Eric Greitens Quotes & Sayings

Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart. — Eric Greitens

It's easier to measure what we've told people than it is to measure how we've changed people. It is easier to preach to people than to practice with them. — Eric Greitens

Practice builds habits. Our habits are our character. When it comes to virtue, practice makes a very great difference - or rather, all the difference. — Eric Greitens

There is no school of thought that can save us from the simple fact that hard decisions are best made by good people, and that the best people can only be shaped by hard experience. — Eric Greitens

Accept that you are imperfect and always will be. Your quest is not to perfect yourself, but to better your imperfect self. — Eric Greitens

I can point you in a certain direction, maybe draw you a map and give you some ideas. I can't carry you where you need to go. — Eric Greitens

Warriors are warriors not because of their strengh, but because of their ability strengh to good purpose — Eric Greitens

It's less about choosing an adventure and more about choosing a path with purpose. — Eric Greitens

The excellent fail more often than the mediocre. — Eric Greitens

What happens to us becomes part of us. Resilient people do not bounce back from hard experiences; they find healthy ways to integrate them into their lives. In — Eric Greitens

Magnanimity" means "greatness of soul, — Eric Greitens

To begin where you are, you have to be where you are. This — Eric Greitens

In the name of "force protection," the military often rolls up windows, builds walls, and points rifles at the outside world. The best force protection, however, is to be surrounded by friends and allies. — Eric Greitens

Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor and the author of Man's Search for Meaning, wrote that human beings create meaning in three ways: thought their work, though their relationships, and by how they choose to meet unavoidable suffering. Every life brings hardship and trial, and every life also offers deep possibilities for meaningful work and love ... I've learned that courage and compassion are two sides of the same coin. — Eric Greitens

If you're a real frogman," he said, "then every time a woman leaves your side, she'll feel better about herself." ... The message felt similar to what Earl had taught: being strong meant being able to do good, to lift up and protect those whose lives you touched. — Eric Greitens

I thought buying at the local market would be an excellent way to build positive relationships with the local villagers. — Eric Greitens

We can only be well led by those who have learned well the habits of resilience. — Eric Greitens

As warriors, as humanitarians, they've taught me that without courage, compassion falters, and that without compassion, courage has no direction. — Eric Greitens

These moments of immersion, of engagement, of clear focus - moments that can last for hours, occasionally days - are some of the best times of our lives. — Eric Greitens

People always ask me, "What kind of people make it through Hell Week?" I don't really have an answer to that. I do know
generally
who won't make it through Hell Week. The weightlifting meatheads who think the size of their biceps indicates their strength: they usually fail. The kids covered in tattoos announcing to the world how tough they are: they usually fail. The preening leaders who don't want to be dirty: they usually fail. The "me first, look at me, I'm the best" former athletes who've always been told they're stars: they usually fail. The blowhards who have a thousand stories about what they're going to do but a thin record of what they've actually done: they usually fail. The whiners, the "this is not fair" guys: they usually fail. — Eric Greitens

Take care of your people is one of the principle lessons of military leadership. If we take care of our people on deployment, why should that change when we come home? — Eric Greitens

The best definition I have ever heard of a vocation is that it's the place where your great joy meets the world's great need. We need all of you to find your vocation. To develop your joys, your passions, and to match them to the world's great needs. — Eric Greitens

One of the reasons you are suffering right now is precisely because the purpose of your struggle is unclear. What are you working toward? What are you fighting for? Who are you going to be? — Eric Greitens

Often, your mentors are already in your life; you just haven't yet found a way to learn from them. — Eric Greitens

The fox knows many things . . . the hedgehog knows one big thing. — Eric Greitens

Smiling and breathing. These are simple things. Exercising and serving. These are simple things. Being grateful and gracious. These are simple things. Acting with humility. Acting with courage. These are simple things. Some people try to make this business of living too complicated, — Eric Greitens

A good peace, a solid peace, a peace in which communities can flourish, can only be built when we ask ourselves and each other to be more than just good, and better than just strong. And a good life, a meaningful life, a life in which we can enjoy the world and live with purpose, can only be built if we do more than live for ourselves. — Eric Greitens

What usually matters in your life is not the magical moment, but the quality of your daily practice. — Eric Greitens

Energy, curiosity, and wonder are not products of age. They're byproducts of what we do. — Eric Greitens

Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength - if we have the virtue of resilience. — Eric Greitens

First, you can develop resilience. Anyone can do it. No one can do it for you. You and you alone have to do the work. Second, you can develop resilience. It's possible to build virtues. It's possible to change your character. It's possible, therefore, to change the direction of your life. Third, you can develop resilience. Resilience cannot be purchased or given to you; you have to do the hard work of building excellence in your life. — Eric Greitens

Prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, or mend a broken bridge, or rebuild a ruined city; but prayer can water an arid soul, mend a broken heart and rebuild a weakened will. — Eric Greitens

Alone, human beings can feel hunger. Alone, we can feel cold. Alone, we can feel pain. To feel poor, however, is something we do only in comparison to others. — Eric Greitens

Virtue is not about what you deny yourself, but what you make of yourself. — Eric Greitens

Earl rarely used the word, but his whole system of teaching and his whole way of living was built around the concept of honor. You honored God by using your time wisely, and you honored your fellow man by treating him with respect. You honored your teacher by calling him "sir," and he honored his students by challenging them to face pain and become stronger. Earl had come to associate charity with pain, and he believed that love did its deepest work when applied to a wound. — Eric Greitens

Please, dear Lord, don't let me f*** up. - ALAN SHEPARD, first American in space, seconds before liftoff — Eric Greitens

Don't do this for me - do this with me. A leader earns devotion by showing devotion. — Eric Greitens

Why Resilience? Of all the virtues we can learn, no trait is more useful, more essential for survival, and more likely to improve the quality of life than the ability to transform adversity into an enjoyable challenge. - MIHALY CSIKSZENTMIHALYI Walker, — Eric Greitens

The best friends support us, challenge us, inspire us. And we do the same for them. — Eric Greitens

We all need something to struggle against and to struggle for. The aim in life is not to avoid struggles, but to have the right ones; not to avoid worry, but to care about the right things; not to live without fear, but to confront worthy fears with force and — Eric Greitens

I can't speak for Aeschylus or Epictetus or Aristotle. But I am convinced of this: they would have hated having their wisdom confined to classrooms and textbooks. This is wisdom about how to live. And it's your property as much as anyone's. It is yours. Take it. Use it. — Eric Greitens

Education aims to change what you know. Training aims to change who you are. — Eric Greitens

What you will become is a result of what you are willing to endure. Are you willing to work hard? To think hard? I know that you are. You always have been. — Eric Greitens

You don't have to know what perfect looks like, but you do have to know what better looks like. — Eric Greitens

Would you love people the same if they could never die? — Eric Greitens

Courage overcomes, but does not replace, fear. Joy overcomes, but does not replace, pain. — Eric Greitens

I've learned that courage and compassion are two sides of the same coin, and that every warrior, every humanitarian, every citizen is built to live with both.
In fact, to win a war, to create peace, to save a life, or just to live a good life requires of us - of every one of us - that we be both good and strong. — Eric Greitens

Seneca: Fate guides the willing but drags the unwilling. — Eric Greitens

Are you going to let what someone might say prevent you from doing what you must do? — Eric Greitens

Across the globe, even in the world's "worst places," people found ways to turn pain into wisdom and suffering into strength. They made their own actions, their very lives, into a memorial that honored the people they had lost. — Eric Greitens

Insights come through practice. When we work at something, we come to see it differently. — Eric Greitens

Failure and pain and hardship have the meaning we choose to give them. — Eric Greitens

The new has no special claim on the true. — Eric Greitens

We grow when we recover from the right pain in the right way. — Eric Greitens

So you ask yourself: Am I willing to take responsibility for my life, in word and in deed? If not, your chances of living a rich and fulfilling life are almost zero. If so, you have the potential for a joyous journey ahead. — Eric Greitens

Life is short. Life is uncertain. But we know that we have today. And we have each other. I believe that for each of us, there is a place on the frontlines. — Eric Greitens

The Lance Corporal [a junior enlisted rank] at the back of your platoon may not know every detail of your operation. He may not have read every piece of intelligence about your enemy, or every nuance of your larger strategy, but he'll always know one thing: he'll know whether or not you care about him. — Eric Greitens

Start with this: not all pain matters. There are people whose attention is consistently drawn away from their purpose and toward their pain, like a moth to a light. Such people, who pay attention to every annoyance and obstacle in their way, are usually unsuccessful in their endeavors. In extreme cases they are mentally ill. A healthy person, a flourishing person, learns to move past a lot of annoyance and a good deal of pain. — Eric Greitens

Yet the basic fact remains: we live in a world marked by violence, and if we want to protect others, we sometimes have to be willing to fight. — Eric Greitens

Some people are made stronger by suffering. Others are defeated. The difference is resilience. — Eric Greitens

There were a number of definitions of courage, but now I was seeing it in its simplest form: you do what has to be done day after day, and you never quit. — Eric Greitens

Teams that are moved by great purpose become tighter still when things are tough. — Eric Greitens

Those who are excellent at their work have learned to comfortably coexist with failure. The excellent fail more often than the mediocre. They begin more. They attempt more. They attack more. Mastery lives quietly atop a mountain of mistakes. — Eric Greitens

A veteran who comes home from war is returning from one of the most intense experiences a human being can have. Even if he was not under fire every day, he woke up every morning as part of a team. He started every day with a purpose, and a mission that mattered to those around him. — Eric Greitens

Self-respect isn't something a teacher or a coach or a government can hand you. Self-respect grows through self-created success: not because we've been told we're good, but when we know we're good. Not everyone gets a trophy, because not every performance merits celebration. If we want our children to have a shot at resilience, they must learn what failure means. If they don't learn that lesson from loving parents and coaches and teachers, life will teach it to them in a far harsher way. — Eric Greitens

Just as any work can be made into a miserable bore, any vocation can be a source of joy — Eric Greitens

Someone else can put a thought in your head. But an insight is something you have to earn on your own. — Eric Greitens

When people have a shared commitment, differences and disagreements don't disappear, but they can be seen in a new light. — Eric Greitens

storytelling is not just a way to remember what happened; it's a way to understand what happened. — Eric Greitens

So let's accept what must be accepted, without letting our acceptance justify inaction. Don't — Eric Greitens

You have enemies? Why, it is the story of every man who has done a great deed or created a new idea. It is the cloud which thunders around everything that shines. Fame must have enemies, as light must have gnats. - VICTOR HUGO — Eric Greitens

Friends challenge the flaws in our thinking and the flaws in our character. When they do that, they make us better. Good friends hold us to a higher standard when we are ready to make an excuse for ourselves. Friends sympathize with our pain, but they stop us from wallowing in it. Friends point out our blind spots, and they do so not with vindictiveness or cruelty, but out of honesty, love, and a desire that we live the fullest and best life possible. — Eric Greitens

The best experts and the best mentors have flexible minds. — Eric Greitens

Death is like the sun. It infuses every part of our lives, but it doesn't make sense to stare at it. — Eric Greitens

And it's often in those battles that we are most alive: it's on the frontlines of our lives that we earn wisdom, create joy, forge friendships, discover happiness, find love, and do purposeful work. If you want to win any meaningful kind of victory, you'll have to fight for it. — Eric Greitens

When I was in third grade
the age of many of the boys here
my parents had debated whether or not to buy me a pair of [special soccer shoes] ... Here in Bolivia most of the kids played in bare feet, and they had as much fun as we ever had. Alone, human beings can feel hunger. Alone, we can feel cold. Alone, we can feel pain. To feel poor, however, is something that we do only in comparison to others. I took off my shoes. — Eric Greitens

The world needs many more humanitarians than it needs warriors, but there can be none of the former without enough of the latter. — Eric Greitens

I thought of Pericles' speech to the families of the Athenian war dead, in which he said, What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. — Eric Greitens

Fortune will play her hand. And when she stands between us and flourishing, all we can do is live our best life. One — Eric Greitens

Readiness is a form of humility, spurred by a recognition of how little we can know or control. Hardship is unavoidable. Resilient people recognize this reality. Then they prepare themselves for it, seeking to meet it as best they can, on their own terms. — Eric Greitens

It was foolish to cast someone as a saint just because they had suffered. — Eric Greitens

I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. Humility leads to clarity. Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart. With an open mind and a forgiving heart, I see every person as superior to me in some way; with every person as my teacher, I grow in wisdom. As I grow in wisdom, humility becomes ever more my guide. I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. — Eric Greitens

Wise people could sometimes be dumb. — Eric Greitens

I had been given the greatest gift an education could provide: I had a better idea of what it meant to live a good life — Eric Greitens

Great calamity met with great spirit can create great strength. — Eric Greitens

The point is to read in a way that leads to better thinking, and to think in a way that leads to better living. — Eric Greitens

If you respected someone, then you had to ask something of them. — Eric Greitens

In the midst of hardship and fear, suffering and difficulty, the person who's built the habit of focus harnesses tremendous power. — Eric Greitens

We learn who we are and where we come from, what is right and what is wrong, from hearing and telling stories - something — Eric Greitens

If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them. — Eric Greitens

Excuses are incompatible with excellence. The — Eric Greitens

You can't say there shouldn't be poisonous serpents - that's the way life is. But in the field of action, if you see a poisonous serpent about to bite somebody, you kill it. That's not saying no to the serpent. That's saying no to that situation. So let's accept what must be accepted, without letting our acceptance justify inaction. — Eric Greitens

When we're struggling, we don't need a book in our hands. We need the right words in our minds. When things are tough, a mantra does more good than a manifesto. — Eric Greitens

For many people in the Western world, freedom is limited not so much by what others do to us, but by what we cannot do for ourselves. Walker, — Eric Greitens

You can put off the life you want to live until you wake up to find that it's too late. — Eric Greitens

Our relations seemed poor to me, and I wasn't surprised that the US intelligence picture in the Horn of Africa was weak. Much of what I read consisted of recycled news headlines repackaged as intelligence. Real, valuable intelligence only came from real people, yet we hadn't done much to meet and work with the people. — Eric Greitens

An unwillingness to endure the hardship of a depressed time keeps us from the possibility of capturing the wisdom and strength and joy that can exist on the other side. There is a season to be sad. Painful things hurt. Allow yourself to be hurt. — Eric Greitens

Five variables go into training or practice of any kind: frequency, intensity, duration, recovery, and reflection. — Eric Greitens

Clarity of purpose creates perspective. — Eric Greitens

Some people try to live a life without criticism by shrinking themselves. They try to make themselves invisible. And you know what happens then? It's not just that they diminish themselves, fail to live their best lives, and squander their time. All of that happens, of course. But you know what else happens? People criticize them for being invisible. — Eric Greitens