Navy Quotes
More Navy Quotes
I've received many honors and I'm grateful for them; but I've already received the highest award I'll ever receive, and that has been the privilege and honor of serving very proudly in the United States Navy.
grace hopper— As appeared in the October 1986 issue of Chips, a Department of the Navy information technology magazine
There is an utter ignorance of, and indifference to, our sufferings and privations….What care they for us, provided we be submissive, pay the taxes, furnish recruits for the Army and Navy and bless the masters who either despise or oppress or combine both? The apathy that exists respecting Ireland is worse than the national antipathy they bear us.
Daniel O'Connell— Letter to T.M. Ray, 1839, on English attitudes to Ireland (O’Connell Correspondence, Vol VI, Letter No. 2588).
Raeder, the political admiral, stealthily built up the German Navy in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and then put it to use in a series of aggressions which he had taken a leading part in planning.
erich raeder— Robert H. Jackson
It has been 20 years since the Navy signed the humiliating Washington Naval Treaty. During [that] time we have whetted our swords to stab [the] US.
— A Japanese officer.[ ]
'Where they got you stationed now, Luke?'? 'At the p-p-p-present time in Norfolk at the Navy base,' Luke answered,'m-m-making the world safe for hypocrisy.'
Thomas Clayton Wolfe— 1929 Look Homeward, Angel, pt.3, ch.36.
Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids.
alexander graham bell— As quoted in The Military Quotation Book by James Charlton, p. 37
There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.
— Senate Select Committee on Secret Military Assistance to Iran and the Nicaraguan Opposition (Iran-Contra hearings) (1987)
— YouTube video
— Daniel K. Inouye: Reference of excerpt
— The Mission of Sheltron: Reference
Navy Commander Erich Raeder was more concerned with enhancing the Navy's position in the new Reich than with contributing to a rational grand strategy. His limited vision fitted nicely into Hitler's dreams of world empire.
erich raeder— Johannes Steinhoff (1994)
With Leighton Smith in charge, we've got a Navy admiral running a predominantly land campaign — the first ever in NATO's 47-year history. ... As the U.S. continues to withdraw from overseas bases, Naval Forces will become even more relevant in meeting American forward presence requirements.
smith, leighton w., jr.— US Secretary of the Navy John Howard Dalton in an address in Newport, Rhode Island (11 June 1996)
If we get chased out of Iraq with our tail between our legs, that will be the fifth consecutive Third-world country with no hint of a Navy or an Air Force to have whipped us in the past 40 years.
hunter s. thompson— "Am I Turning Into a Pervert?" (18 November 2003)
It is not possible to foretell the reaction of certain elements in the Army and Navy.
yoshijirō umezu— Quoted in "The Decision to Drop the Atomic Bomb" - Page 107 - by Dennis Wainstock - History - 1996
And we will NOT let Campbell's Soup, Old Navy, or anybody ELSE, HAMMER into the minds of girls as YOUNG as SIX YEARS OLD that they should ALWAYS hate their bodies and ALWAYS be on a diet!
jello biafra— "Become the Media" (Track 10)
The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
thomas l. friedman— "A Manifesto for the Fast World". New York Times. March 28, 1999. Retrieved on 2010-06-28.
The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist. McDonald's cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley's technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps.
— Thomas L. Friedman, "A Manifesto for the Fast World". New York Times. March 28, 1999. Retrieved on 2010-06-28.
The condition of the British Navy is, no doubt, a matter of national importance and public interest.
— Grove, J., Henwood v. Harrison (1872), L. R. 7 C. P. Cas. 613.
"In the Navy we're concerned about health and about preserving health care because we don't get paid by the procedure. We get paid to have Marines and sailors healthy, and that's the same mission as the chiropractic profession..."
— Vice Admiral Donald C. Arthur, MD, Surgeon General of the Navy ACANews[ ]
I have always believed that successes would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and the Navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place.
— Speech in Parliament (January 15, 1855), reported in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, vol. cxxxviii. p. 2077; this can be contrasted witho Sydney Smith's statement "The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other" in Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1806).
What can I say? If I knew in 1934 what I know now, I would have remained in the Navy. I didn't know that this was going to happen and I didn't know that Germany was going to lose the war and be in ruins.
oswald pohl— To Leon Goldensohn, June 5, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
They have discovered that the length of time we have now been in commission has rotted our ships and wasted our crews, and that with the completeness of our crews and the soundness of the pristine efficiency of our Navy has departed. For it is impossible for us to haul our ships ashore and dry them out because the enemy's vessels being as many or more than our own, we are constantly anticipating an attack.
Thucydides— Book VII, 7.12-[3]-[4]
The royal Navy of England hath ever been its greatest defense and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of our island.
william blackstone— Book I, ch. 13: Of the Military and Maritime States.
I accept responsibility for U-boat warfare from 1933 onward, and of the entire Navy from 1943 on, but to make me responsible for what happened to Jews in Germany, or Russian soldiers on the east front it is so ridiculous all I can do is laugh.
karl dönitz— To Leon Goldensohn, July 14, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004
Great Britain would spend her last guinea to keep a Navy superior to that of the United States or any other power.
david lloyd george— Colonel Edward House's diary entry (4 November 1918), quoted in Charles Seymour (ed.), The Intimate Papers of Colonel House. Volume IV (Boston, 1928), p. 180.
There is a homely old adage which runs: "Speak softly and carry a big stick; you will go far." If the American Nation will speak softly, and yet build, and keep at a pitch of the highest training, a thoroughly efficient Navy, the Monroe Doctrine will go far.
— Theodore Roosevelt, speech, Chicago, Illinois, April 2, 1903.—Presidential Addresses and State Papers, part 1 (vol. 13 of The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, executive ed.), p. 266 (n.d.). In America and the World War, chapter 2, p. 24, he referred to "the homely proverb: ‘Speak softly and carry a big stick.'"—The Works of Theodore Roosevelt, national ed., vol. 18 (1926). In the last chapter of Theodore Roosevelt, An Autobiography, p. 524 (vol. 20 of Works, national ed.), he says: "The only safe rule is to promise little, and faithfully to keep every promise; ‘to speak softly and carry a big stick.'"
The appropriation of public money always is perfectly lovely until some one is asked to pay the bill. If we are to have a billion dollars of Navy, half a billion of farm relief, [etc.] … the people will have to furnish more revenue by paying more taxes. It is for them, through their Congress, to decide how far they wish to go.
— Calvin Coolidge, syndicated column, New York Herald Tribune (August 5, 1930), p. 1.
The royal Navy of England has ever been its greatest defence and ornament; it is its ancient and natural strength; the floating bulwark of the island.
— Sir William Blackstone (1765), Commentaries, Volume I, Book I, chapter xiii., 387.
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.
— Macaulay, History of England, Volume I, Chapter III, Part XXXII.
Surely the Navy must be the Navy royal.
— Holt, C.J., Tutchin's Case (1704), 14 How. St. Tr. 1122.
The Navy is the most important defence of the country, in which every subject of the Queen has an interest of the deepest character.
— Willes, J., Henwood v. Harrison (1872), L. R. 7 C. P. Cas. 627.
