41 Quotes by Dave Grossman

Pain shared is pain divided, and you are only as sick as your secrets. In a debriefing, you have the opportunity to share those secrets and to share your pain as you come together to help each other through a traumatic event. Those who say that they do not.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has. – Margaret Mead, anthropologist.

The basic response stages to killing in combat are concern about killing, the actual kill, exhilaration, remorse, and rationalization and acceptance.

If you spend years and years dialing 4-1-1 and never practice 9-1-1, then under stress you are likely to dial 4-1-1.

General James Gavin, the commander of the 82d Airborne Division in World War II, carried an M1 Garand rifle, then the standard American-infantry weapon of World War II. He advised young infantry officers not to carry any equipment that would make them stand out in the eyes of the enemy.

Stress acclimatization is about measuring precise doses of stress followed by waves of recovery and then repeating these cycles very specifically. There must be time for adaptation to take place and there must be enough training, repeated over time, to help it stick as well as reinforcing the conditioning.

The fight-or-flight dichotomy is the appropriate set of choices for any creature faced with danger other than that which comes from its own species. When we examine the responses of creatures confronted with aggression from their own species, the set of options expands to include posturing and submission.

The basic aim of a nation at war is establishing an image of the enemy in order to distinguish as sharply as possible the act of killing from the act of murder. – Glenn Gray The Warriors.

Napoleon said, “The moment of greatest vulnerability is the instant immediately after victory.