Quotes from Eric Greitens

Success means eliminating Al Qaeda's ability to launch terrorist attacks against the United States and our allies.

As the Obama administration negotiates with the Karzai government and with Pakistan, we may be tempted to make commitments that, in the name of nation-building, restrict our ability to fight terrorists. If we must involve the Afghan government in every night raid, our operations will slow and targets will escape.

Our firefighters, they show up every day to fight fires. If, God forbid, there's a situation where they have to fight cancer, they shouldn't have to fight bureaucrats to get the care they deserve.

Part of the attraction of the SEAL teams was the incredible tests that it offered.

I don't think many people want to say to themselves that they've quit. At the same time, we've all failed in our lives, we've all failed at different things in different ways and I think there's a lot to be said about facing that failure squarely.

Of course fear does not automatically lead to courage. Injury does not necessarily lead to insight. Hardship will not automatically make us better. Pain can break us or make us wiser. Suffering can destroy us or make us stronger. Fear can cripple us, or it can make us more courageous. It is resilience that makes the difference.

I've never been in politics before, but even in the brief time that I've been running for governor, I've been exposed to some of the worst people I've ever known. Liars, cowards, sociopaths.

I know the pride of carrying our nation's flag abroad - and I have felt the grief of burying too many friends beneath that flag at home.

Whenever we love or care for anything in our lives we're willing to respond with care and with compassion, but if something that we love or someone we love is threatened, we're also willing to respond with courage.

When people have jobs in a thriving economy, it solves a lot of problems.

It's only in the act of pushing yourself, challenging yourself to make a contribution to your community, to your family, to your country, that you actually realize your full self, you know?

You don't reduce crime by taking away guns from law-abiding citizens.

Missourians are a hardworking people. They want good, quality jobs.

In failure, children learn how to struggle with adversity and how to confront fear. By reflecting on failure, children begin to see how to correct themselves and then try again with better results.

The more successful Navy SEALs there are, the more glory it reflects on the community and the better it is for our country.

Before I became a SEAL, I'd done humanitarian work around the world - with refugee families in Bosnia, with unaccompanied children in Rwanda, with kids who lost limbs to land mines in Cambodia.

I first started doing service, actually, as a kid, doing service projects. Later in college, I started doing international humanitarian work that brought me to places like Bosnia, Rwanda.

I was at this dinner for Rhodes Scholars. And we were in the Rhodes mansion, which is this fancy mansion on the Oxford campus. And I remember I looked up in the rotunda, and I saw that etched into the marble were the names of Rhodes Scholars who had left Oxford, and had fought and died in World War II.

It's oftentimes the case that relief workers, people who've been involved in development projects and foreign assistance, have a real understanding of foreign cultures that the military desperately needs if we're going to be able to work effectively.

Our state's world famous motto, 'Show me,' reminds us that Missourians don't much value big talk.

I think there are a couple of key lessons that come from Judaism that shaped my life. One of them is the idea we have a duty to repair the world, and all of us should play a role in our lives in trying to repair the world and to make the world better for the next generation.

I read Mitch Daniels's book, 'Keeping the Republic,' several times.

Every entrepreneur has to deal with hardship, but if we're tough enough and thoughtful enough, we can find a way to make hard things make us better.

The U.S. military may well be the best-integrated large institution on the planet. You have people from every corner of the country, every ethnic background, every walk of life, and we all come together to serve.