# Call Sign Chaos  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Jim Mattis, Bing West]] - Full Title:: Call Sign Chaos - Category: #books ## Highlights > Beneath its Prussian exterior of short haircuts, crisp uniforms, and exacting standards, the Corps nurtured some of the strangest mavericks and most original thinkers I would encounter in my journey through multiple commands, dozens of countries, and many college campuses. ([Location 110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=110)) > In any organization, it’s all about selecting the right team. The two qualities I was taught to value most in selecting others for promotion or critical roles were initiative and aggressiveness. ([Location 117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=117)) > “Will this commitment contribute sufficiently to the well-being of the American people to justify putting our troops in a position to die?” ([Location 160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=160)) > “We don’t get to choose when we die,” he said. “But we do choose how we meet death.” ([Location 184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=184)) - Note: Stoic MA & Seneca > Jackie Robinson’s tombstone: “A life is not important except in its impact on other lives.” ([Location 194](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=194)) > You don’t always control your circumstances, but you can always control your response. ([Location 220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=220)) > I didn’t have to earn their support; it was mine to lose, not to gain. ([Location 237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=237)) > Because there are few fates worse than public rejection and summary dismissal. Everyone needs a friend, a purpose, and a chance to belong to something greater than themselves. No one wants to be cast aside as worthless. ([Location 265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=265)) > We shared what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.” ([Location 307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=307)) > 1990, I WAS A “TOTUS PORCUS” (whole hog) Marine. ([Location 438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=438)) > I was conscious of what George Washington wrote to the Congress early in our war for independence: “Men who are familiarized to danger meet it without shrinking; whereas troops unused to service often apprehend danger where no danger is.” ([Location 568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=568)) > 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. ([Location 790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=790)) > The Secretary of Defense most often had to choose the least bad option. If it was an easy decision with good options, that decision had already been made. ([Location 907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=907)) > We were expeditionary, able to fight at a moment’s notice in forward-deployed, self-contained combat packages. ([Location 942](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=942)) > “It is not the young man who misses the days he does not know,” Marcus Aurelius wrote. “It is the living who bear the pain of those missed days.” ([Location 1861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=1861)) > In the U.S. military, we ride for the brand, as we do out west, where I am from. If a civilian leader tells me to fight rustlers, that’s what I do. If he tells me to round up wild horses, I do that. And if he tells me my job is to help a new settler plow his cornfield, I’ll get off my horse, cinch my holster around my saddle horn, and get behind the plow. ([Location 1953](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=1953)) > If we needed “new ideas” to help us construct our plan, old books were full of them. I reminded my men that Alexander the Great would not be perplexed by the enemy we faced. In 330 B.C., he first conquered the country, then instituted fair laws and orderly practices. It wasn’t a bad model to consider. ([Location 1974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=1974)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The defilement of the human body affronts our sense of dignity. Homer, in describing how Achilles had dragged Hector’s body behind his chariot during the Trojan War, condemned Achilles, regardless of his warrior fame. Civilization progresses, Homer taught us, only when the strongest nations and armies respect the dignity of the weakest. ([Location 2056](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2056)) > Reflecting back on the weeks of brutal urban fighting, I thought of a Kipling line: “For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” ([Location 2276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2276)) > It was now a matter of revenge, and the cycle of violence spun faster. ([Location 2322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2322)) > Writing after his command in the Balkans in the 1990s, British general Rupert Smith had observed, “War amongst the people is conducted best as an intelligence and information operation, not as one of manoeuvre and attrition in the manner of industrial war.” ([Location 2327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2327)) > As Churchill noted, “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on.” ([Location 2374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2374)) > You can’t fool the troops. Our young men had to harden their hearts to kill proficiently, without allowing indifference to noncombatant suffering to form a callus on their souls. I had to understand the light and the dark competing in their hearts, because we needed lads who could do grim, violent work without becoming evil in the process, lads who could do harsh things yet not lose their humanity. ([Location 2422](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2422)) > In my judgment, Admiral Nelson’s instruction before the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar remains the standard for all senior commanders. “In case signals can neither be seen nor perfectly understood,” he said, “no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.” ([Location 2626](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2626)) > As one man explained, when asked why Robert Burns wrote his poetry in taverns, it was in those places that one could hear “the elemental passions, the open heart and the bold tongue, and no masks.” ([Location 2635](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2635)) > Attitudes are caught, not taught. ([Location 2666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2666)) > In 1863, President Lincoln approved a general order to all Union soldiers: “Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease in this account to be moral beings, responsible for one another and to God.” ([Location 2767](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2767)) > One of our Nation’s most articulate Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., served as an infantryman during the Civil War and described war as an “incommunicable experience.” He has also noted elsewhere that “Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the face of an uplifted knife.” ([Location 2810](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2810)) > NATO, not Joint Forces Command, would be my main effort. Why? History is compelling; nations with allies thrive; those without them die. ([Location 2839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2839)) > As Churchill said, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them!” ([Location 2972](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2972)) > As economist Friedrich Hayek cautioned, “Adaptation is smarter than you are.” ([Location 3023](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3023)) > “Every attempt to make war easy and safe,” General Sherman wrote, “will result in humiliation and disaster.” ([Location 3026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3026)) > Only a verbal narrative that logically connects a succinct problem statement using rational thinking can develop sound solutions. PowerPoint is excellent when displaying data; but it makes us stupid when applied to critical thinking. ([Location 3042](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3042)) > “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.” ([Location 3053](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3053)) > No one contributes money to a presidential campaign to be assigned ambassador to a Middle East country. We military leaders in CENTCOM realized that we had a varsity team of diplomats. We had the best, the most proven, and the most experienced. Ambassadors like Jim Jeffrey in Iraq, Ryan Crocker in Afghanistan, Anne Patterson in Egypt, Stu Jones in Jordan, and Elizabeth Richard and Gerald Fierstein in Yemen. ([Location 3196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3196)) > “Let me be clear,” I told my staff. “We back up our commanders. Whatever they ask for, we deliver immediately. Ask enough questions to clarify what the field commanders need. Then make sure they get it when they need it. That’s our role.” ([Location 3241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3241)) > After a rebellion, however, power tends to flow to those most organized, not automatically to the most idealistic. ([Location 3656](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3656)) > The French Revolution unleashed six years of terror and trial by the guillotine, ending with the rise of the Napoleonic militaristic state. During World War I, the Russians rebelled against czarist rule, but that ultimately ushered in Stalin’s totalitarianism and the deaths of millions. Rebellions, no matter how idealistic in origin, can as often as not produce chaos that often leads to tyranny. ([Location 3659](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3659)) > In determining how to deal with a hostile and powerful England in 1807, President Jefferson wrote, “What is good in this case cannot be effected. We have, therefore, only to find out what will be least bad.” That struck me as sound advice during the Arab Spring. ([Location 3667](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3667)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is better to have a friend with deep flaws than an adversary with enduring hostility. ([Location 3751](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3751)) > “Dynamite in the hands of a child,” Winston Churchill wrote, “is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out.” ([Location 3774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3774)) > As the strategist Rear Admiral J. C. Wylie had written, “Nobody other than God can consistently predict the onset, scope, tenor, intensity, course, and consequences of any war. Requirements therefore exist for a rucksack full of plans…because planning for certitude is the most grievous of all…mistakes.” ([Location 3786](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3786)) > As American naval strategist Alfred Mahan wrote, “If the strategy be wrong, the skill of the general on the battlefield, the valor of the soldier, the brilliancy of victory, however otherwise decisive, fail of their effect.” ([Location 3872](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3872)) > As President Truman, the great builder of the post–World War II order, put it, “Men make history; history doesn’t make the man.” ([Location 3876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3876)) > “Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it,” Aristotle wrote. “People come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players, by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just. By doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled, and by doing brave acts, we become brave.” ([Location 3898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3898)) > I have seen no case where weakness promotes the chance for peace. A Kipling passage comes to mind about a peace-seeking man (the lama) and an old soldier. “It is not a good fancy,” said the lama. “What profit to kill men?” “Very little—as I know,” [the old soldier replied,] “but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.” ([Location 3913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3913)) > My warfighting style simply represents the Marine Corps way of war. It stems from a Corps that cannot stomach defeat, even when landed on hostile shores with the enemy to the front and the ocean at its back. It’s a naval force limited in its fighting philosophy to what the ships can carry, so it cannot rely on overwhelming numbers or heavy equipment. It’s a force that integrates skill, courage, cunning, and initiative into its own form of maneuver warfare, maneuver that takes form in the intellectual, physical, and spiritual realms. ([Location 3918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3918)) > 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 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. ([Location 3930](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3930)) > Trust is the coin of the realm for creating the harmony, speed, and teamwork to achieve success at the lowest cost. ([Location 3972](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3972)) > Because maverick thinkers are so important to an organization’s adaptability, high-ranking leaders need to be assigned the job of guiding and even protecting them, much as one would do for any endangered species. ([Location 4026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=4026)) > adversaries; ([Location 4074](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=4074)) # Call Sign Chaos  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Jim Mattis, Bing West]] - Full Title:: Call Sign Chaos - Category: #books ## Highlights > Beneath its Prussian exterior of short haircuts, crisp uniforms, and exacting standards, the Corps nurtured some of the strangest mavericks and most original thinkers I would encounter in my journey through multiple commands, dozens of countries, and many college campuses. ([Location 110](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=110)) > In any organization, it’s all about selecting the right team. The two qualities I was taught to value most in selecting others for promotion or critical roles were initiative and aggressiveness. ([Location 117](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=117)) > “Will this commitment contribute sufficiently to the well-being of the American people to justify putting our troops in a position to die?” ([Location 160](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=160)) > “We don’t get to choose when we die,” he said. “But we do choose how we meet death.” ([Location 184](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=184)) - Note: Stoic MA & Seneca > Jackie Robinson’s tombstone: “A life is not important except in its impact on other lives.” ([Location 194](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=194)) > You don’t always control your circumstances, but you can always control your response. ([Location 220](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=220)) > I didn’t have to earn their support; it was mine to lose, not to gain. ([Location 237](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=237)) > Because there are few fates worse than public rejection and summary dismissal. Everyone needs a friend, a purpose, and a chance to belong to something greater than themselves. No one wants to be cast aside as worthless. ([Location 265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=265)) > We shared what F. Scott Fitzgerald called “riotous excursions with privileged glimpses into the human heart.” ([Location 307](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=307)) > 1990, I WAS A “TOTUS PORCUS” (whole hog) Marine. ([Location 438](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=438)) > I was conscious of what George Washington wrote to the Congress early in our war for independence: “Men who are familiarized to danger meet it without shrinking; whereas troops unused to service often apprehend danger where no danger is.” ([Location 568](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=568)) > 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. ([Location 790](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=790)) > The Secretary of Defense most often had to choose the least bad option. If it was an easy decision with good options, that decision had already been made. ([Location 907](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=907)) > We were expeditionary, able to fight at a moment’s notice in forward-deployed, self-contained combat packages. ([Location 942](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=942)) > “It is not the young man who misses the days he does not know,” Marcus Aurelius wrote. “It is the living who bear the pain of those missed days.” ([Location 1861](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=1861)) > In the U.S. military, we ride for the brand, as we do out west, where I am from. If a civilian leader tells me to fight rustlers, that’s what I do. If he tells me to round up wild horses, I do that. And if he tells me my job is to help a new settler plow his cornfield, I’ll get off my horse, cinch my holster around my saddle horn, and get behind the plow. ([Location 1953](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=1953)) > If we needed “new ideas” to help us construct our plan, old books were full of them. I reminded my men that Alexander the Great would not be perplexed by the enemy we faced. In 330 B.C., he first conquered the country, then instituted fair laws and orderly practices. It wasn’t a bad model to consider. ([Location 1974](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=1974)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > The defilement of the human body affronts our sense of dignity. Homer, in describing how Achilles had dragged Hector’s body behind his chariot during the Trojan War, condemned Achilles, regardless of his warrior fame. Civilization progresses, Homer taught us, only when the strongest nations and armies respect the dignity of the weakest. ([Location 2056](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2056)) > Reflecting back on the weeks of brutal urban fighting, I thought of a Kipling line: “For the strength of the pack is the wolf, and the strength of the wolf is the pack.” ([Location 2276](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2276)) > It was now a matter of revenge, and the cycle of violence spun faster. ([Location 2322](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2322)) > Writing after his command in the Balkans in the 1990s, British general Rupert Smith had observed, “War amongst the people is conducted best as an intelligence and information operation, not as one of manoeuvre and attrition in the manner of industrial war.” ([Location 2327](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2327)) > As Churchill noted, “A lie gets halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on.” ([Location 2374](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2374)) > You can’t fool the troops. Our young men had to harden their hearts to kill proficiently, without allowing indifference to noncombatant suffering to form a callus on their souls. I had to understand the light and the dark competing in their hearts, because we needed lads who could do grim, violent work without becoming evil in the process, lads who could do harsh things yet not lose their humanity. ([Location 2422](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2422)) > In my judgment, Admiral Nelson’s instruction before the 1805 Battle of Trafalgar remains the standard for all senior commanders. “In case signals can neither be seen nor perfectly understood,” he said, “no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.” ([Location 2626](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2626)) > As one man explained, when asked why Robert Burns wrote his poetry in taverns, it was in those places that one could hear “the elemental passions, the open heart and the bold tongue, and no masks.” ([Location 2635](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2635)) > Attitudes are caught, not taught. ([Location 2666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2666)) > In 1863, President Lincoln approved a general order to all Union soldiers: “Men who take up arms against one another in public war do not cease in this account to be moral beings, responsible for one another and to God.” ([Location 2767](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2767)) > One of our Nation’s most articulate Supreme Court Justices, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., served as an infantryman during the Civil War and described war as an “incommunicable experience.” He has also noted elsewhere that “Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the face of an uplifted knife.” ([Location 2810](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2810)) > NATO, not Joint Forces Command, would be my main effort. Why? History is compelling; nations with allies thrive; those without them die. ([Location 2839](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2839)) > As Churchill said, “There is only one thing worse than fighting with allies, and that is fighting without them!” ([Location 2972](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=2972)) > As economist Friedrich Hayek cautioned, “Adaptation is smarter than you are.” ([Location 3023](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3023)) > “Every attempt to make war easy and safe,” General Sherman wrote, “will result in humiliation and disaster.” ([Location 3026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3026)) > Only a verbal narrative that logically connects a succinct problem statement using rational thinking can develop sound solutions. PowerPoint is excellent when displaying data; but it makes us stupid when applied to critical thinking. ([Location 3042](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3042)) > “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.” ([Location 3053](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3053)) > No one contributes money to a presidential campaign to be assigned ambassador to a Middle East country. We military leaders in CENTCOM realized that we had a varsity team of diplomats. We had the best, the most proven, and the most experienced. Ambassadors like Jim Jeffrey in Iraq, Ryan Crocker in Afghanistan, Anne Patterson in Egypt, Stu Jones in Jordan, and Elizabeth Richard and Gerald Fierstein in Yemen. ([Location 3196](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3196)) > “Let me be clear,” I told my staff. “We back up our commanders. Whatever they ask for, we deliver immediately. Ask enough questions to clarify what the field commanders need. Then make sure they get it when they need it. That’s our role.” ([Location 3241](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3241)) > After a rebellion, however, power tends to flow to those most organized, not automatically to the most idealistic. ([Location 3656](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3656)) > The French Revolution unleashed six years of terror and trial by the guillotine, ending with the rise of the Napoleonic militaristic state. During World War I, the Russians rebelled against czarist rule, but that ultimately ushered in Stalin’s totalitarianism and the deaths of millions. Rebellions, no matter how idealistic in origin, can as often as not produce chaos that often leads to tyranny. ([Location 3659](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3659)) > In determining how to deal with a hostile and powerful England in 1807, President Jefferson wrote, “What is good in this case cannot be effected. We have, therefore, only to find out what will be least bad.” That struck me as sound advice during the Arab Spring. ([Location 3667](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3667)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > It is better to have a friend with deep flaws than an adversary with enduring hostility. ([Location 3751](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3751)) > “Dynamite in the hands of a child,” Winston Churchill wrote, “is not more dangerous than a strong policy weakly carried out.” ([Location 3774](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3774)) > As the strategist Rear Admiral J. C. Wylie had written, “Nobody other than God can consistently predict the onset, scope, tenor, intensity, course, and consequences of any war. Requirements therefore exist for a rucksack full of plans…because planning for certitude is the most grievous of all…mistakes.” ([Location 3786](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3786)) > As American naval strategist Alfred Mahan wrote, “If the strategy be wrong, the skill of the general on the battlefield, the valor of the soldier, the brilliancy of victory, however otherwise decisive, fail of their effect.” ([Location 3872](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3872)) > As President Truman, the great builder of the post–World War II order, put it, “Men make history; history doesn’t make the man.” ([Location 3876](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3876)) > “Whatever we learn to do, we learn by actually doing it,” Aristotle wrote. “People come to be builders, for instance, by building, and harp players, by playing the harp. In the same way, by doing just acts we come to be just. By doing self-controlled acts, we come to be self-controlled, and by doing brave acts, we become brave.” ([Location 3898](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3898)) > I have seen no case where weakness promotes the chance for peace. A Kipling passage comes to mind about a peace-seeking man (the lama) and an old soldier. “It is not a good fancy,” said the lama. “What profit to kill men?” “Very little—as I know,” [the old soldier replied,] “but if evil men were not now and then slain it would not be a good world for weaponless dreamers.” ([Location 3913](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3913)) > My warfighting style simply represents the Marine Corps way of war. It stems from a Corps that cannot stomach defeat, even when landed on hostile shores with the enemy to the front and the ocean at its back. It’s a naval force limited in its fighting philosophy to what the ships can carry, so it cannot rely on overwhelming numbers or heavy equipment. It’s a force that integrates skill, courage, cunning, and initiative into its own form of maneuver warfare, maneuver that takes form in the intellectual, physical, and spiritual realms. ([Location 3918](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3918)) > 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 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. ([Location 3930](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3930)) > Trust is the coin of the realm for creating the harmony, speed, and teamwork to achieve success at the lowest cost. ([Location 3972](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=3972)) > Because maverick thinkers are so important to an organization’s adaptability, high-ranking leaders need to be assigned the job of guiding and even protecting them, much as one would do for any endangered species. ([Location 4026](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=4026)) > adversaries; ([Location 4074](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B07SBRFVNH&location=4074))