Fick Quotes & Sayings

Marine training is essentially a psychological battle against the instinct for self-preservation. — Nathaniel Fick

My team is the best, the platoon is good, the company is awful, and the battalion is actively trying to kill us. — Nathaniel Fick

Hardness," I was learning, was the supreme virtue among recon Marines. The greatest compliment one could pay to another was to say he was hard. Hardness wasn't toughness, nor was it courage, although both were part of it. Hardness was the ability to face an overwhelming situation with aplomb, smile calmly at it, and then triumph through sheer professional pride. — Nathaniel Fick

The whole glory of virtue resides in activity. — Marcus Tullius Cicero

One does not need a faith in God. Sufficient is a faith in created things, that enables one to move among objects in the conviction that they exist, persuaded of the irrefutable reality of this chair, this umbrella, this cigarette, this friendship. He who doubts himself is lost, just as someone scared of failure in love-making fails indeed. We are happy in the company of people who make us feel the unquestionable presence of the world, just as the body of the beloved gives us the certainty of those shoulders, that bosom, that curve of the hips, the surge of these as incontestable as the sea. And one who is in despair, we are taught by Singer, can act as though he believed: faith will come afterwards. — Claudio Magris

Worst of all were the accolades and thanks from people "for what you guys did over there." Thanks for what, I wanted to ask - shooting kids, cowering in terror behind a berm, dropping artillery on people's homes? — Nathaniel Fick

The Marines,' my dad said, 'will teach you everything I love you too much to teach you. — Nathaniel Fick

Do nothing but be prepared to do anything. — Nathaniel Fick

People build continuity into their life: Places, friends and goals. We go to work on Monday with plans for Friday night, enroll as freshmen intending to be seniors and save money for retirement. We try to control what comes next and shape it to meet our will. — Nathaniel Fick

Great Marine commanders, like all great warriors, are able to kill that which they love most -- their men. — Nathaniel Fick

I thought I was losing my mind. The only way I knew I was still sane was that I thought I might be going crazy. Surely, that awareness meant I was sane. Crazy people think they're sane. Only sane people can thing they're crazy. I was reduced to taking comfort in a tautology. — Nathaniel Fick

Learn to love mornings! Everyday is a fresh start. You've a lot to look forward to. Your whole life is in front of you. You can get up everyday and decide what you're going to accomplish, what goals you're going to work towards. Think about that. Every morning is an opportunity to change what you aren't happy with. — Adriana Locke

When you are serving volunteer professional military, you take an oath to the Constitution, not to a policy or a president and you swear to obey the lawful orders of the democratically elected government. And so at the end of the day you could table your personal political views and do your job. — Nathaniel Fick

Christeson, cut that stop sign down and put it in the back of the truck". He looked at me in disbelief. An Officer had never before ordered him to commit vandalism. — Nathaniel Fick

Complex ideas must be made simple, or they'll remain ideas and never be put into action. — Nathaniel Fick

Your job is to be the hardest motherfucker in your platoon," he said while pointing at me across the desk. "Do that, and everything else will fall into place."
He added that I was assigned to Bravo Company, call sign Hitman, and wished me luck. — Nathaniel Fick

Strong combat leadership is never by committee. Platoon commanders must command, and command in battle isn't based on consensus. It's based on consent. Any leader wields only as much authority and influence as is conferred by the consent of those he leads. The Marines allowed me to be their commander, and they could revoke their permission at any time. — Nathaniel Fick

Capture the sacred moment. — Lailah Gifty Akita

Music, the greatest good that mortals know and all of heaven we have hear below. — Joseph Addison

Im not advocating social Darwinism, I am witnessing actual Darwinism.
If you are in a camp with a bunch of campers, and a bear attacks, you don't have to be faster than the bear.
You only have to be faster than the slowest camper — Michael Ruppert

VJ had gone to the Naval Academy, where he competed as a powerlifter and developed a distaste for military customs such as short hair and addressing people by rank. — Nathaniel Fick

I hurt for my Marines, goodhearted American guys who'd bear these burdens for the rest of their lives. And I mourned for myself. Not in self-pity, but for the kid who'd come to Iraq. He was gone. I did all this in the dark, away from the platoon, because combat command is the loneliest job in the world. — Nathaniel Fick

Why do they call it the restroom? Is there anybody just resting in this room? — Dane Cook

Tactical catastrophes are rarely the outcome of a single poor decision. Small compromises incrementally close off options until a commander is forced into actions he would never choose freely. — Nathaniel Fick

The United States is now relearning an ancient lesson, dating back to the Roman Empire. Brutalizing an enemy only serves to brutalize the army ordered to do it. Torture corrodes the mind of the torturer. — James Risen

The rule of captivity is to bend, not break. — Nathaniel Fick

You can't volunteer to go to war and then bitch about getting shot at. — Nathaniel Fick

Infantry Marines live only and forever in the real world. — Nathaniel Fick

What we need, of course, is a language which will allow us to distinguish the normal or routine fuck from the glorious, the rare, or the lousy one - a fack from a fick, a fick from a fock - but we have more names for parts of horses than we have for kinds of kisses, and our earthy words are all ... well ... 'dirty'. It says something dirty about us, no doubt, because in a society which had a mind for the body and other similarly vital things, there would be a word for coming down, or going up, words for nibbles on the bias, earlobe loving, and every variety of tongue track. After all, how many kinds of birds do we distinguish? We have a name for the Second Coming but none for a second coming. In fact our entire vocabulary for states of consciousness is critically impoverished. — William H Gass

I was in Afghanistan and then obviously in Iraq. And I realized that you can't control life. You can do a lot to prepare. You can train, and at the end of the day there's an element that's always going to be beyond your control. — Nathaniel Fick

Tell me what to do, not how to do it.' Decentralize command and allow subordinates to operate freely within the framework of the commander's intent. Train them as a team. Develop trust, loyalty, initiative. — Nathaniel Fick