Quote: There is something about going to sea. A little bit of discipline, self-discipline and humility are required.
Author: Prince Andrew British Prince
Quote: I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.
Author: Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley 1769-1852, British Statesman, Military Leader
Quote: We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.
Author: Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley 1769-1852, British Statesman, Military Leader
Quote: Valor, glory, firmness, skill, generosity, steadiness in battle and ability to rule -- these constitute the duty of a soldier. They flow from his own nature.
Author: Bhagavad Gita c. BC 400-, Sanskrit Poem Incorporated Into the Mahabharata
Quote: How happy is the sailor's life, from coast to coast to roam; in every port he finds a wife, in every land a home.
Author: Isaac Bickerstaffe
Quote: Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.
Author: Ambrose Bierce 1842-1914, American Author, Editor, Journalist, ''The Devil's Dictionary''
Quote: The Royal Navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island.
Author: Sir William Blackstone 1723-1780, British Jurist
Quote: The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.
Author: Napoleon Bonaparte 1769-1821, French General, Emperor
Quote: If I should die, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.
Author: Rupert Brooke 1887-1915, British Poet
Quote: In the weakness of one kind of authority, and in the fluctuation of all, the officers of an army will remain for some time mutinous and full of faction, until some popular general, who understands the art of conciliating the soldiery, and who possesses the true spirit of command, shall draw the eyes of all men upon himself. Armies will obey him on his personal account. There is no other way of securing military obedience in this state of things.
Author: Edmund Burke 1729-1797, British Political Writer, Statesman
Quote: What makes a regiment of soldiers a more noble object of view than the same mass of mob? Their arms, their dresses, their banners, and the art and artificial symmetry of their position and movements.
Author: Lord Byron 1788-1824, British Poet
Quote: The General Order is always to maneuver in a body and on the attack; to maintain strict but not pettifogging discipline; to keep the troops constantly at the ready; to employ the utmost vigilance on sentry go; to use the bayonet on every possible occasion; and to follow up the enemy remorselessly until he is utterly destroyed.
Author: Lazare Carnot
Quote: Soldiers have many faults, but they have one redeeming merit; they are never worshippers of force. Soldiers more than any other men are taught severely and systematically that might is not right. The fact is obvious. The might is in the hundred men who obey. The right (or what is held to be right) is in the one man who commands them.
Author: Gilbert K. Chesterton 1874-1936, British Author
Quote: Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.
Author: Winston Churchill 1874-1965, British Statesman, Prime Minister
Quote: War is too important a matter to be left to the military.
Author: Georges Clemenceau 1841-1929, French Statesman
Quote: There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.
Author: Joseph Conrad 1857-1924, Polish-born British Novelist
Quote: The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.
Author: Calvin Coolidge 1872-1933, Thirtieth President of the USA
Quote: I had rather have a plain, russet-coated Captain, that knows what he fights for, and loves what he knows, than that which you call a Gentle-man and is nothing else.
Author: Oliver Cromwell 1599-1658, Parliamentarian General, Lord Protector of England
Quote: Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?
Author: Daniel Daly
Quote: I must have the gentleman to haul and draw with the mariner, and the mariner with the gentleman. I would know him, that would refuse to set his hand to a rope, but I know there is not any such here.
Author: Sir Francis Drake c.1540-1596, Elizabethan Seaman, Born in Crowndale, Devon
Quote: Drinking is the soldier's pleasure.
Author: John Dryden 1631-1700, British Poet, Dramatist, Critic
Quote: The most advanced nations are always those who navigate the most.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor.
Author: Ralph Waldo Emerson 1803-1882, American Poet, Essayist
Quote: Rogues, would you live forever?
Author: (Frederick II) Frederick The Great 1712-1786, Born in Berlin, King of Prussia (1740-1786),
Quote: The courage of a soldier is found to be the cheapest and most common quality of human nature.
Author: Edward Gibbon 1737-1794, British Historian
Quote: We are as near to heaven by sea as by land.
Author: Sir Humphrey Gilbert 1539-1583, British Navigator
Quote: Conscription may have been good for the country, but it damn near killed the army.
Author: Sir Richard Hull
Quote: Every man thinks meanly of himself for not having been a soldier, or not having been at sea.
Author: Samuel Johnson 1709-1784, British Author
Quote: No man will be a sailor who has contrivance enough to get himself into a jail; for being in a ship is being in a jail, with the chance of being drowned. A man in a jail has more room, better food and commonly better company.
Author: Samuel Johnson 1709-1784, British Author
Quote: Now, you mummy's darlings, get a rift on them boots. Definitely shine em, my little curly-headed lambs, for in our mob, war or no war, you die with clean boots on.
Author: Gerald Kersh
Quote: When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.
Author: Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936, British Author of Prose, Verse
Quote: Children play soldier. That makes sense. But why do soldiers play children?
Author: Karl Kraus 1874-1936, Austrian Satirist
Quote: There were gentlemen and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second. But the seamen were not gentlemen; and the gentlemen were not seamen.
Author: Thomas B. Macaulay 1800-1859, American Essayist and Historian
Quote: Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilized folk to despise war.
Author: Allan Massie
Quote: No profession or occupation is more pleasing than the military; a profession or exercise both noble in execution (for the strongest, most generous and proudest of all virtues is true valor) and noble in its cause. No utility either more just or universal than the protection of the repose or defense of the greatness of one's country. The company and daily conversation of so many noble, young and active men cannot but be well-pleasing to you.
Author: Michel Eyquem De Montaigne 1533-1592, French Philosopher, Essayist
Quote: The army is the true nobility of our country.
Author: Napoleon III 1808-1873, Third son of Louis Bonaparte, the President of the Second French Rep.
Quote: The military mind is indeed a menace. Old-fashioned futurity that sees only men fighting and dying in smoke and fire; hears nothing more civilized than a cannonade; scents nothing but the stink of battle-wounds and blood.
Author: Sean O'Casey 1884-1964, Irish Dramatist
Quote: 'Tis the soldier's life to have their balmy slumbers waked with strife.
Author: William Shakespeare 1564-1616, British Poet, Playwright, Actor
Quote: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers. For he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; be never so vile. This day shall gentle his condition. And gentlemen in England now abed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.
Author: William Shakespeare 1564-1616, British Poet, Playwright, Actor
Quote: History shows that there are no invincible armies.
Author: Joseph Stalin 1879-1953, Georgian-born Soviet Leader
Quote: There are few men more superstitious than soldiers. They are, after all, the men who live closest to death.
Author: Mary Stewart
Quote: If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined to longevity.
Author: Sun Tzu c 400-430 bc, Chinese Military Strategist, Author of ''Art of War''
Quote: Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts -- a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments.
Author: Henry David Thoreau 1817-1862, American Essayist, Poet, Naturalist
Quote: That's what an army is -- a mob; they don't fight with courage that's born in them, but with courage that's borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.
Author: Mark Twain 1835-1910, American Humorist, Writer
Quote: In this country it's a good thing to kill an admiral now and then to encourage the others.
Author: Voltaire 1694-1778, French Historian, Writer
Quote: The feeling about a soldier is, when all is said and done, he wasn't really going to do very much with his life anyway. The example usually is: ''he wasn't going to compose Beethoven's Fifth.''
Author: Kurt Vonnegut Jr. 1922-, American Novelist
Quote: When we assumed the Soldier, we did not lay aside the Citizen. Author: George Washington 1732-1799, First President of the USA
Quote: O the joy of the strong-brawn'd fighter, towering in the arena in perfect condition, conscious of power, thirsting to meet his opponent.
Author: Walt Whitman 1819-1892, American Poet
Quote: Making the world safe for hypocrisy.
Author: Thomas Wolfe 1931-, American Author, Journalist
Quote: Standing armies can never consist of resolute robust men; they may be well-disciplined machines, but they will seldom contain men under the influence of strong passions, or with very vigorous faculties.
Author: Mary Wollstonecraft 1759-1797, British Feminist Writer
Quote: Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love.
Author: William Butler Yeats 1865-1939, Irish Poet, Playwright.
Quote: An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.
Author: Mao Zedong 1893-1976, Founder of Chinese Communist State