There is something about going to sea. A little bit of discipline, self-discipline and humility are required.
~ Prince Andrew

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they terrify me.
~ Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley

We have in the service the scum of the earth as common soldiers.
~ Duke of Wellington Arthur Wellesley

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.
~ Bhagavad Gita

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.
~ Isaac Bickerstaffe

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

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.
~ Sir William Blackstone

The greatest general is he who makes the fewest mistakes.
~ Napoleon Bonaparte

If I should die, think only this of me: that there's some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England.
~ Rupert Brooke

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.
~ Edmund Burke

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.
~ Lord Byron

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.
~ Lazare Carnot

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.
~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

Don't talk to me about naval tradition. It's nothing but rum, sodomy and the lash.
~ Winston Churchill

War is too important a matter to be left to the military.
~ Georges Clemenceau

There is nothing more enticing, disenchanting, and enslaving than the life at sea.
~ Joseph Conrad

The nation which forgets its defenders will be itself forgotten.
~ Calvin Coolidge

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.
~ Oliver Cromwell

Come on, you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?
~ Daniel Daly

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.
~ Sir Francis Drake