Chris Kyle Quotes

But I didn’t risk my life to bring democracy to Iraq. I risked my life for my buddies, to protect my friends and fellow countrymen. I went to war for my country, not Iraq. My country sent me out there so that bullshit wouldn’t make its way back to our shores.

PEOPLE TELL ME I SAVED HUNDREDS AND HUNDREDS OF people. But I have to tell you: it’s not the people you saved that you remember. It’s the ones you couldn’t save.

What I couldn’t stand was being cold. Lying out on the beach in the surf, stripped down, freezing my ass off — that was the worst. I’d lock arms with the guys on either side of me and “jackhammer,” my body vibrating crazily with the chills. I prayed for someone to pee on me. Everybody did, I’m sure. Urine was about the only warm thing available at that point. If you happen to look out on the surf during a BUD/S class and see a bunch of guys huddled together, it’s because somebody out there is pissing and everybody is taking advantage of it.

I had to wonder why these people weren’t protesting at their congressional offices or in Washington. Protesting the people who were ordered to protect them — let’s just say it put a bad taste in my mouth.

People back home, people who haven’t been in war, or at least not that war, sometimes don’t seem to understand how the troops in Iraq acted. They’re surprised — shocked — to discover we often joked about death, about things we saw. Maybe it seems cruel or inappropriate. Maybe it would be, under different circumstances. But in the context of where we were, it made a lot of sense. We saw terrible things, and lived through terrible things. Part of it was letting off pressure or steam, I’m sure. A way to cope. If you can’t make sense of things, you start to look for some other way to deal with them. You laugh because you have to have some emotion, you have to express yourself somehow.

The moon, Earth, and stars aligned. God blew on the bullet, and I gut-shot the jackass.

I DON’T SPEND A LOT OF TIME PHILOSOPHIZING ABOUT KILLING people. I have a clear conscience about my role in the war.

IT SEEMED THE ONLY NEWS STORIES WE READ WERE ABOUT atrocities or how impossible it was going to be to pacify Ramadi. Guess what? We killed all those bad guys, and what happened? The Iraqi tribal leaders finally realized we meant business, and they finally banded together not just to govern themselves, but to kick the insurgents out. It took force, it took violence of action, to create a situation where there could be peace.

As far as I can see it, anyone who has a problem with what guys do over there is incapable of empathy. People want America to have a certain image when we fight. Yet I would guess if someone were shooting at them and they had to hold their family members while they bled out against an enemy who hid behind their children, played dead only to throw a grenade as they got closer, and who had no qualms about sending their toddler to die from a grenade from which they personally pulled the pin — they would be less concerned with playing nicely.

Oh, they may be tough individuals, but it takes more than personal toughness to be good leaders. The methods and goals have to contribute to the toughness.

You know all the everyday things that stress you here? I don’t give a shit about them. There are bigger and worse things that could happen than to have this tiny little problem wreck your life, or even your day. I’ve seen them. More: I’ve lived them.

What wounded veteran's don't need is sympathy. THey need to be treated like the men they are: equals, heroes, and people who still have tremendous value for society.

I don't worry about what other people think of me. It's one of the things I most admired about my dad growing up. He didn't give a hoot what others thought. He was who he was. It's one of the qualities that has kept me most sane.

He’d already accepted that he was going to die, and he wanted to do it there, not at home from a disease he couldn’t fight with a gun or his fists. “It doesn’t matter,” he told me. “I’ll die and you’ll find someone else. People die out here all the time. Their wives go on and find someone else.

Help people help themselves — that’s the way it should be.