Adam Kesler Quotes

His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It`s peace that`s wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

I don`t confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is'Šthe higher achievement.

Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We`re not giving up. We`re waiting for a better opportunity to win.

My home is not a place, it is people.

A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind.

Experience suggests it doesn`t matter so much how you got here, as what you do after you arrive.

Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they`ll be called on to do before the next chance.

The will to be stupid is a very powerful force, but there are always alternatives.

I am who I choose to be. I always have been what I chose'Šthough not always what I pleased.

It`s important that someone celebrate our existence... People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.

Exile, for no other motive than ease, would be the last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it.

Any community`s arm of force - military, police, security - needs people in it who can do necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity.

You try to give away what you want yourself.

Adulthood isn`t an award they`ll give you for being a good child. You can waste... years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just... take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I`m sorry you feel like that and walk away. But that`s hard.

If you`re trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it`s a lot easier to hit your targets if you don`t yell going through the door.

I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.

Our children change us... whether they live or not.

But pain... seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?

A hundred objective measurements didn`t sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that. Only the use made it mean something.

Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can`t trade for your heart`s desire is your heart.

If you can`t do what you want, do what you can.

It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart`s hope. It was what I wanted to be.

If you want to catch something, running after it isn`t always the best way.

Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation.

How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old?

Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself.

A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack.

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.

An honor is not diminished for being shared.