percent of post-9/11 veterans say the transition to civilian life was difficult for them.[28]

Has the tendency among elected officials to talk of all veterans as though they are disabled and to represent all trauma as weakening rather than strengthening diminished public confidence in our fighting forces?

It’s only a little hyperbolic to conclude that some Americans—those who feel most removed from military life—see the service as an experience leading to pathological behavior.

the uninformed public gives political leaders wider latitude to impose “transmutation” of progressive cultural values over the functional imperatives of the military for success on the battlefield.

we are concerned that civilians believe the military can sustain a war-winning force without the values our military inculcates in order to produce success on the battlefield.

In a world in which fewer and fewer government institutions seem capable of performing with even minimal competence, Americans also consistently say they trust the military more than any other public institution:

elites designed to represent opinion leaders in 10 professional areas of expertise—

They offer several recommendations to shore up important elements of American civil-military relations, including better scholar and journalist policing of politicization of the military by politicians

Public opinion surveys conducted as part of this study strongly suggest that while the American public is not knowledgeable about military issues, its judgment is fundamentally sound, and its concern is unabated for the soldiers, sailors, airmen, coastguardsmen, and Marines who fight the nation’s wars.

the less informed the public, the greater latitude governmental elites have to avoid electoral consequences for the material and human cost of strategic failure and the more likely public support is to be erratic and quickly eroded.

Many well-intentioned Americans cannot even find a thread of conversation when discussing military service with a veteran other than asking about PTSD or sexual harassment in the case of female vets.

a people uninformed about what they are asking the military to endure is a people inevitably unable to fully grasp the scope of the responsibilities our Constitution levies upon them.”[43]

Half of all active-duty military personnel are now stationed in only five states: California, Texas, Virginia, North Carolina, and Georgia.[7] Partly as a consequence of these policies, over the last few decades the military has become more southern, less urban, and more politically conservative than American society as a whole.

Our work is appreciated, of that I am certain. There isn’t a town or a city I visit where people do not convey to me their great pride in what we do. But I fear they do not know us. I fear they do not comprehend the full weight of the burden we carry or the price we pay when we return from battle.”[10]

Under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, disobeying a lawful order will land you behind bars—and desertion in wartime is still punishable by death. The Declaration of Independence tells us that all men have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, but those who volunteer for military service effectively give up those rights. Once in the military, their lives belong to the nation.

To many military leaders, the White House appeared to be constantly demanding contradictory and impossible things but refusing to resource them.

Civil-military relations in modern America are characterized more by paradox than by consistency: ordinary Americans support the military more than ever but know less about it than ever. In Washington, senior government policymakers simultaneously overestimate the military’s capabilities and mistrust the military leadership. The US military is widely viewed as the strongest military in the history of the world, but military leaders view conventional military tools as less and less useful for dealing with the complex security threats we face today. Meanwhile, although the military itself is more professional than ever, its internal structures—from recruiting, training, and education to personnel policies—lag badly behind those in most civilian workplaces, making it difficult for the military to change from within. These paradoxes both reflect and contribute to an underlying conundrum. In today’s world, where security challenges increasingly stem from nonstate actors, the cyber domain, the diffuse effects of climate change, and similar nontraditional sources, it is growing ever more difficult to clearly define the US military’s role and mission. We no longer have a coherent basis for distinguishing between war and “not war,” or between military force and other forms of coercion and manipulation. In such a context, we no longer know what kind of military we need, or how to draw sensible lines between civilian and military tasks and roles.

majorities across all demographic groups in the YouGov survey, both military and civilian, agreed that “military culture and way of life . . . is very different from the culture and way of life of those who are not in the military” and that “the military has different values than the rest of society,

over a third of those that call themselves “very liberal” believe the military gets more respect than it deserves

Some 48.7 percent of Americans believe that the military offers more opportunity than the rest of society for minorities