Mark Owen Quotes

I've heard one of my SEAL mentors say that there are rules about bitching. He said everyone has the right to bitch about a mission or job for five minutes. After those five minutes, you shut the fuck up and get to work.

I watched as the instructors corrected a SEAL and ordered him to do ten push-ups as punishment. As soon as the SEAL started, his buddies hit the floor too.

Every SEAL has gone through the same training, tested themselves in the same kind of extreme conditions, and typically trained together extensively to the point where we all wind up capable of doing the most basic tasks extraordinarily well.

Hero is not a word we use easily, and it had gotten to the point where it had lost all meaning in our community. Everyone was a hero now.

There is no honor in sending men to die for something you won't even fight for yourself

The higher up the food chain the targeted individual was, the bigger a pussy he was.

Don't just live, but live for a purpose bigger than yourself. Be an asset to your family, community, and country.

You always want someone in your professional life who is going to be honest, who's going to call you on your bullshit.

I learned there that the key was first to prioritize all the individual stressors and then act. I break it all down into the little things I can manage. The stressors that I can't affect, I don't worry about. The ones I can affect, I simply deal with one at a time.

When you're more experienced and have been in the car crash a million times, and have made mistakes and learned from them, everything slows down and something as small as shoes can stand out.

Staying in my three-foot world became a mantra for me. It is liberating once you let go of the things you can't control. It seems to work for just about any situation.

People think SEALs are fearless. Think again. No one lives without fear;

There is no "secret sauce," but there is a lot of hard work, dedication, and drive.

The leaders were less willing to fight. It is always the young and impressionable who strap on the explosives and blow themselves up.

Just get to lunch," I muttered to myself.
It was the only way I could control my anxiety. In 1998, I'd made it through Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL, or BUD/S, by focusing on just making it to the next meal. It didn't matter if I couldn't feel my arms as we hoisted logs over our heads or if the cold surf soaked me to the core. It wasn't going to last forever. There is a saying: "How do you eat an elephant?" The answer is simple: "One bite at a time." Only my bites were separated by meals: Make it to breakfast, train hard until lunch, and focus until dinner. Repeat.

did his yard the other day," the mulch guy said between loads. "There is something big going on, and he's been up in D.C." "What?

We were tools in their toolbox, and when things go well they promote it. They inflate their roles.

I'd failed my first hooded box test at S&T, but the lesson learned wasn't one I'd forget. Assess, prioritize, and act.

Politics are for the Washington, D.C., policy makers who safely watched the action on a video monitor from thousands of miles away.

It was no different than making friends in school or at work. Just be yourself, be open, and be a good houseguest.

I knew he was ready, and we entered the hallway. I shouldered my rifle and squeezed off several rounds to make sure he was down. The

Shaped like a dagger, it had a jagged edge that was stabbing me in the leg. The metal was so hot that it had melted the foam earplugs that I always stowed in my left pocket.

I had no idea if the photos [of Osama bin Laden's dead body] would ever be made public, and I didn't care.