137 Quotes by David Petraeus

Well, the oil, the oil spot, if you will, is a, is a term in counterinsurgency literature that connotes a peaceful area, secure area. So what you're trying to do is to always extend that, to push that out.

I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.

The fact is that Iran doesn't want to see the Taliban come back any more than do most Afghan citizens.

If you don't want to have to kill or capture every bad guy in the country, you have to reintegrate those who are willing to be reconciled and become part of the solution instead of a continued part of the problem. And then, above all, the resources.

President Obama has said that our aspirations should be realistic. We are not going to turn one of the poorest countries in the world, that was plunged into 30 years of war, into an advanced, industrialized, Western-style democracy. What we want to achieve is Afghanistan's capacity to secure and govern itself.

Items of interest will be located, identified, monitored, and remotely controlled through technologies such as radio-frequency identification, sensor networks, tiny embedded servers, and energy harvesters - all connected to the next-generation internet using abundant, low-cost, and high-power computing.

I am not a politician, and I will never be, and I say that with absolute conviction.

The president and I sat down in the Oval Office, and he expressed very clearly that what he wants from me is my best professional military advice.

I will not ever run for political office. I can assure you.