Quotes from John F. Kelly

We Marines believe that God gave America the greatest gift He could bestow to man while he lived on this earth -freedom. We also believe He gave us another gift nearly as precious - our soldiers, sailors, airmen, Coast Guardsmen, and Marines - to safeguard that gift and guarantee no force on this earth can ever steal it away.

The young people I work with every day and serve the nation in the armed forces in general, and the Marine Corps in particular, have broken the mold and stepped out as men and women of character who are making their own way in life while protecting ours.

Those with less of a sense of service to the nation never understand it when men and women of character step forward to look danger and adversity straight in the eye, refusing to blink, or give ground, even to their own deaths. The protected can't begin to understand the price paid so they and their families can sleep safe and free at night.

My fear was of being offered a job that would be kind of a full-time position at a veterans organization or even in the government... I'd prefer to not be that, to come up the Beltway every day.

Given the opportunity to do another 9/11, our vicious enemy would do it today, tomorrow, and every day thereafter. I don't know why they hate us, and I frankly don't care, but they do hate us and are driven irrationally to our destruction.

My first time overseas was taking 10,000 tons of beer to Vietnam.

Since 1945, no one in the U.S. military has liked the end result of the military conflicts we've been in: Vietnam, Korea, certainly Iraq, and probably Afghanistan. But in a democracy, you salute.