Quotes by Naval Officers

After a battle is over people talk a lot about how decisions were methodically reached but actually there's always a hell of a lot of groping around.

One of the best safeguards of our hopes I have suggested is to be able to mark off the areas of hopelessness and to acknowledge them to face them directly not with despair but with the creative intent of keeping them from polluting all the areas of possibility.

If you are going to sin, sin against God, not the bureaucracy. God will forgive you but the bureaucracy won't.

... secrecy adds a charm to an amour ...

When doing a job — any job — one must feel that he owns it, and act as though he will remain in that job forever.

Dollars cannot buy yesterday.

Thus was this expedition finished...after having, by its event, strongly evinced this important truth; that though prudence, intrepidity and perseverence united are not exempted from the blows of adverse fortune, yet in a long series of transactions they usually rise superior to its power, and in the end rarely fail of proving successful.Voyage Around The World, 1751

In the course of crime ... the descent is rapid.

Security is not a license for people in authority to hide tactics they would never openly admit to using.

What it takes to do a job will not be learned from management courses. It is principally a matter of experience, the proper attitude, and common sense — none of which can be taught in a classroom... Human experience shows that people, not organizations or management systems, get things done.