Anchors of Inspiration: A Powerful Collection of Navy Quotes to Motivate and Empower

"Damn the torpedoes, Full speed ahead!"

- Admiral David Glasgow Farragut

"Don't give up the ship!"

- Captain James Lawrence

"I have not yet begun to fight!"

- John Paul Jones

"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."

- William Blackstone

"Being a Navy SEAL and sniper taught me all about risk management. Take away all the risk variables under your control and reduce it to an acceptable level. The same fundamentals apply in business."

- Brandon Webb

"I wish to have no Connection with any Ship that does not Sail fast for I intend to go in harm's way."

- Captain John Paul Jones

"We have met the enemy and they are ours…"

- Oliver Hazard Perry

""I can imagine no more rewarding a career. And any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: ‘I served in the United States Navy.’""

- President John F. Kennedy

""Take her down!""

- Commander Howard Walter Gilmore

"For much of my life, the Navy was the only world I knew. It is still the world I know best and love most."

- John McCain

"I've been writing poems since I was in the Navy - to Rosalynn. I found I could say things in poems that I never could in prose. Deeper, more personal things. I could write a poem about my mother that I could never tell my mother. Or feelings about being on a submarine that I would have been too embarrassed to share with fellow submariners."

- Jimmy Carter

""The battle of Iwo Island [Jima] has been won. The United States Marines, by their individual and collective courage, have conquered a base which is as necessary to us in our continuing forward movement toward final victory as it was vital to the enemy in staving off ultimate defeat.... Among the Americans who served on Iwo Island, uncommon valor was a common virtue.""

- Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

"I enlisted when I was a boy. The Navy looked after me like my mother. It fed me, took care of me and gave me wonderful opportunities."

- Tony Curtis

"Freedom of navigation, as ensured by the Navy, is critical to America's ability to project power by moving men and equipment over 70 percent of the earth's surface and to maintaining world trade and commerce."

- Robert C. O'Brien

"It follows then as certain as that night succeeds the day, that without a decisive naval force we can do nothing definitive, and with it, everything honorable and glorious."

- President George Washington

"You may fire when you are ready Gridley."

- Commodore George Dewey

""For in this modern world, the instruments of warfare are not solely for waging war. Far more importantly, they are the means for controlling peace. Naval officers must therefore understand not only how to fight a war, but how to use the tremendous power which they operate to sustain a world of liberty and justice, without unleashing the powerful instruments of destruction and chaos that they have at their command.""

- Admiral Arleigh Burke

""Events of October 1962 indicated, as they had all through history, that control of the sea means security. Control of the seas can mean peace. Control of the seas can mean victory. The United States must control the seas if it is to protect your security…""

- President John F. Kennedy

"I believe in American exceptionalism. As a Navy SEAL, I fought so that I would never have to see my president bow to anyone."

- Ryan Zinke

"Leadership is absolutely vital if there are comparable countries which can affect the security of the world you live in. Between Lincoln and Roosevelt's time, America was protected by huge oceans and, in practice, by the British navy. Today, it's different, and the obsession of the Obama administration has been for retrenchment."

- Henry Kissinger

"Theodore Roosevelt's policy to build a two-ocean navy confirmed that the old-style isolationism of the founders had not survived the modern, increasingly globalized world."

- Margaret MacMillan

""The Navy has both a tradition and a future ─ and we look with pride and confidence in both directions.""

- Admiral George Anderson

"A powerful Navy we have always regarded as our proper and natural means of defense; and it has always been of defense that we have thought, never of aggression or of conquest. But who shall tell us now what sort of Navy to build? We shall take leave to be strong upon the seas, in the future as in the past; and there will be no thought of offense or provocation in that. Our ships are our natural bulwarks."

- President Woodrow Wilson

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

- President Theodore Roosevelt

"Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition!"

- Leutenant Howell Maurice Forgy (USN)

"You must be your very best in the darkest moments."

- Navy SEALs

"Anything worth doing is worth overdoing. Moderation is for cowards."

- Navy SEALs

"When you are under pressure you don’t rise to the occasion. You sink to the level of your training. Train well."

- Navy SEALs

"Put your mind in neutral and your ass in gear."

- Navy SEALs

"GET UP. AND. GO. Take the risk, take the gamble, take the first step. Take action. And don’t let another day slip by."

- Navy SEALs

"You’ve only got three choices in life: Give up, give in, or give it all you’ve got."

- Navy SEALs

"Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up."

- Navy SEALs

"When you’re under pressure you don’t rise to the occasion, you sink to the level of your training."

- Navy SEALs

"If a particular task is worth your time and energy, then it’s worth doing correctly."

- Navy SEALs

"There are two ways to do something … the right way, and again."

- Navy SEALs

"It’s all mind over matter, If I don’t mind, then it doesn’t matter."

- Navy SEALs

"If you’re gonna be stupid, you better be hard."

- Navy SEALs

"You don’t have to like it, you just have to do it."

- Navy SEALs

"The more you sweat in training, the less you bleed in combat."

- Navy SEALs creed

"Be sure to taste your words before you spit them out."

- Navy SEALs