There is only one 'retirement plan' for terrorists.
Jim MattisRead
Thanks to my reading, I have never been caught flat-footed by any situation, never at a loss for how any problem has been addressed... It doesn't give me all the answers, but it lights what is often a dark path ahead.
Interpretation
Reading prepares you for challenges by providing insight and perspective.
This quote emphasizes the importance of reading as a source of knowledge and guidance in facing life's challenges. Jim Mattis reflects on how reading equips him with the understanding to navigate difficult situations, suggesting that while it may not provide every solution, it offers clarity and light in uncertain times.
In practice
In a speech on the importance of lifelong learning, one could quote this to stress how reading informs decision-making.
There is only one 'retirement plan' for terrorists.
There are hunters, and there are victims. By your discipline, cunning, obedience, and alertness, you will decide if you are a hunter or a victim.
Now from a distance, I look back on what the Corps taught me: to think like men of action, and to act like men of thought!
I believe that many of my young guys lived because I didn't waste their lives because I didn't have the vision in my mind of how to destroy the enemy at least cost to our guys and to the innocents on the battlefields.
For whatever trauma came with service in tough circumstances, we should take what we learned - take our post-traumatic growth - and, like past generations coming home, bring our sharpened strengths to bear, bring our attitude of gratitude to bear.
Policy makers who have never served in the military continue to use the military to lead social change in this country.
The Gates Foundation has learned that two questions can predict how much kids learn: 'Does your teacher use class time well?' and, 'When you're confused, does your teacher help you get straightened out?'
So many organizations have a mentoring arm, but they don't really do it. Their idea of mentoring a kid is giving them general advice. But what they need to do is read with children.
I started teaching when I was in my 20s because Lee Strasberg asked me to, and he didn't do that with a lot of people.
Education is the basic tool for the development of consciousness and the reconstitution of society.
I think with you, that nothing is of more importance for the public weal, than to form and train up youth in wisdom and virtue. Wise and good men are in my opinion, the strength of the state; more so than riches or arms.
In schools, including universities, most resources are spent to purchase the time and motivation of a limited number of people to take up predetermined problems in a ritually defined setting. The most radical alternative to school would be a network or service which gave each man the same opportunity to share his current concern with others motivated by the same concern.
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