Christopher Pokorny

“If the courage of young men and women in battle truly does depend on the nature and quality of our civic society, we should be very worried… The clarity of purpose so central to bonding men in combat cannot emerge purely from the military itself. And in our current climate, after a decade and a half of multiple wars on multiple continents, the hope for such clarity is rotting away.”
― Harold Koenig, Spiritual Readiness: Essentials for Military Leaders and Chaplains

“How do you motivate men and women to fight and die for a cause many of them don’t believe in, and whose purpose they can’t articulate? What happens to the bonds between men and women in combat, and to the bonds between soldiers and the citizenry for whom they fight, when we fail as a nation to treat our wars as a collective responsibility, rather than the special mission of a self-selected few?”
― Harold Koenig, Spiritual Readiness: Essentials for Military Leaders and Chaplains

“everyone shares the handicap of mortality. Our individual physical, emotional, and spiritual failures are but symptoms of this disease.”
― Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Spiritual Life: Eight Essential Titles by Henri Nouwen

“Character, in the long run, is the decisive factor in the life of an individual and of nations alike.” —Theodore Roosevelt”
― Anonymous, A Warning