Michael Mullen Quotes & Sayings (Page 3)

“I have met parents all over the world, and they all just want to raise their kids to a higher standard than they were raised with.”

“My job is simply to give advice, to be a counselor to our nation's leaders.”

“The sea is my business.”

“One of the reasons that I'm still in the military - or I stayed in the military - is because I think the military has been a place where certainly people could improve, advance, and were treated fairly.”

“Right now we're on the President Obama plan, and we'll stay with that. And from my perspective, the reason we're there is to make sure that we can achieve the principal goal which is ensure that Afghanistan can never become a safe haven for a terrorist organization like al Qaeda.”

“There isn't a fight that I'm in that I'm not asking the question, 'What could we have done to avoid this?' Or, 'What can we do to avoid this in the future in terms of the kinds of things that we see?'”

“When I go there to Afghanistan or Pakistan, the question both asked - and if it's not asked, implied - is, 'Are you staying this time?' because we left last time, in 1989 in Afghanistan, and we sanctioned Pakistan from 1990 to 2002. So I think it's a fair question.”

“I'm very concerned about the nuclear weapons development for Iran and the destabilizing influence it has and they have in that part of the world. And I strongly endorse continued pressure, diplomatically, financially, economically.”

“Our training is world-class across all the services. We spend an awful lot on every soldier, sailor, airman, Marine, Coast Guardsman that comes in, and we ask them to do an awful lot, sometimes more than we expect of ourselves, and they do that.”

“Too often we just look at these glistening successes. Behind them in many, many cases is failure along the way, and that doesn't get put into the Wikipedia story or the bio. Yet those failures teach you every bit as much as the successes.”