Marine Quotes

“People ask: Why should I care about the ocean? Because the ocean is the cornerstone of earth's life support system, it shapes climate and weather. It holds most of life on earth. 97% of earth's water is there. It's the blue heart of the planet — we should take care of our heart. It's what makes life possible for us. We still have a really good chance to make things better than they are. They won't get better unless we take the action and inspire others to do the same thing. No one is without power. Everybody has the capacity to do something.”
― Sylvia A. Earle

“As a civilian, I know nothing about combat, the Marine Corps experience or modern man's struggle adjusting to peace after war. I only know what's been shared with me; confidences I would never betray, nor use as details in a novel.”
― Tiffany Madison

“Semper fuckin' fi”
― Kristen Ashley, At Peace

“Every war is different. Every war is the same.”
― Anthony Swofford, Jarhead : A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles

“In my younger days dodging the draft, I somehow wound up in the Marine Corps. There's a myth that Marine training turns baby-faced recruits into bloodthirsty killers. Trust me, the Marine Corps is not that efficient. What it does teach, however, is a lot more useful.

The Marine Corps teaches you how to be miserable.
This is invaluable for an artist.

Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swab jockeys, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because these candy-asses don't know how to be miserable.

The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not. He will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation.

The artist must be like that Marine. He has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier or swabbie or jet jockey. Because this is war, baby. And war is hell."
Page 68”
― Steven Pressfield, The War of Art

“The Pacific is my home ocean; I knew it first, grew up on its shore, collected marine animals along the coast. I know its moods, its color, its nature.”
― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America

“If they didn't want to know, they shouldn't have asked.”
― James Webb, Fields of Fire

“I'll wait until we're both old and gray, chasing you around the retirement home while pushing my walker if that's what it takes.”
― Ann Mayburn, Still

“The Pacific is my home ocean; I knew it first, grew up on its shore, collected marine animals along the coast. I know its moods, its color, its nature. It was very far inland that I caught the first smell of the Pacific. When one has been long at sea, the smell of land reaches far out to greet one. And the same it true when one has been long inland.”
― John Steinbeck

“Into the sea I’d love to sink
When with both eyes a shark can blink
Is he a brave fish or a marine man?
Through those closed eyelids my heart will he scan?”
― Munia Khan

“The thing about a marine is that they can be the nicest men and women you will ever meet, but when it comes to their duty there are none fiercer.”
― Joshua Mcnutt, The Licen Sepulcher

“No matter what the reason, the ways I tried to justify the situation, the second-guessing that lingered, nothing could change the fact that people stopped existing because of me.”
― Clint Van Winkle, Soft Spots: A Marine's Memoir of Combat and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

“There are some people who think you have to hate them in order to shoot them. I don’t think you do. It’s just business.”
― James Mattis

“One of the few entry points to the Baltic Sea, the Kattegat passage is a busy and treacherous waterway. The entire region is a maze of fractured islands, shallow waters and tricky cur-rents which test the skills of all mariners. A vital sea route, the strait is used by large container ships, oil tankers and cruise ships alike and provides a crucial link between the Baltic coun-tries and Europe and the rest of the world. Navigating is difficult even in calm weather and clear visibility is a rare occurrence in these higher latitudes. During severe winters, it’s not uncommon for sections of the Baltic Sea to freeze, with ice occasionally drifting out of the straits, carried by the surface currents.
The ship I was commandeering was on a back-and-forth ‘pendulum’ run, stopping at the ports of St Petersburg (Russia), Kotka (Finland), Gdańsk (Poland), Aarhus (Denmark) and Klaipėda (Lithuania) in the Baltic Sea, and Bremerhaven (Ger-many) and Rotterdam (Netherlands) in the North Sea. On this particular trip, the weather gods were in a benevolent mood and we were transiting under a faultless blue sky in one of the most picturesque regions of the world. The strait got narrower as we sailed closer to Zealand (Sjælland), the largest of the off-lying Danish islands. Up ahead, as we zigzagged through the laby-rinth of islands, the tall and majestic Great Belt Bridge sprang into view. The pylons lift the suspension bridge some sixty-five metres above sea level allowing it to accommodate the largest of the ocean cruise liners that frequently pass under its domi-nating expanse.”
― Jason Rebello, Red Earth Diaries: A Migrant Couple's Backpacking Adventure in Australia

“All sailors of all sorts are more or less capricious and unreliable- they live in the varying outer weather and they inhale it's fickleness”
― Herman Melville , Moby Dick

“It was that hour that turns seafarers' longings homeward- the hour that makes their hearts grow tender upon the day they big sweet friends farewell...”
― Dante Alighieri, Purgatorio (Deluxe)

“It's your job, Marine, to stay alive. If that means getting comfortable with your inner darkness, then that's what you do.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“I’m a marine and we never leave a man behind.”
― Jason Medina, The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel

“If only conversations could be more like missions. Identify the target. Get in, do the job, and get out as quickly as possible.”
― Lisa Cox Carter, A Vast and Gracious Tide

“Marine ecology is complex and tightly interwoven.”
― Mark Kurlansky, Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World

“Falling asleep at your post during wartime is considered a court-martial offense punishable by death, but in the Marine Corps, unit leaders usually improvise and concoct a punishment that is worse than death.”
― John J Culbertson, Master Sniper USMC

“Offshore wind turbines are having detrimental effects on marine wildlife.”
― Steven Magee