Top 50 Eric Greitens Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Resilience is the virtue that enables people to move through hardship and become better. No one escapes pain, fear, and suffering. Yet from pain can come wisdom, from fear can come courage, from suffering can come strength – if we have the virtue of resilience.”

— Eric Greitens

2. “As warriors, as humanitarians, they’ve taught me that without courage, compassion falters, and that without compassion, courage has no direction.”

— Eric Greitens

3. “Alone, human beings can feel hunger. Alone, we can feel cold. Alone, we can feel pain. To feel poor, however, is something we do only in comparison to others.”

— Eric Greitens

4. “The work of reflection is something you have to do for yourself. No one else can make you wise.”

— Eric Greitens

5. “Those who are excellent at their work have learned to comfortably coexist with failure. The excellent fail more often than the mediocre. They begin more. They attempt more. They attack more. Mastery lives quietly atop a mountain of mistakes.”

— Eric Greitens

6. “Practice builds habits. Our habits are our character. When it comes to virtue, practice “makes a very great difference – or rather, all the difference.”

— Eric Greitens

7. “People who think you weak will offer you an excuse. People who respect you will offer you a challenge.”

— Eric Greitens

8. “There were a number of definitions of courage, but now I was seeing it in its simplest form: you do what has to be done day after day, and you never quit.”

— Eric Greitens

9. “Life is short. Life is uncertain. But we know that we have today. And we have each other. I believe that for each of us, there is a place on the frontlines.”

— Eric Greitens

10. “The best definition I have ever heard of a vocation is that it’s the place where your great joy meets the world’s great need. We need all of you to find your vocation. To develop your joys, your passions, and to match them to the world’s great needs.”

— Eric Greitens

11. “You are not responsible for everything that happens to you. You are responsible for how you react to everything that happens to you.”

— Eric Greitens

12. “What you will become is a result of what you are willing to endure. Are you willing to work hard? To think hard? I know that you are. You always have been.”

— Eric Greitens

13. “What happens to us becomes part of us. Resilient people do not bounce back from hard experiences; they find healthy ways to integrate them into their lives. In time, people find that great calamity met with great spirit can create great strength.”

— Eric Greitens

14. “Accept that you are imperfect and always will be. Your quest is not to perfect yourself, but to better your imperfect self.”

— Eric Greitens

15. “If we want to change something, we must begin with understanding. But if we want to love something, we must begin with acceptance.”

— Eric Greitens

16. “At the root of resilience is the willingness to take responsibility for results.”

— Eric Greitens

17. “The first step to building resilience is to take responsibility for who you are and for your life. If you’re not willing to do that, stop wasting your time reading this letter. The essence of responsibility is the acceptance of the consequences – good and bad – of your actions.”

— Eric Greitens

18. “We all need something to struggle against and to struggle for. The aim in life is not to avoid struggles, but to have the right ones; not to avoid worry, but to care about the right things; not to live without fear, but to confront worthy fears with force and.”

— Eric Greitens

19. “Five variables go into training or practice of any kind: frequency, intensity, duration, recovery, and reflection.”

— Eric Greitens

20. “Yet the basic fact remains: we live in a world marked by violence, and if we want to protect others, we sometimes have to be willing to fight.”

— Eric Greitens

21. “A veteran who comes home from war is returning from one of the most intense experiences a human being can have. Even if he was not under fire every day, he woke up every morning as part of a team. He started every day with a purpose, and a mission that mattered to those around him.”

— Eric Greitens

22. “Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart.”

— Eric Greitens

23. “If you start with humility, you see every person as your teacher.”

— Eric Greitens

24. “When real transformation does occur in someone’s life, it usually happens through evolution, not revolution. Every time we make a choice to confront our fear, our character evolves and we become more courageous. Every time we make a choice to move through pain to pursue a purpose larger than ourselves, our character evolves and we become wiser. Every time we make a choice to move through suffering, our character evolves and we become stronger.”

— Eric Greitens

25. “And keep in mind the one thing Philoctetes did during his ten years of pain: he stayed alive. Suicide isn’t what warriors do, because the first purpose of the warrior is to protect others; suicide makes that impossible.”

— Eric Greitens

26. “When we rob people of their pain – when we don’t allow them the possibility of failure – we also rob them of their happiness.”

— Eric Greitens

27. “In the name of “force protection,” the military often rolls up windows, builds walls, and points rifles at the outside world. The best force protection, however, is to be surrounded by friends and allies.”

— Eric Greitens

28. “We all need resilience to live a fulfilling life. With resilience, you’ll be more prepared to take on challenges, to develop your talents, skills, and abilities so that you can live with more purpose and more joy. I hope something here can help you to become stronger. I look forward to walking with you on this path.”

— Eric Greitens

29. “Virtues that are not practiced die. Resilience that is not practiced weakens. The only way to keep resilience alive – through success, through temporary comfort, and through the challenges of age – is to engage ourselves in purposeful learning at every step of life. Every master must still have a master. Every good teacher must still be a student.”

— Eric Greitens

30. “I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility. Humility leads to clarity. Humility leads to an open mind and a forgiving heart. With an open mind and a forgiving heart, I see every person as superior to me in some way; with every person as my teacher, I grow in wisdom. As I grow in wisdom, humility becomes ever more my guide. I begin with humility, I act with humility, I end with humility.”

— Eric Greitens

31. “And it’s often in those battles that we are most alive: it’s on the frontlines of our lives that we earn wisdom, create joy, forge friendships, discover happiness, find love, and do purposeful work. If you want to win any meaningful kind of victory, you’ll have to fight for it.”

— Eric Greitens

32. “Start with this: not all pain matters. There are people whose attention is consistently drawn away from their purpose and toward their pain, like a moth to a light. Such people, who pay attention to every annoyance and obstacle in their way, are usually unsuccessful in their endeavors. In extreme cases they are mentally ill. A healthy person, a flourishing person, learns to move past a lot of annoyance and a good deal of pain.”

— Eric Greitens

33. “If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them.”

— Eric Greitens

34. “The excellent fail more often than the mediocre.”

— Eric Greitens

35. “But the longer you hesitate, the hairier and scarier the fear becomes. The longer you hesitate, the more likely you are to turn around and crawl back under the covers. Screw that, Walker. It’s time to begin.”

— Eric Greitens

36. “Millions of people, in all walks of life and in every endeavor, create distractions and excuses for themselves by focusing on tools rather than on character. They’d rather, as Socrates warned, focus on what they have than on what they are.”

— Eric Greitens

37. “The world needs many more humanitarians than it needs warriors, but there can be none of the former without enough of the latter.”

— Eric Greitens

38. “Courage overcomes, but does not replace, fear. Joy overcomes, but does not replace, pain.”

— Eric Greitens

39. “When we’re struggling, we don’t need a book in our hands. We need the right words in our minds. When things are tough, a mantra does more good than a manifesto.”

— Eric Greitens

40. “I was worried that all the corners of the earth had been explored, all the great battles fought. The famous people on TV were athletes and actresses and singers. What did they stand for? I wondered: Had the time for heroes passed?”

— Eric Greitens

41. “Men wanted: For hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold, long months of complete darkness. Constant danger, safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success.”

— Eric Greitens

42. “If you’re going to spend time thinking about bad things that might happen, then use that energy for a purpose. Go ahead and visualize the worst that can happen. But instead of wallowing in your worries, imagine how you’ll respond to them. Practice. Mentally rehearse what you’ll do. Imagine and envision yourself making it through hardship.”

— Eric Greitens

43. “One of the reasons you are suffering right now is precisely because the purpose of your struggle is unclear. What are you working toward? What are you fighting for? Who are you going to be?”

— Eric Greitens

44. “We begin by accepting that we have problems, that we’re miles away from perfect. But some people take this too far: they turn acceptance of the world into an excuse for passivity in the face of their own failings, and even in the face of evil. Yes, you have to accept some unpleasant, upsetting, tragic facts about life. But you also have to accept your responsibility to act in the world.”

— Eric Greitens

45. “Across the globe, even in the world’s “worst places,” people found ways to turn pain into wisdom and suffering into strength. They made their own actions, their very lives, into a memorial that honored the people they had lost.”

— Eric Greitens

46. “Know this: anyone who does anything worthy, anything noble, anything meaningful, will have critics.”

— Eric Greitens

47. “First, you can develop resilience. Anyone can do it. No one can do it for you. You and you alone have to do the work. Second, you can develop resilience. It’s possible to build virtues. It’s possible to change your character. It’s possible, therefore, to change the direction of your life. Third, you can develop resilience. Resilience cannot be purchased or given to you; you have to do the hard work of building excellence in your life.”

— Eric Greitens

48. “Beginning brings fear. It doesn’t matter whether you’re launching yourself into space, standing waist-deep in grab-your-bones-and-make-’em-shake freezing water on the first night of Hell Week, sitting down to write a novel, applying for a job, or thinking about starting your own business – you’ll feel fear.”

— Eric Greitens

49. “Beware the person who seeks to lead and has not suffered, who claims responsibility on the grounds of a spotless record.”

— Eric Greitens

50. “Eric Hoffer, studied the reasons why people voluntarily give away responsibility and join mass movements and mobs. One quote he collected came from a young German who explained that he joined the Nazi party to be “free from freedom.”

— Eric Greitens