The Operator Quotes

“Morale is the key to everything. There is nothing wrong with keeping people happy.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“Once we go on this mission, we aren’t going to see our kids again or kiss our wives. We’ll never eat another steak or smoke another cigar.” We were trying to get down to the truth about why we were still willing to do this when we pretty much knew we were going to die. What we came up with was that we were doing it for the single mom who dropped her kids off at school and went to work on a Tuesday morning, and then an hour later decided to jump out of a skyscraper because it was better than burning alive. A woman whose last gesture of human decency was holding down her skirt on the long way to the pavement so no one could see her underwear. That’s why we were going. She was just trying to get through a workday, live a life.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“The troop commander's name was Rich...[and] he was one of the best leaders I've ever known. His motto, which I've stolen from him, is, 'Nobody ever worked for me. They worked with me.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“When things go so right for so long, you stop thinking about ways things can go wrong. This is how success can kill.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“...the daily morning muster began beneath a sign that said, 'Are you ready for war today? You should be.' SEALs hadn't fired a shot in anger for years. But nobody ever admitted that around civilians, even to their closest non-SEAL friends.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“The fourth was a five-hundred-pound bomb that would smack down right in the middle. It was going to be awesome. Tony let me know, “Bombs away, two minutes out!” “Two minutes???” I shouted, “What, did he drop them from the fucking Space Shuttle??? We need them now!” It was then that I found out that Bones 22 was a B-1 bomber that flew at about fifty thousand feet. I guess these things take time.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“They called it “The Gaza Strip” because stuff was blowing up all the time.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“One thing I’ve learned since becoming a civilian is that being a Navy SEAL is only part of your life. High school is a part of your life and it’s the most important thing when you’re in it. Then it’s over. For me, for over a decade, being a Navy SEAL was everything. Those hard-as-nails instructors at Coronado and the officers I served under in the years after taught me to meet, and rise above, challenges I wouldn’t have imagined. And my SEAL brothers—they taught me a sense of comradery that I still consider priceless. But to keep growing, we all have to move to the next phase. That’s life.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“The next day, the locals who’d been terrorized by this al-Qaeda cell for four years realized that all their oppressors were dead. We could see their reaction because we had aircraft circling overhead, watching in case any more bad guys showed up to bury the dead. No more bad guys, just a big celebration. The party got so big, with all these jubilant people drinking juice and dancing in the street, that a newspaper in Baghdad sent a reporter up there. He asked, “Who did this? Who came last night?” The women responded: “Ninjas, and they came with lions.” That was the headline the next day in Baghdad.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“A brochure that had been thoughtfully provided in the recruitment paperwork revealed that to even qualify for a SEAL tryout you had to be able to do a minimum of eight pull-ups. And that’s after you swim five hundred yards, and do forty-two push-ups and fifty sit-ups. And before you run.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“NOBODY CAN PREDICT WHO’LL MAKE it through BUD/S. The brass tries to figure it out; they bring in psychologists and boost the number of guys beginning the process, hoping more SEALs will be left standing at the end. They tweak the design to create more equal opportunity for minorities, but all that happens is that the instructors do to the students exactly what was done to them, and always 80 percent don’t make it. We have more white SEALs simply because more white guys try out. Eighty percent of white guys fail, 80 percent of Filipinos fail, 80 percent of black guys fail. And the irony is, the Navy doesn’t want an 80 percent failure rate. There can’t be too many SEALs. We’re always undermanned. From the beginning of boot camp, the instructors try separating guys who want to be SEALs. They put them together, feed them better, give them workouts designed to prepare them for BUD/S. These promising rookies get in better shape, are better nourished, and are psychologically primed to go. Then they’re sent to SEAL training and 80 percent fail. No matter what the Navy process tweakers do, they can’t crack it. You’d think the Olympic swimmer would make it. You’d think the pro-football player would make it. But they don’t—well, 80  percent don’t. In my experience, the one category of people who get reliably crushed in BUD/S are that noble demographic, the loudmouths. They’re usually the first to ring the bell. As for who will make it, all I can say is: Are you the person who can convince your body that it can do anything you ask it to? Who can hit the wall and say, “What wall?” That strength of mind isn’t associated with any ethnicity or level of skin pigmentation. It’s not a function of size or musculature or IQ. In the end, it’s sheer cussedness, and I’m guessing you’re either born that way or you never get there.”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior

“fourteen-mile run was more a scenic island tour than”
― Robert O'Neill, The Operator: Firing the Shots that Killed Osama bin Laden and My Years as a SEAL Team Warrior