Miles Garrett > Miles's Quotes

“I once heard someone describe the Fall of Man as an allegory depicting humankind’s choice of knowledge over happiness. From time to time I catch wisps of this allegorical candle. Its fragrance so false yet no less real and tall. A fragrance like the middle passage, meant, nay, demanded to bear remembrance. Like Hill’s vulnerable soul deserving to be woken gently. Somehow still forgotten. The Fall of Man is chestnut only in its modern manner of telling, only in its mistranslation upon insisted. Where hides that in our national discourse? And why? Could someone please teach my children the great and conflicted nature of King David, and what was the source of Solomon’s wisdom? What of Job? Ruth? These lessons passed through time shall not pass with us. Au contraire, through us they shall pass. And yet still I struggle to convey these past lessons within the confines of my household.”
― Miles Garrett, Executive Leadership: A Warfighter's Perspective

“I must not seem proud; happy are they that hear their detractions, and can put them to mending.”
― William Shakespeare, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare

“Audaces fortuna iuvat (latin)- Fortune favors the bold.”
― Virgil

“Time is a game played beautifully by children.”
― Heraclitus, Fragments

“Out of every one-hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior and he will bring the others back.”
― Heraclitus

“To gaze into another persons face is to do two things: to recognise their humanity and to assert your own.”
― Lawrence Hill, Someone Knows My Name

“When it comes to understanding others, we rarely tax our imaginations.”
― Lawrence Hill

“Some say that I was once uncommonly beautiful, but I wouldn't wish beauty on any woman who has not her own freedom, and who chooses not the hands that claim her.”
― Lawrence Hill, Someone Knows My Name

“Let me begin with a caveat to any and all who find these pages. Do not trust large bodies of water, and do not cross them. If you, dear reader, have an African hue and find yourself led toward water with vanishing shores, seize your freedom by any means necessary. And cultivate distrust of the colour pink. Pink is taken as the colour of innocence, the colour of childhood, but as it spills across the water in the light of the dying sun, do not fall into its pretty path. There, right underneath, lies a bottomless graveyard of children, mothers and men. I shudder to imagine all the Africans rocking in the deep. Every time I have sailed the seas, I have had the sense of gliding over the unburied.

Some people call the sunset a creation of extraordinary beauty, and proof of God's existence. But what benevolent force would bewitch the human spirit by choosing pink to light the path of a slave vessel? Do not be fooled by the pretty colour, and do not submit to its beckoning.”
― Lawrence Hill, Someone Knows My Name

“We ain't what we oughta be. We ain't what we want to be. We ain't what we gonna be. But, thank God, we ain't what we was.”
― Martin Luther King Jr.

“I have been a member of and inspected dozens of commands in my military tenure. Unit morale is always readily detectable. Morale posts itself front and center to experienced organizational leaders and fresh recruits alike. Does that have anything to do with a unit's inherent limitations? Absolutely not. Those units are comprised of personnel cut from the same cloth as those of others. The difference is inspired leadership. It takes inspired executive leadership to foster healthy organizational cultures.
Too often, leadership is assumed rather than considered. Implied rather than piloted. It takes thoughtful communication to develop the potential of those under one's charge. Organizational climates require molding, lest unhealthy ones smolder unchecked. Leadership properly executed is a calculated act. There are thousands of ways to skin this cat, but one certainty is that the skinning should be surgical.”
― Miles Garrett, Executive Leadership: A Warfighter's Perspective

“It follows then as certain as night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it everything honorable and glorious.”
― George Washington

“Perception of competence at an activity will depend [on]...whether one has to succeed by his or her own standards or by someone else's.”
― Mark Lepper and David Greene

“The country today bears striking similarity to the days leading up to Pearl Harbor. Our workforce drags aslumber. The primary focus of the majority of the national workforce prioritizes maximizing time off and contributing as little as required. Always in pursuit of that external motivation. Experiencing resentment rather than satisfaction. Why does it have to be that way? Why does it take a crisis to improve ourselves collectively? And what about on a submarine? Why does it take a war order to recognize the reality of action before consequence?”
― Miles Garrett, Executive Leadership: A Warfighter's Perspective

“Adulthood, by the way, needs to be taught. More so modeled. Exemplified. It takes care and effort to develop our boys into men, our girls into women, our gender-ambiguous and gender-fluid children into adults. They, too, sing America. As a society, we do a damn poor job of this. Our national discourse repels children. And why? Our workforce drags its feet. Community playgrounds stand appreciably worse than those of a country like New Zealand. National food standards poor. Educational standards low. Dwindling interest in the arts, architecture, fashion, reading for its own sake. The near unanimous acceptance of dressing down, and the verbal dressings down we give to anyone who bothers dressing up. Widespread disregard for personal appearance. Bowling alone. Absence of dialog on history, philosophy, culture. Highbrow these are not. They are modes of civilization, taught to us by our forebears.”
― Miles Garrett, Executive Leadership: A Warfighter's Perspective

“To our nation’s principals and superintendents, where hides your series of leadership talks. And why? I find your performance lackluster at best. For the love of God, pick up Alfie Kohn’s book, which was published over three decades ago, and do something about it. Be better. You should foster, facilitate, not gatekeep. Demand excellence over the entirety of your school grounds from start to finish of every single school day. Excellence, and nothing less. Not for our children’s future. For their now.”
― Miles Garrett, Executive Leadership: A Warfighter's Perspective

“Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
― Steve Jobs

“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”
― Galileo

“Jesus did a lot, said a lot, and taught a lot, but his ultimate message was love.”
― Amy Watkins

“Open your heart to love again. By this, I mean biblical love (patience, kindness, honesty, peace). God is love.”
― Amy Watkins

“Since 1865, when the [Thirteenth] Amendment was passed, Black men were getting charged, set up, arrested, and convicted for the pettiest of offenses--like child support. They were getting harsher punishments and longer sentences than their white counterparts. That way, the cotton could still get picked and the tobacco could still get plucked. The Confederate way of making money could still survive despite the abolishment of slavery.”
― Amy Watkins

“Two-sentence horror story: I woke up in a country founded on the genocide of native peoples and the enslavement of imported ones. I could not find my way back to sleep.”
― Miles Garrett

“We learn more from people who challenge our thought process than those who affirm our conclusions. Strong leaders engage their critics and make themselves stronger. Weak leaders silence their critics and make themselves weaker. This reaction isn’t limited to people in power. Although we might be on board with the principle, in practice we often miss out on the value of a challenge network.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“A mark of lifelong learners is recognizing that they can learn something from everyone they meet.”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”
― Adam Grant, Originals: How Non-conformists Change the World

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” George Bernard Shaw”
― Adam M. Grant, Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World

“In ancient Greece, Plutarch wrote of a wooden ship that Theseus sailed from Crete to Athens. To preserve the ship, as its old planks decayed, Athenians would replace them with new wood. Eventually all the planks had been replaced. It looked like the same ship, but none of its parts was the same. Was it still the same ship? Later, philosophers added a wrinkle: if you collected all the original planks and fashioned them into a ship, would that be the same ship?”
― Adam M. Grant, Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know

“One may...call 'mental state' what is expressed by tone of voice in speaking, by gestures, etc. It would thus be possible to speak of a mental state of conviction, and that may be the same whether it is knowledge or false belief.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein, On Certainty

“A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“The limits of my language means the limits of my world.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein