25 Quotes by Nathaniel Fick

People build continuity into their life: Places, friends and goals. We go to work on Monday with plans for Friday night, enroll as freshmen intending to be seniors and save money for retirement. We try to control what comes next and shape it to meet our will.

Safety is paramount.” “If safety were paramount,” Whitmer declared, “we’d stay in the barracks and play pickup basketball. Good training is paramount.

Complex ideas must be made simple, or they’ll remain ideas and never be put into action.

The Marines,′ my dad said, ’will teach you everything I love you too much to teach you.

VJ had gone to the Naval Academy, where he competed as a powerlifter and developed a distaste for military customs such as short hair and addressing people by rank.

Marine training is essentially a psychological battle against the instinct for self-preservation.

I thought I was losing my mind. The only way I knew I was still sane was that I thought I might be going crazy. Surely, that awareness meant I was sane. Crazy people think they’re sane. Only sane people can thing they’re crazy. I was reduced to taking comfort in a tautology.

We learned that indecision is a decision, that inaction has a cost all its own. Good commanders act and create opportunities. Great commanders ruthlessly exploit those opportunities.

Worst of all were the accolades and thanks from people “for what you guys did over there.” Thanks for what, I wanted to ask – shooting kids, cowering in terror behind a berm, dropping artillery on people’s homes?