Mission Success Quotes

Our military commanders have said over and over again that a timetable for withdrawal sends the wrong message to our troops, but more importantly to our enemy.

The post office actually achieves its mission. I wish we could say the same of the CIA.

In a special operations mission, the concept of speed is simple. Get to your objective as fast as possible. Any delay will expand your area of vulnerability.

The Agency became so wrapped up in the military operation that it failed to appraise the chances of success realistically. Furthermore, it failed to keep the national policymakers adequately and realistically informed of the conditions considered essential for success.

WHEN we don't get the results we want in our military endeavors, we don't blame the soldiers.

On a mission your worst enemy is idle time.

The question is: How do we succeed in Iraq? And you don't succeed by leaving before the mission is complete, like some in this political process are suggesting.

Things felt pretty crazy on earth in 1969, but the cosmos was friendly. Astronauts had round-trip tickets; they got home.

The failings in Afghanistan don't fall on the shoulders of the American service personnel trying to complete their mission. The failure falls on military leadership unable to adapt to irregular warfare, and a Congress that blindly continues to fund failure.

Mission accomplished, we didn't have any problems as far as violence goes.

The flakier your mission, the fiercer you have to be on the business side.

My son is not wild about going back to Iraq, but he'd sure rather do that than sacrifice all that he and his fellow soldiers have accomplished by leaving too early and inviting chaos.

Spaceflight will never tolerate carelessness, incapacity, and neglect.

Mission presidents hold keys of responsibility for the welfare, safety, and success of their missionaries.

I love the U.S. military. I want them to be the most effective and the most cost-effective and I think there is so much spending and so much bloat and so much bureaucracy that it actually hinders them from having a lot of the mission accomplishments that they should.

I'm a career Air Force officer. We have a saying in the Air Force: 'If you want people to be with you at the crash, you've got to put them on the manifest.' And so I was always of the view to almost leave no stone unturned when you're up there briefing the Hill.

Having too many layers of approval in a dynamic battlefield environment delays our ability to fight and win, especially when troops are engaged in combat.

The way the public sees it is this. If we don't leave, we are idiots. If we do leave but don't succeed in our mission, we are incompetent. But if we do succeed, it's because it was easy and anyone could have done it.

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

One of the first things I learned in the Marine Corps is that any military mission has to be defined as precisely as you can possibly define it, and then you size the force and equipment force to accomplish that mission without fail.

The thing the Pentagon should be seeking is success, not avoiding failure.

As I step off at the surface at Taurus-Littrow, I'd like to dedicate the first step of Apollo 17 to all those who made it possible.

I think no commander ever is going to come out and say, 'I'm confident that we can do this.'

I have had the privilege to be a member of many high-performance teams at NASA, both on and off the planet.

The first two missions have some test objectives, some new capabilities that we're going to try to develop on orbit to possibly be used on later flights.