Navy War Quotes & Sayings

Danny Dietz died right there in my arms. I don't know how quickly hearts break, but that nearly broke mine ... I had to leave him or else die out here with him. But I knew one thing was certain. I still had my rifle and I was not alone, and neither was Danny, a devout Roman Catholic. I left him with God. — Marcus Luttrell

Had Howe pressed on the afternoon of the 27th, the British victory could have been total. Or had the wind turned earlier, and the British navy moved into the East River, the war and the chances of an independent United States of America could have been long delayed, or even ended there and then. — David McCullough

What is the great fear of the United States? That an Eastern power will build a navy to challenge us. How do you keep them from doing that? Keep them at each other's throats so they don't have any money to do this. This is why we fought the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War. — George Friedman

Desperate men are dangerous. And I do know that the United States is not ready to go to war against Japan. Our navy isn't ready and our air force isn't ready. — Ken Follett

I take a nap after supper and dream of the U.S. Navy, a ship anchored near a war scene, at an island, but everything is drowsy as two sailors go up the trail with fishing poles and a dog between them to go make love quietly in the hills: the captain and everybody know they're queer and rather than being infuriated however they're all drowsily enchanted by such gentle love ... (p. 119) — Jack Kerouac

To have command of the air means to be able to cut an enemy's army and navy off from their bases of operation and nullify their chances of winning the war. — Giulio Douhet

Paradoxically, the few eras of peace were times when men of war had high influence. The Pax Romana was enforced by Caesar's Legions. The Pax Brittanica was enforced by the Royal Navy and His Majesty's Forces. — Jerry Pournelle

It seems amazing that the Navy SEALs managed to get inside the compound and shoot Osama so efficiently. I can only imagine they were told that the mission was to rescue a bearded British hostage and he must be brought out alive. — Frankie Boyle

Growing up in the shadow of Johnson Space Center and moving to Texas to welcome our last moon mission home, I wanted to be an astronaut. Combined with my love for Navy history and World War II flight ops, and unsatisfying degrees in college and law school, I joined the Navy and became a naval aviator. — Pete Olson

I'm a Veteran. I was in the Navy, in the submarine corps. I come from a military family. Both of my grandparents were in World War II and retired as officers. One fought in the Pacific and one fought in Europe. The whole family was in the war. I grew up exposed to it and hearing the stories, but the stories I heard weren't kind of the whole "Rah, rah, rah! We saved the world!" They were about the personal price and the emotional price. — David Ayer

All I asked was, where do I sign? Some of the other navy men said I was rooting for the war to last forever. (after Browns gave him a monthly stipend during the war) — Otto Graham

These people weren't Navy SEALs or Army Rangers, weren't trained by the best professional warriors in the world, weren't seasoned by a real war in which they had encountered an enemy who fought back. They lacked the honor of SEALs and Rangers, lacked ideals that stiffened the spine in times of peril. They were fanatics, driven by emotion rather than reason. Their commitment was to destruction instead of to the preservation of what was good, and this
commitment made them feel dangerous, therefore powerful and superior. Being dangerous, however, wasn't the same as being powerful and certainly didn't support a claim to superiority. Like all barbarians, they were vulnerable to panic and confusion when the destruction they wished to wreak was visited instead upon them. — Dean Koontz

I got called back into the Navy during the Korean War. — Daniel J. Evans

In your dream you call for Chaplain Charlie. You met the Navy chaplain when you interviewed him for a feature article you were writing. Chaplain Charlie was an amateur magician. With his magic, Chaplain Charlie entertained Marines in sick bays and distributed spiritual tourniquets to men who were still alive, but weaponless. To brutal, godless children Chaplain Charlie spoke about how God is merciful, despite appearances, about how the Ten Commandments lack detail because when you're writing on stone tablets with lightning bolts you've got to be brief, about how the Free World will conquer Communism with aid of God and a few Marines, and about free fish. One day a Vietnamese child booby-trapped Chaplain Charlie's black bag of tricks. Chaplain Charlie reached in and pulled out a bright ball of death... — Gustav Hasford

The thing that drew me to Lafayette as a subject - that he was that rare object of agreement in the ironically named United States - kept me coming back to why that made him unique. Namely, that we the people never agreed on much of anything. Other than a bipartisan consensus on barbecue and Meryl Streep, plus that time in 1942 when everyone from Bing Crosby to Oregonian school children heeded FDR's call to scrounge up rubber for the war effort, disunity is the through line in the national plot - not necessarily as a failing, but as a free people's privilege. And thanks to Lafayette and his cohorts in Washington's army, plus the king of France and his navy, not to mention the founding dreamers who clearly did not think through what happens every time one citizen's pursuit of happiness infuriates his neighbor, getting on each other's nerves is our right. — Sarah Vowell

I was in World War II; I cried when they took me in the Navy. That's the last time I cried. — Don Rickles

He who is ready to die for his country is a fool. For he didn't choose where he was born; and where he was born didn't choose him. — Mokokoma Mokhonoana

You must be a light unto yourself. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Israel uses sophisticated attack jets and naval vessels to bomb densely-crowded refugee camps, schools, apartment blocks, mosques, and slums to attack a population that has no air force, no air defense, no navy, no heavy weapons, no artillery units, no mechanized armor, no command in control, no army and calls it a war. — Noam Chomsky

The British Army and Navy sang a rousing song called "Heart of Oak"; the rebels had writ one to counter it called "The Liberty Song." Both songs blustered of freedom; but both were sung to the same tune.
And we, to avoid offense, played the tune without words. — M T Anderson

Against all the odds, we built a better navy than theirs - from scratch - in two months! We now rule the waves in the Mediterranean Sea - Our Sea! The day will come - it begins today - when Rome will master the world! Alexander will roll in his grave, Atlantis will decay in her decadence, and these demons of Harappa will entertain Hades with their theatrics this very night. But Rome will live on in fame and glory. It starts with our victory today! — Jennifer McKeithen

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

In Japan, no one could dictate effectively to either army or navy. To an extraordinary degree, the two services - each with its own air force - pursued independent war policies, though the soldiers wielded much greater clout. The foremost characteristic of the army general staff, and especially of its dominant operations department, the First Bureau, was absolute indifference to the diplomatic or economic consequences of any military action. Mamoru — Max Hastings

This was the argument put forward during the War when the expenditure on the army and navy had to be met; and this was the argument put forward in Germany and Austria after the War when a part of the population had to be provided with cheap food, the losses on the operation of the railways and other public undertakings met, and reparations payments made. The assistance of inflation is invoked whenever a government is unwilling to increase taxation or unable to raise a loan; that is the truth of the matter. — Ludwig Von Mises

The main American naval forces were shifted to the Pacific region and an American admiral made a strong declaration to the effect that if war were to break out between Japan and the United States, the Japanese navy could be sunk in a matter of weeks. — Hideki Tojo

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. — Gerald Kersh

The function and Navy in any future war will be to support the dominant air arm. — Jimmy Doolittle

My father took me back home, back to Greenwich Village, and he thought by taking me out of the orphanage he'd be out of the World War too. But no way - they got him anyway. He went in the Navy and then I lived on the streets. — Gregory Corso

Egypt, too, learned to respect the long arm of British capitalism. During the nineteenth century, French and British investors lent huge sums to the rulers of Egypt, first in order to finance the Suez Canal project, and later to fund far less successful enterprises. Egyptian debt swelled, and European creditors increasingly meddled in Egyptian affairs. In 1881 Egyptian nationalists had had enough and rebelled. They declared a unilateral abrogation of all foreign debt. Queen Victoria was not amused. A year later she dispatched her army and navy to the Nile and Egypt remained a British protectorate until after World War Two. — Yuval Noah Harari

Mellas knew that Hawke was letting him squirm. Then, without looking up, Hawke said, 'Look, Mellas, in the Navy or Air Force they give you a medal for what the Marines call just doing their job. In the Marines you only get a medal for being braver than just doing your job. Then he looked at Mellas. 'You get in fixes where medals are handed out because you were unlucky and had to fix things, or because you were stupid and had to fix things. Be carful what you're wishing for. — Karl Marlantes

In 1939, Hitler expanded the German Navy and, in violation of the Munich Agreement, occupied parts of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia. Germany then established the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. This protectorate included those portions of Czechoslovakia that had not already been incorporated into Germany. On August 30, 1939, the German Reich issued an ultimatum to Poland concerning the Polish Corridor and the Free City of Danzig. On September 1st, without waiting for a response to its ultimatum, Germany invaded Poland. Much to Hitler's surprise, England honored its treaty with Poland. Neville Chamberlain declared war on Germany, thereby ushering in another World War. Officially, "The Second World War" in Europe was started by the German Reich when it attacked Poland, although at the time Germany blamed the Treaty of Versailles. — Hank Bracker

A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guaranty of peace. — Theodore Roosevelt

Never in history has the navy landed an army at the planned time and place. But if you land us anywhere within 50 miles of Fedela and within 1 week of D-Day. I'll go ahead and win. — George S. Patton

The reason that the American Navy does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the Americans practice chaos on a daily basis. — Karl Donitz

However, in a later interview, housed in the archives of the Imperial War Museum, London, Beesly was less judicious. "As an Englishman and a lover of the Royal Navy," he said, "I would prefer to attribute this failure to negligence, even gross negligence, rather [than] to a conspiracy deliberately to endanger the ship." But, he said, "on the basis of the considerable volume of information which is now available, I am reluctantly compelled to state that on balance, the most likely explanation is that there was indeed a plot, however imperfect, to endanger the Lusitania in order to involve the United States in the war." So much was done for the Orion and other warships, he wrote, but nothing for the Lusitania. He struggled with this. No matter how he arranged the evidence, he came back to conspiracy. He said, "If that's unacceptable, will someone tell me another explanation to these very very curious circumstances? — Erik Larson

I am for relying for internal defense on our militia solely till actual invasion, and for such a naval force only as may protect our coasts and harbors from such depredations as we have experienced; and not for a standing army in time of peace which may overawe the public sentiment; nor for a navy which, by its own expenses and the eternal wars in which it will implicate us, will grind us with public burthens and sink us under them. — Thomas Jefferson

Down there in the dark was the most technologically sophisticated navy strike force in the world, launching fighters and cruise missiles into Afghanistan ... I had to admit that what the Taliban was doing was brillant. Without satellites, without an air force, with even their primitive radar knocked out, they were ingenious enough to use plain old commercial flights to keep track of the fifth fleets positions. I realized that if we were counting on our military technology alone to win the war on terror, we had a lot of lessons to learn. — Greg Mortenson

The Red Army and Navy and the whole Soviet people must fight for every inch of Soviet soil, fight to the last drop of blood for our towns and villages ... onward, to victory! — Joseph Stalin

After the Second World War, San Francisco was the main point of re-entry for sailors returning from the Pacific. Out at sea, many of these sailors had picked up amatory habits that were frowned upon back on dry land. So these sailors stayed in San Francisco ... — Jeffrey Eugenides

In answer to 'But violence hasn't solved anything!'
The hell it hasn't. The application of violence - of killing and a willingness to be killed - on a massive scale is responsible for a lot of solutions. The most recent mass application of violence liberated Kuwait. The most recent mass application of violence on a global scale alone cleansed the world of the Third Reich. Nonviolence and passive resistance did less than nothing to stop Hitler and his henchmen. The Atlantic slave trade wasn't stopped by 'dialogue' or 'passive resistance' or conferences, but by the opened gunports of the Royal Navy; Dachau and Chang-I weren't liberated with pamphlets. — Markham Shaw Pyle

The Jews caused the war, the Jews caused the outbreak of thieving and robbery all over the country, the Jews caused the inefficiency of the navy — Henry Ford

It would be as if the Navy Seals defected from the U.S. Army to help the Crips take over Los Angeles
and succeeded. — Johann Hari

The best way to contain China and make it the peaceful rise of China is for us to have an enormously robust navy that is the greatest navy in the world, that can patrol two oceans, that can fight two or three wars, and China will not challenge us because the Chinese are practical. — Rudy Giuliani

The essence of war is violence and moderation in war is imbecility.
-Admiral Jacky Fisher of the British Navy — Erik Larson

My mom enlisted in the U.S. Navy in World War II, and my parents actually bought our home thanks to the loan she got through the GI Bill. — Thomas Friedman

With Midway as the turning point, the fortunes of war appeared definitely to shift from our own to the Allied side. The defeat taught us many lessons and impelled our Navy, for the first time since the outbreak of war, to indulge in critical self-examination. — Mitsuo Fuchida

Now comes the reign of iron - and cased sloops are to take the place of wooden ships. — John Adolphus Bernard Dahlgren

There is no honor in sending men to die for something you won't even fight for yourself — Mark Owen

The contention that a standing army and navy is the best security of peace is about as logical as the claim that the most peaceful citizen is he who goes about heavily armed. The experience of every-day life fully proves that the armed individual is invariably anxious to try his strength. The same is historically true of governments. Really peaceful countries do not waste life and energy in war preparations, with the result that peace is maintained. — Emma Goldman

The captain was amusing. He said that he himself couldn't draw and proved his words by drawing his own house for his prisoner to see. It was just such a house as the babies drew in the kindergarten: a square box with four square windows, a door and two chimneys, each with a neat curl of smoke. "That's best I can do," said the Captain, laughing.
Max laughed with him for politeness' sake, though inwardly he was shocked that an important man like the Captain made a fool of himself. "Vater does not draw," he said kindly, "nor does Mutti; but they are both very keen on photography. Perhaps you are good at that?"
"Not brilliant," said the Captain. — Constance Savery

The Army's new pitch was simple. Good pay, good benefits, a manageable amount of adventure ... but don't worry, we're not looking to pick fights these days. For a country that had paid so dear a price for its recent military buccaneering, the message was comforting. We still had the largest and most technologically advanced standing army in the world, the most nuclear weapons, the best and most powerful conventional weapons systems, the biggest navy. At the same time, to the average recruit the promise wasn't some imminent and dangerous combat deployment; it was 288 bucks a month (every month), training, travel, and experience. Selling the post-Vietnam military as a career choice meant selling the idea of peacetime service. It meant selling the idea of peacetime. Barf. — Rachel Maddow

I was brought up in a very naval, military, and conservative background. My father and his friends had very typical opinions of the British middle class - lower-middle class actually - after the war. My father broke into the middle class by joining the navy. I was the first member of my family ever to go to private school or even to university. So, the armed forces had been upward mobility for him. — Christopher Hitchens

The Navy can lose us the war, but only the Air Force can win it. The fighters are our salvation, but the bombers alone provide the means of victory. — Winston Churchill

The world of 1906 ... was a stable and a civilized world in which the greatness and authority of Britain and her Empire seemed unassailable and invulnerably secure. In spite of our reverses in the Boer War it was assumed unquestioningly that we should always emerge "victorious, happy and glorious" from any conflict. There were no doubts about the permanence of our "dominion over palm and pine", or of our title to it. Powerful, prosperous, peace-loving, with the seas all round us and the Royal Navy on the seas, the social, economic, international order seemed to our unseeing eyes as firmly fixed on earth as the signs of the Zodiac in the sky. — Violet Bonham Carter

Huzzah! Free Trade and Sailors' Rights! But instead American ships are captured and sailors impressed by the thousands into the British Navy, becoming slaves to the lash, while the United States has virtually no navy to back them up. Baltimore native, Nathan Jeffries, son of an American hero, Captain William Jeffries, and his Quaker wife, Amy, is haunted by the memories of his fiancee, his best friend, his enemy's woman and his betrayal. Chesapeake Bay is no refuge aboard his father's brig Bucephalus;facing his worst fears, he is chased and captured by armed privateer schooner Scourge. In a violent world at war, Nathan must break his most solemn promise to his mother. For Nathan and the young United States, 1812 would severely challenge rights of passage. — Bert J. Hubinger

The common sense of the word (navy) as we use it today refers to a permanent fighting service made up of ships designed for war, manned by professionals and supported by an adminsistrative and technical infrastructure. A navy in this sense is only one possible method of making war at sea, and by some way the most difficult and the most recent. There have in the past been, and to some extent still are, many other ways of generating sea power. — Nicholas Rodger

Our Navy was very largely sunk. And we were at war in no time at all. I share, in retrospect, the distress we all share at the internment of the Japanese American citizens of the United States. It was not our finest hour. But the Supreme Court had it before it at the time, and justified it and upheld it. — William A. Rusher

Only one military organization can hold and gain ground in war-a ground army supported by tactical aviation with supply lines guarded by the navy. — Omar N. Bradley

The President is to be commander-in-chief of the army and navy of the United States. In this respect his authority would be nominally the same with that of the king of Great Britain, but in substance much inferior to it. It would amount to nothing more than the supreme command and direction of the land and naval forces, as first general and admiral ... while that of the British king extends to the declaring of war and to the raising and regulating of fleets and armies - all which, by the Constitution under consideration, would appertain to the legislature. — Alexander Hamilton

But I felt it necessary to be part of the war effort and I enlisted in the Navy to be a flyer. — Paul Berg

War is a nasty, dirty, rotten business. It's all right for the Navy to blockade a city, to starve the inhabitants to death. But there is something wrong, not nice, about bombing that city. — Sir Arthur Harris, 1st Baronet

The war was not won by any single individual, be it Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant. The Union, as a whole, triumphed. The national army, fielding over two million men in toto, led by legions of staff, company, field, and general officers; a correspondingly potent navy; and a far more powerful economy than its adversary were all needed to ultimately subdue the Confederacy. — Joseph A. Rose

I thought of Pericles' speech to the families of the Athenian war dead, in which he said, What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others. — Eric Greitens

I grew up in Manchester, and we were very poor. My father was a miner who joined the Navy during the war and developed a lung disease and had to have a lung removed. — Bernard Hill

Hopefully one day Wars will only be fought in movies. And may the best producer win! — Stanley Victor Paskavich

Their task was to film the work of the Allied women. More than 20,000 American women served overseas during the war - 10,000 as nurses in the army and navy and a few thousand under the auspices of the Red Cross, the YMCA, and the Salvation Army. Several hundred women were telephone operators with the Army Signal Corps and still others served as doctors, entertainers, canteen workers, interpreters, dentists, therapists, decoders, and in a myriad of other roles. Most of the one thousand professional entertainers who joined the war effort were connected to either the Overseas Theater League or the YMCA and over half were women. — Cari Beauchamp

I was 20 years old at Pearl Harbor. I was in the Navy about a year and four months before the war. — Barney Ross

The success of our surprise attack on Pearl Harbor will prove to be the Waterloo of the war to follow. For this reason the Imperial Navy is massing the cream of its strength in ships and planes to assure success. — Chuichi Nagumo

The British Army should be a projectile to be fired by the British Navy. — Edward Grey, 1st Viscount Grey Of Fallodon

staff of U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet and submitted his narrative in 2001. With the ongoing war in Iraq, I felt it appropriate that a broader audience have access to Commander Winkler's work. — David F. Winkler

The United States Navy, during the war, used Navajos as "code-talkers" who relayed messages from ship to ship, talking in Navajo (a language not studied in Japan). — Michael Lesk

The Royal Navy had not built its magnificent reputation over the centuries by avoiding battle. — Arthur Nicholson

I have a mathematical certainty that the future will confirm my assertion that aerial warfare will be the most important element in future wars, and that in consequence not only will the importance of the Independent Air Force rapidly increase, but the importance of the army and navy will decrease in proportion. — Giulio Douhet

I went over to the Charlestown Navy Yard yesterday and saw some big men of war, one over 100 guns. — John D. Long

The great chandeliers hang silent. The tables in the vast dining room overlooking the lake are spread with white cloth and silver as if for dinners before the war. At a little after 4, into the green room with the slow walk of aged people, the Nabokovs come. He wears a navy blue cardigan, a blue-checked shirt, gray slacks and a tie. His shoes have crepe soles. He is balding, with a fringe of gray hair. His hazel-green eyes are watering, oysterous, as he says. He is 75, born on the same day as Shakespeare, April 23. He is at the end of a great career, a career half-carved out of a language not his own. — James Salter

Headquarters must never find out about this hellish embarrassment. We must do on our own, without any help from the navy. You and I, Grisha, we must stick together on this one. You're all I've got, Grisha, you're all I have." Grisha sat down slowly on the firm couch. He and the Captain had gone many, many miles together, since the early days of Soviet subs, through this cold war and a few hot ones. They were among the last remnants of the Second World War veterans left in the Soviet Navy. He was always sure they would serve together until the end. He had never envisioned such an end. I must not let it happen, he thought and looked up to his Captain. "Don't worry, Valerie," he said, calling the Captain by name, as he had always called him when they were by themselves with a bottle of Cognac. "We've seen much worse and lived to drink about it. We shall make it this time, too. We haven't lost this battle yet." His calm demeanor reassured — Herzel Frenkel

I'm a warrior at heart; I'm an ex-Navy Seal. I'm too old to wage war anymore, and so now I wage it mentally. And so I find politics very stimulating; it's war without guns. — Jesse Ventura

When I was a child in the Navy during World War II, I was perennially grateful to the armed services libraries for having on hand a good supply of those pocket books, which were so common in that period. I must have read a couple hundred of them, and they did a lot to save my sanity. — James A. Michener

It is the function of the Navy to carry the war to the enemy so that it is not fought on U.S. soil. — Chester W. Nimitz

The president is commander-in-chief of the army and navy and of the state militia when called into the service of the United States. He holds this power in time of peace as well as in time of war. — Charles A. Beard

Surveyors showed up unannounced at the twenty-acre campus of Mount Vernon Seminary and Junior College, a private girls' school on Ward Circle in Northwest Washington. The Navy announced it was taking immediate possession "in the interest of the war effort." It offered $800,000 for the property worth over $5 million, eventually agreeing to a $1.1 million purchase price. Over 5,000 codebreakers soon arrived to transform the school grounds into a Communications Annex. — Cindy Gueli

You do not mean there is danger of peace?, cried Jack. — Patrick O'Brian