Richard “Dick” Marcinko (1940–2021) was an American Navy officer, author, radio talk show host, military consultant, and motivational speaker. He was the first commander of Navy Seal Team Six, an exclusive special operations force whose stardom he fed as the best-selling author of derring-do.
Born in Lansford, Pennsylvania, Marcinko enlisted in the U.S. Navy at 18. He was deployed in 1967 to Vietnam with Seal Team Two. He was the founding commander of Seal Team Six, one of America’s elite special forces units. He commanded the group for its first three years and was given more than 30 medals and citations during his career with the U.S. Navy. He also gained a reputation for flouting the rules and gained a maverick image for Seal Team Six within the military community.
Marcinko retired from the Navy in 1989, and in 1990, he was found guilty of duping the government over hand grenade contracts. He was given a 21-month prison sentence but was freed after 15 months.
Marcinko wrote the New York Times best-selling autobiography Rogue Warrior (1992.) With ghostwriter John Weisman, Marcinko also wrote works of military fiction and a three-book series on leadership, management, and team-building. He hosted a radio talk show and served as a consultant for movies and TV shows, including the action-drama series 24.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Richard Marcinko
Popularity is not leadership.
—Richard Marcinko
Topics: Popularity, Leadership, Leaders
Pain was their body’s way of telling them that they’d pushed themselves to their limits—which was exactly where they were supposed to be.
—Richard Marcinko
Topics: Pain
If you train people properly, they won’t be able to tell a drill from the real thing. If anything, the real thing will be easier.
—Richard Marcinko
Topics: Business
We all knew there was just one way to improve our odds for survival: train, train, train. Sometimes, if your training is properly intense it will kill you. More often—much, much more often—it will save your life.
—Richard Marcinko
Topics: Practice
Change hurts. It makes people insecure, confused, and angry. People want things to be the same as they’ve always been, because that makes life easier. But, if you’re a leader, you can’t let your people hang on to the past.
—Richard Marcinko
Topics: Change
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