Top 55 Eric Greitens Quotes

One of the things that I’ve found in everything that I’ve done: People want leaders to create a sense of direction and to lead and to act.

Ask yourself, how can I learn from the people around me. Often, your mentors are already in your life; you just haven’t yet found a way to learn from them.

Since Bin Laden’s death, many Americans have decided that our job in Afghanistan is done. They see a victory in the counterterrorism campaign, and are tired of the corruption, confusion and dysfunction of the nation-building campaign.

If you care about people, then you’re willing to act not just with compassion, but you’re also willing to act with courage.

Tort reform is important. We need to prevent trial lawyers from killing good jobs.

It certainly could be that there are prejudices around. I can only speak to what I have lived, and I have experienced that people have been incredibly welcoming to me as a Jewish Republican.

When I was in Iraq and Afghanistan, I never once turned to someone before a raid on a house and said, ‘Hey, man, are you a Democrat or a Republican?’

What happens for a lot of veterans when they come home, especially when they get back to their community is that they can go to a very tough and hard place and they start to wonder, ‘What’s next for me?’ and they ask themselves, ‘Why did this happen to me?’

One of the great things about the SEAL teams in particular, and the American military in general, is the tremendous diversity of backgrounds and experience that people bring to their service.

When vets come home from war they are going through a tremendous change in identity. Then the VA, and others, encourage them to view themselves as disabled.

I had a great time at Oxford, got a wonderful, wonderful education there.

What matters is what you do. And this runs counter to what a lot of the culture teaches people about putting feelings first. By contrast, resilient people focus not on what they intend, but on what they achieve.

Teach your children early not to pass the blame or make excuses, but to take responsibility for their actions.

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

God has a way of helping you to move through suffering and actually become stronger.

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

I actually think it’s very important that the Navy SEAL community stay out of politics.

I was raised to stand up for the little guy, for working families and the middle class.

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?

For too long, Missouri has been run by career politicians, owned by corrupt consultants, high-paid lobbyists and special interests.

Your children should know that you’re always there for them, and that they can call on you when needed. But give them the opportunity to learn to solve their own problems.

In any leadership, whenever you’re facing a tough challenge, find ways to bring people together and get them to serve together.

Young men often seek tests and trials, and to me, BUD/S training – basic underwater demolition/SEAL – seemed like the ultimate test.

Defeating a terrorist organization is like fighting a forest fire; there’s never a clear moment of victory, and even after you’ve won, you have to watch carefully.

We’ve already seen other candidates set up these secretive super PACs where they don’t take any responsibility for what they’re funding… because that’s how the game has always been played. I’ve been very proud to tell people, ‘I’m stepping forward, and you can see every single one of our donors.’

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.

I did a lot of humanitarian work before I joined the military.

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.

So Hell Week is considered to be the hardest week of the hardest military training in the world. It is a week of continuous military training during which most classes sleep for a total of two to five hours over the course of the entire week.

My parents were both Democrats and I grew up as a Democrat. Basically I was told that the Democrats were the party that cared about people. I liked people and I cared about them, so I was a Democrat.

I don’t think that we need to raise tuition on our students. I don’t think that our students should be made to pay for the mistakes of our past politicians and the promises they made.

Right to work doesn’t eliminate unions. It makes them more responsible and accountable to their members on the front lines.

We need to make sure we’re making a distinction between violent felons who are in this country illegally and children who were brought here through no fault of their own, who have grown up here in America.

If you want to start or grow a business in the state of Missouri and hire more people with good jobs, I will be your friend and ally.

I’m not after anything, I don’t want to be part of politics, I don’t want to be a part of anything.

I’d finished a dissertation, writing about how international humanitarian organizations worked with kids in war zones and then I made this transition from the academic world to officer candidate school and to the SEAL teams. It was one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.

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.

I am a conservative Republican, but I didn’t start out that way. I was raised as a Democrat.

The mistake that I made was that I was engaged in a consensual relationship with a woman who was not my wife. That is a mistake for which I am very sorry.

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.

Sometimes the purpose of our opponents is to be our teachers.

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.

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.

We need to protect every life and that we need to defend the lives of the unborn.

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.

There is no room for anti-Semitism in the Republican Party, and the leaders need to show that.

Like the plague, opioids kill the young, the old, the healthy, the sick, the virtuous and the sinful.

It’s very important for us as a group of Navy SEALs, to make sure that the message that we send to the country is that we’re ready to serve any commander in chief, the elected head of the armed forces, that the people of the United States elect. That is our mission, that’s our duty, as Navy SEALs.

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

The more I thought about myself, the weaker I got. The more I recognized that I was serving a purpose larger than myself, the stronger I got.

I became a conservative because I believe that caring for people means more than just spending taxpayer money; it means delivering results. It means respecting and challenging our citizens, telling them what they need to hear, not simply what they want to hear.

We are fighting to bring more jobs to the people of Missouri.

It’s really important to have role models, and a lot of the ancients always talked about this. Seneca talked about this, Aristotle talked about this, and in fact, this was my boxing coach’s philosophy in college, was that you have to have role models.

The fact is, Missouri’s budget is broken. For decades, insiders, special interests, lobbyists and prior politicians have made a mess of our budget.