I know a lot of people in the aviation business, particularly ones who will fly to places where your boots get dirty when you get out of the airplane.
— Erik Prince
One of the real core competencies of Blackwater, or companies like Blackwater, is we can operate in difficult places without any outside support.
I think faith gives us a structure around which to try to organize our lives. I'm also a big believer, and very thankful that there's forgiveness.
The establishment, rigged, cozy system inside the beltway is not America.
I wish we had been doing diplomatic security in Benghazi. I can tell you that Benghazi would not have happened if Blackwater were on the job there.
Some people will always hate the name Blackwater. They might not like me.
I represented everything Democrats loathed.
I built Blackwater to stay connected to the SEAL teams and to serve that whole community.
We're very excited about Africa - it can be the breadbasket of the world.
I can relate to ranchers and roughnecks and professional game guides and farmers and homemakers.
I give people ideas on how to solve intractable problems.
If I could send a message back to my younger self, it would be: Do not work for the State Department at all.
I think everybody wanted to help the U.S. government in some way after 9/11.
If the Chinese are sensitive about anything, it's not having their people die.
I will support vigorously whoever commits to reduce the size of government the most.
America is way too quick to trade freedom for the illusion of security. Whether it's allowing the NSA to go way too far in what it intercepts of our personal data, to our government monitoring of everything domestically and spending way more than we should.
My father was a brilliant inventor and businessman. He taught me to appreciate the opportunities that America offers to innovators.
I think the diplomatic-security needs in Iraq were an anomaly. There's never been a bulge of requirements that large ever before.
I'm no hero. The world knows all too well about my mistakes. But I was never meant to play the villain.
Blackwater's work with the CIA began when we provided specialized instructors and facilities that the Agency lacked. In the years that followed, the company became a virtual extension of the CIA because we were asked time and again to carry out dangerous missions, which the Agency either could not or would not do in-house.
We have kind of turned our back on the fact that hard work, sacrifice, risk-taking, innovation, is what made America great.
I love the U.S. military. I want them to be the most effective and the most cost-effective and I think there is so much spending and so much bloat and so much bureaucracy that it actually hinders them from having a lot of the mission accomplishments that they should.
Bad things usually don't happen by themselves in Iraq.
I'm not sure whether a person can really gauge the quality of his work by the enemies he's made, but if I somehow upset Hamas and the Taliban and Henry Waxman, I must have done something right.
The greatest threat to our freedom and prosperity is not al-Qaida, the Taliban, Iran or even China. It's an idea, the idea that we can spend our way out of our problems without tightening our belt and paring down the very bloated government.
Let's stop trading freedom for the illusion of security.
I identify with Wyoming, I love the state of Wyoming, I love the people. It's a fantastic state - people that live in rugged conditions and who make their living doing things in the outdoors.
My dad built his business by providing products he figured the customers would want.
I'm a practicing Roman Catholic, but you don't have to be Catholic, you don't have to be a Christian to work for Blackwater.
I started a private equity fund and we invest in energy, mining, agriculture kind of things in Africa.
You pretty much remove the entire political texture from Blackwater when you come to China. What they look at is our 100 per cent success rate.
The left wants to protect social programs, the right wants to protect defense and intelligence spending and all the rest. I say the defense and intelligence world will be better off with a smaller budget. They would be less encumbered by bloat and able to maneuver the way they used to be able and not trip over themselves.
Training for any difficult job is essential.
Video games are an exciting medium. The creativity of design, the technology and the interaction represent the best of American innovation.
In Joe Yorio you find a guy who's smarter at business than I am. I'm an entrepreneur and idea guy; he's a professional businessman.
Unfortunately, I kind of split between Virginia and living in an airplane. I travel a lot.
I live in Loudoun County, and the counties surrounding Washington, D.C., have the highest per-capita income in the country. Not because they create wealth, but because they suck wealth from the rest of the country, and that system needs to be shaken up.
I like the fact that Donald Trump has been in the private sector. I like that he's had to make a payroll. I like that he's had to do projects.
I loved being a SEAL. I loved working with those kind of guys and a sense of mission, and Blackwater was started to continue that sense of mission.
I'm an American working for America. Anything we do is to support U.S. policy. You know the definition of a mercenary is a professional soldier that works in the pay of a foreign army. I'm an American working for America.
I never intended to be a defense contractor in the first place.
Sometimes motorists do irrational things.
I believe there is significant overreach by the NSA in how it monitors American citizens.
I'm going to teach high school. History and economics. I may even coach wrestling. Hey, Indiana Jones taught school, too.
Some of the most dedicated, most passionate people I've ever met have been part of the United States armed forces.
I've certainly been mortared and rocketed a few times.
C'mon now, I'm not going to make it easy for the terrorists to get me.
China trading with its neighbours and building infrastructure brings only benefits.
I don't know if I want to live in a country where lone wolf and random terror attacks are impossible 'cause that country would look more like North Korea than America.
The video game industry is constantly evolving. The sheer creativity matched with cutting-edge technologies gives me the comfort that innovation is alive and well in America.
