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" The bottom line is, you really have to commit to something if you're going to be successful in it. "
David Petraeus
Successful
Bottom
Going
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" Proud parents document the arrival and growth of their future CIA officer in all forms of social media that the world can access for decades to come. "
David Petraeus
Growth
Future
Parents
" I refuse to use terms like 'optimist' or 'pessimist' and instead prefer 'realist.' "
David Petraeus
Like
Use
Realist
" There is no question in my mind that a 'Brexit' would deal a significant blow to the E.U.'s strength and resilience at exactly the moment when the West is under attack from multiple directions. "
David Petraeus
Moment
Mind
Resilience
" The proximate cause of Iraq's unraveling was the increasing authoritarian, sectarian, and corrupt conduct of the Iraqi government and its leader after the departure of the last U.S. combat forces in 2011. "
David Petraeus
Cause
Last
Government
" We're all outriders out there, and what we have is all these large number of tasks - that's the herd; that's all the cattle - a whole bunch of individual, hundreds if not thousands of projects at any given time ongoing that we're trying to complete. So we're trying to keep the cattle herd, keep it all just going in the right direction. "
David Petraeus
Direction
Time
Right
" I will not ever run for political office. I can assure you. "
David Petraeus
Office
You
Will
" There is nothing I can do to undo what I did. I can only say again how sorry I am to those I let down and then strive to go forward with a greater sense of humility and purpose, and with gratitude to those who stood with me during a very difficult chapter in my life. "
David Petraeus
I Am
Life
Sorry
" The word 'insurgency' had connotations that really sent a shiver down the spine of folks in Washington, in the United States - for good reason, because it means this is something much bigger than just a few terrorist cells. "
David Petraeus
Good
Reason
Down
" I've truly tried to be apolitical. "
David Petraeus
Apolitical
Tried
Truly
" The tragedy is that political leaders failed so badly at delivering what Iraqis clearly wanted - and for that, a great deal of responsibility lies with Prime Minister Maliki. "
David Petraeus
Political
Great
Responsibility
" People often ask, why aren't you reading about what it is you're working on right now? And the truth is, you only get three pages a night before your eyelids close. "
David Petraeus
Truth
People
Reading
" Even before the missteps that I've had, I was never going to run for office. My family is adamantly opposed to it, and frankly, my politics don't necessarily work for the primaries of either of our parties. "
David Petraeus
Office
Family
Work
" Well, the oil, the oil spot, if you will, is a, is a term in counterinsurgency literature that connotes a peaceful area, secure area. So what you're trying to do is to always extend that, to push that out. "
David Petraeus
Literature
Peaceful
Push
" At least from a national security standpoint, none of the problems the U.S. and U.K. face will become easier to solve if the U.K. is out of the E.U.; on the contrary, I fear that a 'Brexit' would only make our world even more dangerous and difficult to manage. "
David Petraeus
Security
Problems
Fear
" Partners from the Islamic world are of particular importance. Indeed, they have huge incentives to be involved, as the ongoing struggles are generally not clashes between civilizations. Rather, what we are seeing is more accurately a clash within a civilization: that of the Islamic world. "
David Petraeus
World
Civilization
Seeing
" The Orlando terrorist is an example of someone who was in the sights of law enforcement but never crossed the threshold from pre-criminal to criminal behavior and, thus, was not tracked adequately before this horrific act. "
David Petraeus
Someone
Behavior
Law
" During the surge in Iraq, we were able to roll back the tide of al-Qaeda and associated insurgents because we succeeded in mobilizing Iraqis - especially Sunni Arabs - to join us in fighting against the largely Sunni extremist networks in their midst. "
David Petraeus
Against
Us
Tide
" To do de-Baathification without an agreed process of reconciliation threw tens of thousands of people out of their jobs, out of their homes, out of their future, and even robbed them of their position in society. "
David Petraeus
Out
Future
Society
" Nothing means more to those in harm's way than the knowledge that their country appreciates their sacrifices and those of their families. "
David Petraeus
Way
Knowledge
More
" We periodically note that there are no silver bullets, there are no magic formulas, there's no single action or component of the overall... comprehensive civil-military approach. "
David Petraeus
Magic
Action
Single
" Leadership is an individual sport, one that has to be fine-tuned to each of the people that reports to you. Leaders also need to provide the direction, energy, encouragement and inspiration for each person who reports directly to the leader as well as for the overall organization. "
David Petraeus
Leadership
You
People
" At a certain point, you have to take the rearview mirrors off the bus and focus forward, and that's what we've sought to do. "
David Petraeus
You
Point
Mirrors
" I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.' "
David Petraeus
Out
Think
Say
" The bottom line is that Daesh's defeat requires not just hammering them on the battlefield but, simultaneously, revived political reconciliation with Sunnis. "
David Petraeus
Political
Line
Defeat
" Committing to a particular goal publicly puts pressure on oneself. It becomes an enormous action-forcing mechanism and often helps you achieve more than you might have had you kept your goals to yourself. "
David Petraeus
Goal
Yourself
You
" I don't vote. "
David Petraeus
Vote
" If you look at casualties, you find countries that had much higher loss rates per capita than the US. Denmark comes to mind, the United Kingdom, they have suffered heavy losses at various points, the Germans as well. "
David Petraeus
You
Mind
Find
" The formulation of sound national policy requires finding the right overarching concepts. "
David Petraeus
Right
Finding
Concepts
" The idea is to go to bed every night with fewer enemies than you had in the morning. "
David Petraeus
Morning
Enemies
Bed
" I think carpet bombing is an absolutely tremendous idea if the enemy accommodates you by laying himself out like a carpet in the middle of the desert without any civilians or infrastructure around him. Sadly, the Islamic State has learned that that is a losing proposition and does not accommodate us in that way. "
David Petraeus
Way
Desert
Enemy