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I have always believed that successes would be the inevitable result if the two services, the army and the navy, had fair play, and if we sent the right man to fill the right place.
--
Speech in Parliament (January 15, 1855), reported in Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, Third Series, vol. cxxxviii. p. 2077; this can be contrasted witho Sydney Smith's statement "The officer and the office, the doer and the thing done, seldom fit so exactly that we can say they were almost made for each other" in Sketches of Moral Philosophy (1806).

 

Austen Henry Layard

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James A. Michener

 

It is the love of the [British] people; it is their attachment to their government, from the sense of the deep stake they have in such a glorious institution, which gives you both your army and your navy, and infuses into both that liberal obedience, without which your army would be a base rabble, and your navy nothing but rotten timber.

 

Edmund Burke

 

Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.
The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition.
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Emma Goldman

 

Your daughter says, 'Dad. Mom. I want to join the armed services.' You look at her beautiful face, her life flashes before your eyes, and you see a body bag. Now's the time to let her know the biggest military secret: She can join the military and be as safe-from-death as she would be at home. How? In the war in Iraq, not a single woman has been killed in the Air Force. Nor has a single woman been killed in the Marines. And only one has died in the Navy. Your only job is to keep her out of the Army.

 

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I am not one to advocate the reducing of our navy in any degree below that proportion to the French navy which the exigencies of our service require; and, mind what I say, here is just what the French Government would admit as freely as you would. England has four times, at least, the amount of mercantile tonnage to protect at sea that France has, and that surely gives us a legitimate pretension to have a larger navy than France. Besides, this country is an island; we cannot communicate with any part of the world except by sea. France, on the other hand, has a frontier upon land, by which she can communicate with the whole world. We have, I think, unfortunately for ourselves, about a hundred times the amount of territory beyond the seas to protect, as colonies and dependencies, that France has. France has also twice or three times as large an army as England had. All these things give us a right to have a navy somewhat in the proportion to the French navy which we find to have existed if we look back over the past century. Nobody has disputed it. I would be the last person who would ever advocate any undue change in this proportion. On the contrary—I have said it in the House of Commons, and I repeat it to you—if the French Government showed a sinister design to increase their navy to an equality with ours; then, after every explanation to prevent such an absurd waste, I should vote 100 millions sterling rather than allow that navy to be increased to a level with ours—because I should say that any attempt of that sort without any legitimate grounds, would argue some sinister design upon this country.

 

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