Sailors Quotes

“Black seamen - or "Black Jacks" as African sailors were known - enjoyed a refreshing world of liberty and equality. Even if they were generally regulated to jobs such as cooks, servants, and muscians and endured thier fellow seamen's racism, they were still freemen in the Royal Navy. One famous black sailor wrote, "I liked this little ship very much. I now became the captian's steward, in which I was very happy; for I was extremely well treated by all on board, and I had the leisure to improve myself in reading and writing.”

“O Sailor!It’s the way I want to beIt’s beyond the pale for meIt’s what being unknown is all aboutIt’s the path I choose to takeIt’s the destiny I makeIt’s my life now – the only way outOut of circulation in another dimensionI carry you right inside my heartAs we’re one, moulded togetherAlways and forever, never apartIt’s a world where I’m aloneIt’s a place where I can atoneIt’s a severing of all ties I knowI feel so free and yet I’m boundI’m invisible and yet aroundI know I’ve got to go with the flowMy life now is like a sailboat ride,Destiny is the wind – with you by my side,I’m the sailor, who sets the course,Empowered by an incredible force.”

“The strongest storms make the best sailors. The strongest games make the best players. Tougher challenges make the best leaders.”

“Centuries ago, sailors on long voyages used to leave a pair of pigs on every deserted island. Or they'd leave a pair of goats. Either way, on any future visit, the island would be a source of meat. These islands, they were pristine. These were home to breeds of birds with no natural predators. Breeds of birds that lived nowhere else on earth. The plants there, without enemies they evolved without thorns or poisons. Without predators and enemies, these islands, they were paradise. The sailors, the next time they visited these islands, the only things still there would be herds of goats or pigs. Oyster is telling this story. The sailors called this "seeding meat." Oyster says, "Does this remind you of anything? Maybe the ol' Adam and Eve story?" Looking out the car window, he says, "You ever wonder when God's coming back with a lot of barbecue sauce?”

“I had a romance novel inside me, but I paid three sailors to beat it out of me with steel pipes.”

“The old sailors who traveled Earth's seas were said to have loved the ocean. The great captains said they were married to the sea or called the sea their mistress. Modern sailors held no such fantasies about outer space. Space did not love or hate, it simply killed anything it touched.”

“He penned a letter to the Company in London, a letter whose unfailing spirit would become legendary among the sailors of the East India Company. 'I cannot tell where you should looke for me.' he wrote, 'because I live at the devotion of the winds and seas.' (Written by/about Captain James Lancaster, on the ship Red Dragon, during a terrible storm, 1603)”

“A fight is like the perfect storm. It is risky and dangerous. But, as the African proverb goes, Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. Fights are often learning opportunities—if we’re willing to dig deep enough past our own egos.”

“Ships are but boards sailors but men.”