Quotes from Robert Coram

It was the familiar "rogue agent defense" — the agents had no authority to make the promises, and therefore the promises were not legal.

From the day he assumed command, Krulak's leadership theory was the same one he had learned from Holland Smith in the Caribbean and from Lemuel Shepherd in the Pacific: training, training, and more training.

KRULAK and Dyer wrote the first textbook for Marine helicopter pilots and war planners. Usually doctrine and tactics are developed after a weapon is available, but Krulak believed that doctrine should drive, not follow, the development of the helicopter. He

AFTER World War II, General Holland M. Smith said that if Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, the great battles of the Pacific were won in the Caribbean.

Marines say that the difference between a Marine general and God is that God doesn't think he is a general. If Krulak decreed that a new world would be created in two weeks, his will would be done. And it was.

The Dining Out is a formal affair rooted in ancient history. From pre-Christian Roman legions, to marauding Vikings, to King Arthur's knights, a banquet to celebrate military victories has long been customary among warriors. British soldiers brought the practice to colonial America, where it was adopted by George Washington's army. Close bonds between U.S. Army Air Forces pilots and Royal Air Force (RAF) officers during World War II cemented the custom in the U.S. military.

Few things upset Congress more than the idea that someone is trying to take over its lily pad, and Vandegrift had its undivided attention when he moved on to specific Marine Corps interests.

So when a Vietnam-era fighter pilot says he flew up north, that means he ripped off the front gate of hell and flew into the deadliest air-defense system ever devised.

Krulak had done the right thing, but there is often a price to pay for doing the right thing.

No higher praise can be awarded a fighter pilot than to say he is "shit hot." (The phonetic version used in polite company is "Sierra Hotel.")

The two defining characteristics of a successful assault are detailed planning and violent execution. And once a beachhead is established, it is crucial to push inland as quickly as possible. The idea is not simply to seize a beach but to take enemy-held territory

Every leader who wants to make significant change needs a "resident son of a bitch" who can make hard decisions without regard to rank or personality.

Once he told me that the greatest weapon that one can have is controlled anger, and the greatest defect that one can have is uncontrolled anger.

If a man can reduce his needs to zero, he is truly free: there is nothing that can be taken from him and nothing anyone can do to hurt him.

Boyd dove deeper and deeper into the study of war. He realized that while wars take place between nations, every person experiences some form of war; conflict is a fundamental part of human nature. To prevail in personal and business relations, and especially war, we must understand what takes place in a person's mind.

judge people by what they do and not what they say they will do.

Boyd, borrowing from Sun Tzu, said the best commander is the one who wins while avoiding battle. The intent is to shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse of the adversary by generating confusion, disorder, panic, and chaos. Boyd said war is organic and compared his technique to clipping the nerves, muscles, and tendons of an enemy, thus reducing him to jelly. As Boyd

So you got your reward; you got kicked in the teeth. That means you were doing good work. Getting kicked in the teeth is the reward for good work.

The intent is to shatter cohesion, produce paralysis, and bring about collapse of the adversary by generating confusion, disorder, panic, and chaos.

Understanding the OODA loop enables a commander to compress time - that is, the time between observing a situation and taking an action. A commander can use the temporal discrepancy (a form of fast transient) to select the least-expected action rather than what is predicted to be the most effective action. The enemy can also figure out what might be the most effective. To take the least-expected action disorients the enemy. It causes him to pause, wonder, to question.

A pilot can be too cautious. He can be too methodical. He reads and memorizes the specifications, knows the boundaries of the performance envelope, and is careful never to nudge up against the performance limits. But Boyd did not believe the performance specs and had no fear of the aircraft.

This means that they understand their commander's overall intent and they know their job is to do whatever is necessary to fulfill that intent.

Often, when a man is young and idealistic, he believes that if he works hard and does the right thing, success will follow.

They usually did not fight what is known as a "war of attrition." Rather, they used deception, speed, fluidity of action, and strength against weakness. They used tactics that disoriented and confused—tactics that, in Boyd's words, caused the enemy "to unravel before the fight.