Oliver North Quotes

Death is never easy when you know the people doing the dying.

I'm trusting in the Lord and a good lawyer.

Without any intended hubris, I've lead a pretty exciting life. What I've tried to do in Mission Compromised is draw on those experiences to create a sense of excitement and realism within the story

An easy life is rarely meaningful and a meaningful life rarely easy.

The 2.4 million bright, brave, incredibly fit and remarkably talented young Americans who have served in our armed forces since we were attacked on 9-11-01 are all volunteers. As General Petraeus put it during a conversation we had in Afghanistan, 'They all came or stayed, knowing they were going to war.' For more than a decade, these patriots and their loved ones have made extraordinary sacrifices for this country. They embody the classical definition of heroes: those who put themselves at risk for the benefit of others.

I would not trade you a billion dollars for the kids I led to combat in Vietnam or in fact any of the Marines that I served with for a quarter of a century.

We lie by not telling you things...We don't lie by telling you things that aren't true.

The terrorists that we are up against today do not rely upon cell phones and SAT phones and emails. They rely on couriers. You cannot intercept what a courier is telling somebody

All of my high school male teachers were WWII and/or Korean War veterans. They taught my brothers and me the value of service to our country and reinforced what our dad had shown us about the meaning of service.

I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version.

A Commander-in-Chief needs to do two things. One - tell us who the enemy is. And two - say we are fighting to win.

Heroes aren't athletes who set new sports records, or Hollywood actors who make 'daring' films or politicians who make bold promises. Heroes are people who place themselves at risk for the benefit of others.

I haven't, in the 23 years that I have been in the uniformed services of the United States of America, ever violated an order - not one.

God knows, we don't want prayer.

The average term length of a member of congress is approaching 15 years, and the average term length of a convicted criminal is less than three. We've got that backward.

I think capital punishment's day is done in this country. I don't think it's fairly applied.

I want to make it clear that I honestly answered every question put to me during the so-called Iran-Contra hearings. But if they didn't ask me about something, I wasn't about to reveal things that would put other people in jeopardy

History and war are cruel pedants. Those who know too little of the former are likely to have too much of the latter.

I think as a rifle platoon and company commander your view is about 1,000 meters in front of you and you hope you can cover that ground and not have to back up and give it up again.

Bill Clinton is not my Commander in Chief.

The good Lord gave me eight grandchildren, and I am convinced that through schools like Desert Christian that we are going to overwhelm the adversaries, not just with bombs and bullets, but with the demonstration of Christian principles.

As a Marine officer in combat, I was responsible for the lives and safety of all the Marines who served with me.

I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.

I came here to tell you the truth, the good, the bad and the ugly.

I never considered myself a fall guy. I know what I did. I know why I did it. I'm not ashamed of it.

It's one thing to say don't commit atrocities on the battlefield. It's another thing to say don't get caught doing atrocities.

President Reagan didn't always know what he knew.

There is no moral middle ground. Indifference is not an option. ... For the sake of our children, I implore each of you to be unyielding and inflexible in your opposition to drugs.

The lesson of Pearl Harbor ought never to be forgotten, and of course the motto that came from that, 69 years ago, the war which my dad fought, was 'Remember Pearl Harbor, never again.' We need to keep that to mind.

In my first book, Under Fire, I wrote that I revered Ronald Reagan. That was a dozen years ago. I still feel that way. I think he changed the world for the better for my children and my children's children.

And of course there is so much of World War II that is documented that we never have seen

Today, only 2 percent of the people know the name of someone serving in uniform. That means 2 percent of your listeners can actually conjure up the image of someone wearing the uniform of the military of the United States.

I'm like John Wayne. I only play good guys. Describing his cameo role on a TV series.

Writers are storytellers. So are readers.

I don't think there is another person in America that wants to tell this story as much as I do.

We don't need a head of state who guts our defenses and draws phony red lines with a pink crayon.

I know the difference between right and wrong, and I can tell good from bad. But I also know that the more difficult decisions come when we have to choose between good and better. The toughest calls of all are those we have to make between bad and worse.

And so, the youngsters you have today, even though there are far fewer of them - in World War II 16.5 million men and women in uniform, today roughly a million in uniform in spite of the fact that the country is almost twice as large a population as we had in World War II.