Zinni Quotes & Sayings

I think that before you take on nation building in your mind's eye as to how it should be, you'd better have a clear understanding if this is doable and will work. — Anthony Zinni

History reminds us that dictators and despots arise during times of severe economic crisis. — Robert Kiyosaki

If I know something, I am not a victim. Victims don't know the meaning of their suffering. I am an enemy or a collaborator, not a victim. — Rachel Klein

I think it's (Israeli pressure for invading Iraq) the worst kept secret in Washington, everybody I talked to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do; because I mentioned the Neo-Conservatives who describe themselves as Neo-Conservatives, I was called, Anti-Semitic. — Anthony Zinni

I think the Mogadishu effect, if I had to define it, is we need to be more careful where we decide to commit US forces, and for what reason, and to make a clear judgment as to what we can and can't do and whether it's in our interests, or we could afford the resources that it would take to make the situation right. — Anthony Zinni

You have to give everybody another recourse as some means other than violence, no matter how distasteful it may be to have to deal with them and what they represent. — Anthony Zinni

Also, General Zinni, who commanded central command, was very much opposed to the war in the first place, as I was. We were both quoted to that effect in February of 2003. — William Odom

As soon as something seems the most obvious thing in the world,it means that we have abandoned all attempts to understanding it. — Bertolt Brecht

In the lead up to the Iraq war and its later conduct, I saw at a minimum, true dereliction, negligence and irresponsibility, at worse, lying, incompetence and corruption. — Anthony Zinni

The government forces you to give your money to things you don't believe in, to have your money go to projects that might be inherently immoral. — Randall Terry

Service rivalry leads to service pride, which is good for building morale and esprit. — Anthony Zinni

Dirck bolted to his feet and peered out the window. It wasn't a storm. It was worse. An armored transport had stopped outside. Seven commandos, maybe more, stepped from its confines, each in shielded yellow armor, hostile in Zinni's searing light. — Marcha A. Fox

We will pay for this [climate change] one way or another. We will pay to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions today and we'll have to take an enormous hit of some kind. Or we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll. There is no way out of this that does not have real costs attached to it. — Anthony Zinni

Whoever you are, the land to which God has brought you is not like the land of Egypt from which you came out. You can no longer live here as you lived there. Your old life and your former ways are crucified now, and you must not seek to live any more for your own gratification, but give up your own judgement into the hands of a wise director, and sacrifice your pleasures and comforts for the love of God and give the money you no longer spend on those things, to the poor. Above all, eat your daily Bread without which you cannot live, and come to know Christ Whose Life feeds you in the Host, and He will give you a taste of joys and delights that transcend anything you have ever experienced before, and which will make the transition easy. — Thomas Merton

If you put two brigades on the ground right now with U.S. forces, they would push ISIS back into Syria in a heartbeat. — Anthony Zinni

The United Nations offers international legitimacy in what we might do. — Anthony Zinni

Yet, here we are, long and difficult years into that conflict," ... "we still have not created the state we promised them. On the contrary, our costly and valiant efforts have produced an outcome our government did not predict or intend-a failed state spinning out of control into anarchy and civil war. — Anthony Zinni