These admiral quotes will inspire you. Admiral a commander of a fleet or naval squadron, or a naval officer of very high rank.
A collection of motivating, happy, and encouraging admiral quotes, admiral sayings, and admiral proverbs.
Famous Admiral Quotes
- “Admiral. That part of a warship which does the talking while the figurehead does the thinking.” ~ Ambrose Bierce
- “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.” ~ Jack Adams
- “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.” ~ Hideki Tojo
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“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.” ~ Donald Rumsfeld
- “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.” ~ Karl Philipp Moritz
- “There aren’t any great men. There are just great challenges that ordinary men like you and me are forced by circumstances to meet.” ~ William Halsey
- “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.” ~ Raymond A. Spruance
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“If you can’t do the little things right, you will never do the big things right.” ~ William H. McRaven
- “[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!” ~ William Halsey
- “Ford used to come to work in a big car with two Admiral’s flags, on each side of the car. His assistant would be there with his accordion, playing, Hail to the Chief.” ~ Richard Widmark
- “The challenge of education is not to prepare a person for success, but to prepare him for failure.” ~ James Stockdale
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“It isn’t that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better.” ~ Francis Drake
- “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.” ~ Alfred Thayer Mahan
- “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.” ~ Samuel Francis Du Pont
- “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?” ~ George R. R. Martin
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“Any commander who fails to exceed his authority is not of much use to his subordinates.” ~ Arleigh Burke
- “Any commander who fails to exceed his authority is not of much use to his subordinates.” ~ Arleigh Burke”A policeman in plain clothes is a man; in his uniform, he is ten. Clothes and titles 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.” ~ Mark Twain
- “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.” ~ James A. Michener
- “As president, I wouldn’t be making the day-to-day combat decisions. The job of the commander-in-chief is to lay the objective out and then you rely upon the generals and admirals and commanders to give you their expert advice on the tools needed to carry out that objective.” ~ Ted Cruz
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“Among the men who fought on Iwo Jima, uncommon valor was a common virtue.” ~ Chester W. Nimitz
- “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 favoring breezes. Nonetheless, he is caught up in the furious hurricane and driven upon the shoals of death.” ~ Lucretius
- “Today a Scot is leading a British army in France [Field Marshall Douglas Haig], another is commanding the British Grand Fleet at sea [Admiral David Beatty], while a third directs the Imperial General Staff at home [Sir William Roberton]. The Lord Chancellor is a Scot [Viscount Finlay]; so are the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Foreign Secretary [Bonar Law and Arthur Balfour]. The Prime Minister is a Welshman [David Lloyd George], and the First Lord of the Admiralty is an Irishman [Lord Carson]. Yet no one has ever brought in a bill to give home rule to England!” ~ John Hay Beith
- “The highest greatness, surviving time and stone, is that which proceeds from the soul of man. Monarchs and cabinets, generals and admirals, with the pomp of court and the circumstance of war, in the lapse of time disappear from sight; but the pioneers of truth, though poor and lowly, especially those whose example elevates human nature, and teaches the rights of man, so that “a government of the people, by the people, for the people, may not perish from the earth;” such a harbinger can never be forgotten, and their renown spreads co-extensive with the cause they served so well.” ~ Charles Sumner
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“The lad who dreams of being a boxing champion or an admiral chooses reality. If the writer chooses the imaginary, he confuses the two.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre
- “The English also had a reputation, shared with the Dutch, for blowing up their ships to avoid capture. In 1611, for instance, the Spanish Admiral Don Pedro de toledo captured a Turkish pirate ship, but its English consort, ‘being wont to seek a voluntary death rather than yield, blew up their ship when they saw resistance useless’. Blowing up their ships, or at least threatening to do so, would become standard pirate practice.” ~ Peter Earle
- “Perhaps there lives some dreamy boy, untaught
In schools, some graduate of the field or street,
Who shall become a master of art,
An admiral sailing the high seas of thought
Fearless and first, and steering with his fleet
For lands not yet laid down in any chart.” ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - “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.” ~ William Falconer
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“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.” ~ John McCain
- “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.” ~ Donald Trump
- “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.” ~ Donald Trump
- “I’m from Holland and the history of “Admiral” is something you would read about when you’re at school. Nobody knows about these stories and when you go to any museum in Holland, you will see these paintings of these 17th-century sea buckles that the Dutch were into, so it always intrigued me.” ~ Roel Reine
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“Admirals and Generals always want more ships and more weapons and they take the arguments where they can find them.” ~ Helmut Schmidt
- “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.” ~ Sam Smith
- “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.” ~ Benjamin E. Sasse
- “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.” ~ James Thurber
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“Obesity is now a problem in the navy. They’ve created a new rank: Really Big Rear Admiral.” ~ David Letterman
- “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.” ~ Voltaire
- “Your American admiral said that he held me in the highest esteem, and thought that I conducted my defense perfectly. He said through his chief of staff that my conduct was beyond reproach and he had the greatest admiration for me.” ~ Karl Donitz
- “What is wanted in architecture, as in so many things, is a man. … One suggestion might be made-no profession in England has done its duty until it has furnished a victim. … Even our boasted navy never achieved a great victory until we shot an admiral. Suppose an architect were hanged? Terror has its inspiration, as well as competition.” ~ Benjamin Disraeli
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“In this country, we find it pays to shoot an admiral from time to time to encourage the others.” ~ Voltaire
- “Here the people could stand it no longer and complained of the long voyage; but the Admiral cheered them as best he could, holding out good hope of the advantages they would have. He added that it was useless to complain, he had come [to go] to the Indies, and so had to continue it until he found them, with the help of Our Lord.” ~ Christopher Columbus
- “Regarding the air raid over Los Angeles, it was learned by Army G2 that Rear Admiral Anderson…recovered an unidentified airplane off the coast of California…with no bearing on conventional explanation. This Headquarters has come to the determination that the mystery airplanes are in fact not earthly and, according to secret intelligence sources, they are in all probability of interplanetary origin.” ~ George C. Marshall
- “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.” ~ Mikhail Baryshnikov
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“Admirals extolled for standing still, or doing nothing with a deal of skill.” ~ William Cowper
- “The Admiral says that he never beheld so fair a thing: trees all along the river, beautiful and green, and different from ours, with flowers and fruits each according to their kind, many birds and little birds which sing very sweetly.” ~ Christopher Columbus
- “Raeder, the political admiral, stealthily built up the German Navy in defiance of the Versailles Treaty, and then put it to use in a series of aggressions which he had taken a leading part in planning.” ~ Erich Raeder
- “After two hours it stopped raining and in the same moment the spell broke, which Peroquet and the Admiral and Captain Jumeau knew by a curious twist of their senses, as if they had tasted a string quartet, or been, for a moment, deafened by the sight of color blue.” ~ Susanna Clarke
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“This is Leo. I’m the… What’s my title? Am I like, admiral, or captain, or…” “Repair boy.” “Very funny, Piper.” ~ Rick Riordan
- “Leadership is about keeping toilets flushing,” the Admiral once said. “Unless you’re on the battlefront. Then it’s about staying alive. Neither are pleasant.” ~ Neal Shusterman
- “When Secretary [Hillary] Clinton talks about this, I mean, I’ll take the admirals and I’ll take the generals any day over the political hacks that I see that have led our country so brilliantly over the last 10 years with their knowledge. OK? Because look at the mess that we’re in.” ~ Donald Trump
- “But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.” ~ Voltaire
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“An admiral should be put to death now and then to encourage the others.” ~ Voltaire
- “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.” ~ Donald Trump
- “The Admiral’s using us,” he says to the kids around him. “Don’t you see that?” Most of the kids just shrug, but Hayden’s there, and he never misses an opportunity to add his peculiar wisdom to a situation. “I’d rather be used whole than in pieces,” Hayden says.” ~ Neal Shusterman
- “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.” ~ Holland Smith
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“The admirals of his majesty’s fleet are classed into three squadrons, viz. the red, the white, and the blue.” ~ William Falconer
- “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.”” ~ Ferdinand Columbus
- “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.” ~ Christopher Columbus
- “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.” ~ Alexander Hamilton
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“The admiral needs only one science, that of navigation. The general needs all the sciences.” ~ Napoleon Bonaparte
- “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 mythologized and grow ever more heroic, until finally drummer boys and under-age privates are venerated and laurelled with honors like ancient field marshals. There is something touching about that.” ~ A. A. Gill
- “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.” ~ Thomas Sydenham
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“I call my dad ‘Admiral Ass Hat,’ he doesn’t really think it’s funny.” ~ Jay Crownover
- “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.” ~ Christopher Columbus
- “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.” ~ Chris Kyle
Admiral is the commander in chief of a navy.
