Chester W. Nimitz Quotes

It is not the ship so much as the skillful sailing that assures the prosperous voyage.

There is so much to sailing a ship. There's about a thousand different lines on a brig ship, and knowing what each one of those does, it takes a long time, and that's why you have these cabin boys that start on the ship, and they learn throughout the years, and that's why it takes so long to captain one.

I'm not an experienced sailor.

A great mind is a good sailor, as a great heart is.

Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.

Young sailors once stood under a square sail, gazing wonderingly across the water to where a strange shore rose about the sea - a New World.

Nothing is so contrary to military rules as to make the strength of your army known, either in the orders of the day, in proclamations, or in the newspapers.

We can't, you know, use our military to make sure the planet doesn't get warmer. And so that kind of leadership, of being able to bring people together, to apply practical commonsense solutions based on facts, based on science, based on what works you know, that's been the approach I have taken consistently as a public servant. That's the kind of style that I think we need in the presidency right now.

Our present control of the sea is so absolute that it is sometimes taken for granted.

Support for Saddam, including within his military organization, will collapse after the first whiff of gunpowder.

Prisoner of War guard companies, or an equivalent organization, should be as far forward as possible in action to take over prisoners of war, because troops heated with battle are not safe custodians. Any attempt to rob or loot prisoners of war by escorts must be dealt strictly with.

Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated.

I will make certain that our military is the best in the world in both cyber offense and defense and in every other way, by the way. Every other way.

To have command of the air means to be able to cut an enemy's army and navy off from their bases of operation and nullify their chances of winning the war.

We have lived in a world where the discoveries of physics and genetics are far more awe-inspiring, as well as infinitely more liberating, than the claims of any religion.

Very few [doctors] are men of science in any very serious sense; they're men of technique.

Cavalry is useful before, during, and after the battle.

Our artillery... The Germans feared it almost more than anything we had.

Those who fall in love with practice without science are like a sailor who enters a ship without a helm or a compass, and who never can be certain whither he is going.

The sailor is frankness, the landsman is finesse. Life is not a game with the sailor, demanding the long head--no intricate game of chess where few moves are made in straight-forwardness and ends are attained by indirection, an oblique, tedious, barren game hardly worth that poor candle burnt out in playing it.

Science and technology have freed humanity from many burdens and given us this new perspective and great power. This power can be used for the good of all. If wisdom governs our actions; but if the world is mad or foolish, it can destroy itself just when great advances and triumphs are almost without its grasp.

The value of the space program is beyond science, it's beyond military; it's a cultural shift in how we think of our place in the universe.

They who plough the sea do not carry the winds in their hands.

Our vision of interconnectedness resonates with new networks of world citizens in nongovernmental organizations linking from numberless centers of energy, expressing the emergence of a new organic whole, seeking unity within and across national lines... If governments and their leaders, bound by hierarchy and patriarchy, wedded to military might for legitimacy, fail to grasp the implications of an emerging world consciousness for cooperation, for peace and for sustainability, they may become irrelevant.

Air superiority is the ultimate expression of military power.