Quotes from Norman Schwarzkopf

I get angry at a principle, not a person.

War is a profane thing.

With a chemical alarm, you're going to build one that is oversensitive because you would rather the alarm go off and give you a false alarm than to err on the other side.

An awful lot has been written about my temper.

I am living proof that if you catch prostate cancer early, it can be reduced to a temporary inconvenience, and you can go back to a normal life.

Good generalship is a realization that... you've got to try and figure out how to accomplish your mission with a minimum loss of human life.

The fun of fishing is catching 'em, not killing 'em.

It doesn't take a hero to order men into battle. It takes a hero to be one of those men who goes into battle.

But I would defy anyone to go back over the years and tell me anyone whose career I've ruined, anyone whom I've driven out of the service, anyone I've fired from a job.

Carpet bombing tends to portray something that's totally indiscriminate, you know, en masse without regard to the target.

All you have to do is hold your first soldier who is dying in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that I can't do anything about it... Then you understand the horror of war.

You can't help someone get up a hill without getting closer to the top yourself.

Success is sweet, but the secret is sweat.

It's nice to feel that you have a purpose.

They say the good Lord doesn't charge you for the days you hunt and fish, and I believe that.

Generals aren't in the business of commenting on the correctness or incorrectness of the President's decisions. Anybody who thinks he should be able to do that ought to be fired on the spot.

Good generalship is the realisation that you've got to figure out how to accomplish your mission with the minimum loss of human life.

When I fish, I stop thinking about anything else. But truth be told, if you want to declare victories, I can tell you the fish have won a lot more than I have. It's interesting that something with a brain the size of a fish's can outsmart us humans, who think we are el supremo.

I can stand in a crystal stream without another human around me and cast all day long, and if I never catch a single fish, I can come home and still feel like I had a wonderful time. It's the being there that's important.

Fish are a renewable resource, and one of the problems we've had is people feel obliged to catch the limit, then throw 'em in the garbage can.

There's no doubt in my mind that whichever commander ordered the blowing up of Kamisiyah did so in following the instructions that he had received.

I like to say I'm not a hero.

Particularly when you're dealing with very high ranking people, you know, you have to get their attention, they are used to, by their rank, of having their own way and doing their own thing and when it's necessary to all work together on something, sometimes you have to hit the mule between the eyes with a two by four to get its attention.

To be an effective leader, you have to have a manipulative streak - you have to figure out the people working for you and give each tasks that will take advantage of his strength.