Admiral Quotes

The admiral, or commander in chief of a squadron, being frequently invested with a great charge, on which the fate of a kingdom may depend, ought certainly to be possessed of abilities equal to so important a station and so extensive a command.

In this country we find it pays to shoot an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.

I don't pretend to be a general or an admiral or anything else, but I just - every time I see - I see President [Barack] Obama get up, "Ladies and gentleman, we are sending 50 people to Iraq," 50.So that's bad in two ways. Number one, it's such a low number that the enemy's saying is that all?And number two, when you think 50, those people now have a target on their back. They wanna find those 50 people and they look for those 50 people.

I do want to say that I was just endorsed - and more are coming next week - it will be over 200 admirals, many of them here - admirals and generals endorsed me to lead this country. That just happened, and many more are coming. And I'm very proud of it.

In this country [England] it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, to encourage the others. The reference is to Admiral John Byng, who was executed in 1757 for failing to prevent the French from taking Minorca.

A peril of the night road is that flecks of dust and streaks of bug blood on the windshield look to me like old admirals in uniform, or crippled apple women, or the front edge of barges, and I whirl out of their way, thus going into ditches and fields and up on front lawns, endangering the life of authentic admirals and apple women who may be out on the roads for a breath of air before retiring.

While Admiral Neffenger is an impressive man, it is naive and dangerous to pretend installing one director can heal what ails TSA, the Department of Homeland Security needs to admit that it has a crisis of bureaucratic complacency - lacking an overarching vision and coherent measures of success and failure.

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.

Admiral Farragaut upon entering Mobile Bay Damn the torpedos. FULL SPEED AHEAD!

As a man-of-war that sails through the sea, so this earth that sails through the air. We mortals are all on board a fast-sailing,never-sinking world-frigate, of which God was the shipwright; and she is but one craft in a Milky-Way fleet, of which God is the Lord High Admiral.

You're gonna get what's good, you're gonna get what the generals and what the admirals and what - and the enlisted and they'll - we'll get together, we wanna get the right stuff.

The rules are drawn up by lawyers who are trying to protect the admirals and generals from the politicians; they’re not written by people who are worried about the guys on the ground getting shot.

**** the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!

Of this voyage, I observe, that it has miraculously been shown, as may be understood by this writing, by the many signal miracles that He has shown on the voyage, and for me, who for so great a time was in the court of Your Highnesses with the opposition and against the opinion of so many high personages of your household, who were all against me, alleging this undertaking to be folly, which I hope in Our Lord will be to the greater glory of Christianity, which to some slight extent already has happened.

Every schoolchild knows that Columbus set out across the sea to prove that the world was round. But the belief in a spherical earth had a long and illustrious pedigree, as Columbus himself was well aware. . . . "The second reason that inspired the Admiral [Columbus] to launch his enterprise and helped justify his giving the name 'Indies' to the lands which he discovered was the authority of many learned men who said that one could sail westward from the western end of Africa and Spain to the eastern end of India, and that no great sea lay between."

Do you know we are being led to Slaughters by placid admirals & that fat slow generals are getting Obscene on young blood Do you know we are ruled by t.v.

But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.

Gout, unlike any other disease, kills more rich men than poor, more wise men than simple. Great kings, emperors, generals, admirals and philosophers have all died of gout.

Thanks be to God, the air is soft as in April in Seville, and it is a pleasure to be in it, so fragrant it is.

We had generals who were admirals and admirals who wanted to be generals. Generals acting as admirals are bad enough, but it was the admirals who wanted to be generals who imperiled victory among the coral islands.

A broadsheet obituarist once pointed out to me that veteran soldiers die by rank. First to go are the generals, admirals and air marshals, then the brigadiers, then a bit of a gap and the colonels and wing commanders and passed-over majors, then a steady trickle of captains and lieutenants. As they get older and rarer, so the soldiers are mythologised and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honours like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that.

I call my dad 'Admiral Ass Hat,' he doesn't really think it's funny.

The admiral needs only one science, that of navigation. The general needs all the sciences.

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.

The admirals of his majesty's fleet are classed into three squadrons, viz. the red, the white, and the blue.

I will say I would leave many of the decisions of some of the things you mentioned to the generals, the admirals, the people on top, and we get some of the - the Congressmen just mentioned to me and I - I think it's true 100 percent, you get your top enlisted people in that and you have some discussions with some of these top enlisted people who know it better than probably anybody.

The lad who dreams of being a boxing champion or an admiral chooses reality. If the writer chooses the imaginary, he confuses the two.

I am the son and grandson of Navy admirals, and I was born into America's service. It wasn't until I was deprived of her company that I fell in love with America.

When the supreme violence of a furious wind upon the sea sweeps over the waters the chief admiral of a fleet along with his mighty legions, does he not crave the gods' peace with vows and in his panic seek with prayers the peace of the winds and favouring breezes. Nonetheless, he is caught up in the furious hurricane and driven upon the shoals of death.

Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.

Admirals extolled for standing still, or doing nothing with a deal of skill.

A policeman in plain clothes is a man; in his uniform he is ten. Clothes and title are the most potent thing, the most formidable influence, in the earth. They move the human race to willing and spontaneous respect for the judge, the general, the admiral, the bishop, the ambassador, the frivolous earl, the idiot duke, the sultan, the king, the emperor. No great title is efficient without clothes to support it.

I had learned volleyball in the Navy, where all the captains and admirals wanted to be spikers, and I found then that a man who can subdue his own desires and master the art of serving others can make himself invaluable. In choosing sides the team captain always chose the good spikers on the first and second choice, but then the spikers would grab his arm and whisper, 'Take Michener.' I was never chosen lower than third, because I was needed. I wasn't good, but I was faithful.

An admiral should be put to death now and then to encourage the others.

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.

An admiral without ships, a hand without fingers, in service of a king without a throne. Is this a knight who comes before us, or the answer to a child's riddle?

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.

Any commander who fails to exceed his authority is not of much use to his subordinates.

The challenge of education is not to prepare a person for success, but to prepare him for failure.

It isn't that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better.

[Admiral Nelson's counsel] guided me time and again. On the eve of the critical battle of Santa Cruz, in which the Japanese ships outnumbered ours more than two to one, I sent my task force commanders this dispatch: ATTACK REPEAT ATTACK. They did attack, heroically, and when the battle was done, the enemy turned away. All problems, personal, national, or combat, become smaller if you don't dodge them, but confront them. Touch a thistle timidly, and it pricks you; grasp it boldly, and its spines crumble. Carry the battle to the enemy! Lay your ship alongside his!

If you can't do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.

There aren't any great men. There are just great challenges that ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet.

A man's judgment is best when he can forget himself and any reputation he may have acquired and can concentrate wholly on making the right decisions.

Another nice thing was that I would type out letters home for the admiral's stewards. They would then feed me the same food the admiral ate.

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.

The Secretary of Defense is not a super General or Admiral. His task is to exercise civilian control over the Department for the Commander-in-Chief and the country.

Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.

We lived, until I was 12 or so, in communal apartment with five different families and the same kitchen, in two little - my brother and me and my parents. It was hell, but it was a common thing. My father was not general or admiral, but he was colonel. He was teaching in military academy military topography.

As I passed along the side walls of Westminster Abbey, I hardly saw any thing but marble monuments of great admirals, but which were all too much loaded with finery and ornaments, to make on me at least, the intended impression.