Naval Quotes - Page 3

• Marines have a cynical approach to war. They believe in three things; liberty, payday and that when two Marines are together in a fight, one is being wasted. Being a minority group militarily, they are proud and sensitive in their dealings with other military organizations. A Marine's concept of a perfect battle is to have other Marines on the right and left flanks, Marine aircraft overhead and Marine artillery and naval gunfire backing them up.

  Ernie Pyle

  War, Military, Believe

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• The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash.

  Winston Churchill

  Army, British Navy, Royal

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• The new naval treaty permits the United States to spend a billion dollars on warships-a sum greater than has been accumulated by all our endowed institutions of learning in their entire history. Unintelligence could go no further! ... In Great Britain, the situation is similar. ... Until the figures are reversed, ... nations deceive themselves as to what they care about most.

  Abraham Flexner

  War, Government, United States

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• A powerful Navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defense; and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of Navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, in the future as in the past; and there will be no thought of offense or provocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Strong, Powerful, Military

  Woodrow Wilson (2012). “President Wilson's Addresses”, p.154, tredition

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• I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematicks and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Musick, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelaine. (12 May 1780)

  John Adams

  Children, Philosophy, War

  Letter to Abigail Adams, 12 May 1780

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• We few. We happy few. We band of brothers, for he today That sheds his blood with me Shall be my brother.

  William Shakespeare

  Brother, Business, Military

  'Henry V' (1599) act 4, sc. 3, l. 35

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• December 7, 1941. A date which will live in infamy.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  War, Air Force, December

  Address to joint session of Congress asking for declaration of war on Japan, 8 Dec. 1941

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• I'm a huge fan of the Navy. My father was a Naval historian, and I've been studying Naval battles forever.

  Peter Berg

  Father, Forever, Navy

  "Brooklyn Decker and Director Peter Berg Talk BATTLESHIP, Naval Warfare and the Design of the Aliens at WonderCon". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. March 19, 2012.

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• An event is not any more intrinsically intelligible or unintelligible because of the pace at which it moves. For a man who does not believe in a miracle, a slow miracle would be just as incredible as a swift one. The Greek witch may have turned sailors to swine with a stroke of the wand. But to see a naval gentleman of our acquaintance looking a little more like a pig every day, till he ended with four trotters and a curly tail, would not be any more soothing. It might be rather more creepy and uncanny.

  Gilbert K. Chesterton

  Believe, Moving, Men

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• Obviously I was challenged by becoming a Naval aviator, by landing aboard aircraft carriers and so on.

  Alan Shepard

  Navy, Becoming, Aircraft Carriers

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• And gentlemen in England now-a-bed Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, And hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks That fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.

  William Shakespeare

  Military, Army, Thinking

  'Henry V' (1599) act 4, sc. 3, l. 35

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• Unfortunately, every time someone said “debriefing,” the entire flock had one image: someone’s tighty-whities disappearing in a flash. We were smothering our giggles, but it was getting harder. Coupled with the whole “naval this, and naval that,” with its undeniable belly-button connotations, we were essentially turning into a sugar-jacked, sleep-deprived flock of incoherent, silly, recombinant-DNA goofballs. This was not going to end well.

  James Patterson

  Silly, Sleep, Dna

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• At no period of the naval history of the world, is it probable that Marines were more important than during the War of the Revolution.

  James F. Cooper

  War, Marine, Important

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• I think the major event that shaped my life was being a Naval aviator. I got my commission and wings at 18 years old, and then I went into combat at 19. And I think, as I look back on it, that whole experience probably shaped my life more than any incident, or any event.

  George H. W. Bush

  Life, Thinking, Wings

  "George H. W. Bush on Courage". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 2, 1995.

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• Throughout my professional life, I have looked upon the Corps as a most valuable part of our naval organization, and this opinion has only been the more confirmed by every year's additional experience in active service.

  Samuel Francis Du Pont

  Life, Military, Marine

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• The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Army, Men, Sailing

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.172

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• Medieval England was a great military power with a sophisticated machinery of government, but her naval administration, at best improvised and for long periods missing altogether, pointed to a grave weakness: the lack of any reliable means of putting a force of warships at the disposal of the crown. Only Richard I and Henry V of all the kings of England can be said to have understood the problem and attempted to remedy it. It is no coincidence that they wer by far the most successful in war.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Kings, Military, War

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• In every age states of varying size and constitution and at every level of development have found naval warfare to be one of their most formidable and expensive tasks. Ships have always been large, costly and complicated, and warships much more complicated and costly than any others. Scholars are nowadays inclined to emphasize the power, wealth and sophistication of the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, and there is not more striking illustration of this than the advanced and elaborate administrative structures of the early English navy.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Illustration, Naval Warfare, Navy

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• Whether in peaceful trade or warlike attack, the sea unites more than it divides. Even if it were possible to treat England, or the British Isles, as a single, homogenous, united nation, it would still be impossible to write its naval history without reference to the histories of the other nations, near and far, with which the sea has connected it.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Writing, Sea, Peaceful

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• It is not surprising that only one medieval state, Venice, long possessed anything clearly identifiavble as a navy in this sense. We shall see that no state in the British Isles attained attained this level of sophistication before the 16th century, and no history of the Royal Navy, in any exact sense of the words, could legitimately begin much before then. This book, which does, is not an institutional history of the Royal Navy, but a history of naval warfare as an aspect of national history. All and any methods of fighting at sea, or using the sea for warlike purposes, are its concern.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Book, Fighting, Sea

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• Before I became President, in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, there had been fairly dramatic, and I think excessive, reductions in the capability of our military forces, and as a former military man myself - I was a professional naval officer, a submarine officer - I thought it was better, on a step-by-step, very carefully planned way, to increase the technical, or technological, capability of our weapons systems.

  Jimmy Carter

  Military, War, Men

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• Naval dominance of European waters was the largest, longest, most complex and expensive project ever undertaken by the British state and society.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Water, Dominance, Projects

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• It is clear that the flame of True Freedom had passed with naval supremacy and constitutional, consultative government from the United Provinces to Great Britain, where it was regarded with quite as much national pride.

  Peter Padfield

  Pride, Government, Flames

  Peter Padfield (2000). “Maritime Supremacy & the Opening of the Western Mind: Naval Campaigns that Shaped the Modern World”, Overlook Books

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• 'A Naval History of Britain' which begins in the 7th century has to explain what it means by Britain. My meaning is simply the British Isles as a whole, but not any particular nation or state or our own day... 'Britain' is not a perfect word for this purpose, but 'Britain and Ireland' would be both cumbersome and misleading, implying an equality of treatment which is not possible. Ireland and the Irish figure often in this book, but Irish naval history, in the sense of the history of Irish fleets, is largely a history of what might have been rather than what actually happened.

  Nicholas Rodger

  Book, Mean, Perfect

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• The thing is, Guantánamo is also a naval base, and they're under the delusion - especially the people on the naval side who are not dealing with the prison - that they can just pretend this is an ordinary Caribbean naval base. For them, it's: "Why are you making such a big deal out of the most notorious prison in the world?" It's like if people living near Buchenwald said they wanted to talk about the other lovely things in the region besides the camp.

  Molly Crabapple

  People, Lovely, Buchenwald

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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