Quotes & Sayings About Ships And Captains

All we have to do is preserve our personality, to live our own life, be captain of our own ship, and all will be well. — Edward Bach

The surer of himself an admiral is, the finer the tactical development of his fleet, the better his captains, the more reluctant must he necessarily be to enter into a melee with equal forces, in which all these advantages will be thrown away, chance reign supreme, and his fleet be place on terms of equality with an assemblage of ships which have never before acted together. — Alfred Thayer Mahan

The death of a man is like the fall of a mighty nation That had valiant armies, captains, and prophets, And wealthy ports and ships all over the seas. — Czeslaw Milosz

In calm water every ship has a good captain. — Grover Cleveland

Acting on television is like being asked by the captain to entertain the passengers while the ship goes down. — Peter Ustinov

To experience conflicts knowingly, though it may be distressing, can be an invaluable asset. The more we face our own conflicts and seek out our own solutions, the more inner freedom and strength we will gain. Only when we are willing to bear the brunt can we approximate the ideal of being the captain of our ship. Spurious tranquillity rooted in inner dullness is anything but enviable. It is bound to make us weak and an easy prey to any kind of influence. — Karen Horney

When a crew and a captain understand each other to the core, it takes a gale, and more than a gale, to put their ship ashore. — Rudyard Kipling

How many captains of stolen ships did it take to equal one disgraced UN official? That could tie a courtroom up for a few decades. — James S.A. Corey

Very often do the captains of such ships take those absent-minded young philosopher to task, upbraiding them with not feeling sufficient "interest" in the voyage; half-hinting that they are so helplessly lost to all honourable ambition, as that in their secret souls they would rather not see whales than otherwise. But all in vain; those young Platonists have a notion that their vision is imperfect; they are short-sighted; what us, then, to strain the visual nerve? They have left their opera glasses at home. — Herman Melville

We see many instances of cities going down like sinking ships to their destruction. There have been such wrecks in the past and there surely will be others in the future, caused by the wickedness of captains and crews alike. For these are guilty men, whose sin is supreme ignorance of what matters most. — Plato

You are the captain of your own ship; don't let anyone else take the wheel. — Michael Josephson

I am not the captain of my ship. My ship is out there, but I don't have my course. You never know in this business. — Jamie Farr

As the years passed, new myths arose to explain the mysterious objects the strangers brought from the land of the dead. A nineteenth-century missionary recorded, for example, an African explanation of what happened when captains descended into the holds of their ships to fetch trading goods like cloth. The Africans believed that these goods came not from the ship itself but from a hole that led into the ocean. Sea sprites weave this cloth in an "oceanic factory, and, whenever we need cloth, the captain ... goes to this hole and rings a bell." The sea sprites hand him up their cloth, and the captain "then throws in, as payment, a few dead bodies of black people he has bought from those bad native traders who have bewitched their people and sold them to the white men." The myth was not so far from reality. For what was slavery in the American South, after all, but a system for transforming the labor of black bodies, via cotton plantations, into cloth? — Adam Hochschild

When the storm brews and the waves swell, only an experienced captain can control the ship and save it. — Mata Amritanandamayi

Surgeons are independent doers, ready to act. They prefer not to ask for help, thank you, or to place trust in much outside their own abilities. They work hard, expect perfection, and do not accept excuses. To the residents, some surgeon mentors were decent human beings; others were tyrants. Personalities aside, the central fact was this: Surgeons use their hard-earned physical skills to get results in the operating room (or create their own problems). They rely on themselves for success or failure. They are the captains of their ships. They do not need or want to rely on medication or another person to improve the quality of a patient's life. Surgery is a specialty of instant gratification, for patient and surgeon alike. — Paul A. Ruggieri

The captain of a ship is not chosen from those of the passengers who comes from the best family. — Blaise Pascal

It is the duty of the ship's captain to make port, cost what it may. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

It had borne all the ships whose names are like jewels flashing in the night of time, from the Golden Hind returning with her round flanks full of treasure, to be visited by the Queen's Highness and thus pass out of the gigantic tale, to the Erebus and Terror, bound on other conquests - and that never returned. It had known the ships and the men. They had sailed from Deptford, from Greenwich, from Erith - the adventurers and the settlers; kings' ships and the ships of men on 'Change; captains, admirals, the dark "interlopers" of the Eastern trade, and the commissioned "generals" of East India fleets. Hunters for gold or pursuers of fame, they all had gone out on that stream, bearing the sword, and often the torch, messengers of the might within the land, bearers of a spark from the sacred fire. What greatness had not floated on the ebb of that river into the mystery of an unknown earth! . . . The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths, the germs of empires. — Joseph Conrad

Your life is your ship and you are the captain. Choose your course, take the wheel firmly and get on your way. — Michael Josephson

When you do a movie, it's like going on a journey. It's really like the director is the captain of the ship, and that energy, everybody feels. — Kellan Lutz

I'll always rather be in a ship that's got a captain that has some vision. — Susan Sarandon

Somebody can be the captain of the ship, which allows you to make big mistakes. — Susan Sarandon

A century before the concept took hold in America, pirate ships were democracies. Most captains were elected by crew and could be voted out anytime. — Robert Kurson

A really conscientious doctor ought to die with his patient. The captain goes down with his ship. — Eugene Ionesco