Best 37 quotes of Oliver North on MyQuotes

A Commander-in-Chief needs to do two things. One - tell us who the enemy is. And two - say we are fighting to win.

All of my high school male teachers were WWII and/or Korean War veterans. They taught my brothers and me the value of service to our country and reinforced what our dad had shown us about the meaning of service.

And of course there is so much of World War II that is documented that we never have seen

And so, the youngsters you have today, even though there are far fewer of them - in World War II 16.5 million men and women in uniform, today roughly a million in uniform in spite of the fact that the country is almost twice as large a population as we had in World War II.

An easy life is rarely meaningful and a meaningful life rarely easy.

As a Marine officer in combat, I was responsible for the lives and safety of all the Marines who served with me.

God knows, we don't want prayer.

Heroes aren't athletes who set new sports records, or Hollywood actors who make 'daring' films or politicians who make bold promises. Heroes are people who place themselves at risk for the benefit of others.

History and war are cruel pedants. Those who know too little of the former are likely to have too much of the latter.

I came here to tell you the truth, the good, the bad and the ugly.

I haven't, in the 23 years that I have been in the uniformed services of the United States of America, ever violated an order - not one.

I know the difference between right and wrong, and I can tell good from bad. But I also know that the more difficult decisions come when we have to choose between good and better. The toughest calls of all are those we have to make between bad and worse.

I'm like John Wayne. I only play good guys. Describing his cameo role on a TV series.

I'm trusting in the Lord and a good lawyer.

I never considered myself a fall guy. I know what I did. I know why I did it. I'm not ashamed of it.

In my first book, Under Fire, I wrote that I revered Ronald Reagan. That was a dozen years ago. I still feel that way. I think he changed the world for the better for my children and my children's children.

I think as a rifle platoon and company commander your view is about 1,000 meters in front of you and you hope you can cover that ground and not have to back up and give it up again.

I think capital punishment's day is done in this country. I don't think it's fairly applied.

I want to make it clear that I honestly answered every question put to me during the so-called Iran-Contra hearings. But if they didn't ask me about something, I wasn't about to reveal things that would put other people in jeopardy

I was provided with additional input that was radically different from the truth. I assisted in furthering that version.

I would have promised those terrorists a trip to Disneyland if it would have gotten the hostages released. I thank God they were satisfied with the missiles and we didn't have to go to that extreme.

I would not trade you a billion dollars for the kids I led to combat in Vietnam or in fact any of the Marines that I served with for a quarter of a century.

President Reagan didn't always know what he knew.

The 2.4 million bright, brave, incredibly fit and remarkably talented young Americans who have served in our armed forces since we were attacked on 9-11-01 are all volunteers. As General Petraeus put it during a conversation we had in Afghanistan, 'They all came or stayed, knowing they were going to war.' For more than a decade, these patriots and their loved ones have made extraordinary sacrifices for this country. They embody the classical definition of heroes: those who put themselves at risk for the benefit of others.

The average term length of a member of congress is approaching 15 years, and the average term length of a convicted criminal is less than three. We've got that backward.

The good Lord gave me eight grandchildren, and I am convinced that through schools like Desert Christian that we are going to overwhelm the adversaries, not just with bombs and bullets, but with the demonstration of Christian principles.

The lesson of Pearl Harbor ought never to be forgotten, and of course the motto that came from that, 69 years ago, the war which my dad fought, was 'Remember Pearl Harbor, never again.' We need to keep that to mind.

There is no moral middle ground. Indifference is not an option. ... For the sake of our children, I implore each of you to be unyielding and inflexible in your opposition to drugs.

The terrorists that we are up against today do not rely upon cell phones and SAT phones and emails. They rely on couriers. You cannot intercept what a courier is telling somebody

Today, only 2 percent of the people know the name of someone serving in uniform. That means 2 percent of your listeners can actually conjure up the image of someone wearing the uniform of the military of the United States.

We don't need a head of state who guts our defenses and draws phony red lines with a pink crayon.

We lie by not telling you things...We don't lie by telling you things that aren't true.

Without any intended hubris, I've lead a pretty exciting life. What I've tried to do in Mission Compromised is draw on those experiences to create a sense of excitement and realism within the story

Writers are storytellers. So are readers.

Death is never easy when you know the people doing the dying.

People don't like him (John Poindexter) for the same reason they don't like me…If you get things done in this bureaucracy you step on toes.

Whoever has the sword will have the earth.