We've backed off in good faith to try and give you a chance to straighten this problem out. But I am going to beg with you for a minute. I'm going to plead with you, do not cross us. Because if you do, the survivors will write about what we do here for 10,000 years.
— James Mattis
Interesting Us Marine quotations
They're on our right, they're on our left, they're in front of us, they're behind us; they can't get away from us this time.
You are part of the world's most feared and trusted force.
Engage your brain before you engage your weapon.
The battle of Iwo Island has been won.
The United States Marines by their individual and collective courage have conquered a base which is as necessary to us in our continuing forward movement toward final victory as it was vital to the enemy in staving off ultimate defeat.
So they've got us surrounded, good! Now we can fire in any direction, those b*****ds won't get away this time!
We are all members of the same great family .
.. On social occasions the formality of strictly military occasions should be relaxed, and a spirit of friendliness and goodwill should prevail.
The bended knee is not a tradition of our Corps.
But then my mother, who's a very selfless, stoic person from a family of Marines, would tell us that what was good for our father was good for us - he would make more money; therefore, we'd be able to get better educations.
I'm going to fight my way out, I'm going to take all my equipment and all my wounded and as many dead as I can. If we can't get out this way, this Division will never fight as a unit again.
Success in battle is not a function of how many show up, but who they are.
I have only two men out of my company and 20 out of some other company.
We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold.
They say "you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
" In the Marine Corps, you can make that horse wish to hell he had.
Wind is to us what money is to life on shore.
...The Marines have been the first to land-on embattled beaches throughout the world-we share the unfaltering confidence of all Americans that they will land again-and land hard.
I should deem a man-of-war incomplete without a body of Marines.
..imbued with that esprit that has so long characterized the "Old Corps."
Wherever you are or whatever your job, don't be confused or diverted by false priorities. We have only one mission to perform-that is to fight and win. And, we must do it better than anyone else in the world.
The Marine Corps is proud of the fact that it is a force of combined arms, and it jealously guards the integrity of its air-ground team.
War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste.
.. The only redeeming factors were my comrades' incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other - and love. That espirit de corps sustained us.
My skin prickled and I looked back at the ocean.
None of us ask for the things we inherit; they are thrust upon us, willy-nilly. Like The Marine, I suddenly understood. Mom and I weren't trespassing. This house was ours. This view was ours. And that seemed as absurd and unreal as the stories Sailor Hat had spun for me on the ferry.
Let us remember with devotion that the flag we love and honor is the flag of freedom that flew in victory at Yorktown, the flag the United States Marines raised on Mount Suribachi, the flag Francis Scott Key saw by the dawn's early light. Long may it wave.
Look, many of us here are regular marines... I will die as a marine because that is my dream.
Since 9/11 we've been engaged in wars around the world, and General [James] Mattis has been a leading battlefield commander in many of those theaters, including in the April 2004 siege of Fallujah, where the US Marines killed so many people that the municipal soccer stadium in the city had to be turned into a graveyard for the dead.
There it is. It is useless to ask ourselves why it is we who are here. We are here. There is only us between the airfield and the Japs. If we don't hold, we will loose Guadalcanal.
The only things those people have that you don't is guts. Do you wanna live forever?
Every gazette brings accounts of the untutored freaks of the wind,--shipwrecks and hurricanes which the mariner and planter acceptas special or general providences; but they touch our consciences, they remind us of our sins. Another deluge would disgrace mankind.
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.
Yousef Aid Ahmed has memorized the places where his four brothers' bodies laid after they were killed by US marines, he said. The family recounts that November day in 2005 and says it was a massacre of the brothers, along with 20 other people, following a roadside bomb in Haditha.
I can't see how a single man could spend his time to better advantage than in the Marines.
It is the Land of Truth (enchanted name!), surrounded by a wide and stormy ocean, the true home of illusion, where many a fog bank and ice, that soon melts away, tempt us to believe in new lands, while constantly deceiving the adventurous mariner with vain hopes, and involving him in adventures which he can never leave, yet never bring to an end.
Fish gathered to look at us - a school of baracudas, some curious marines.
SCRAM! I told them. They swam off, but I could tell they went reluctantly. I swear I understood their intencions. They were about to star rumors flighing around the sea about the son of poseidon and some girl at the bottom of Siren Bay.
And all of these together, as much as any campaign the Marine Corps has ever pursued, have brought an unrelenting, never-ceasing pride to all of us who have ever claimed the title of United States Marine
Two U.S. Marine skeletons guarded the doors. They grinned down at us, rocket-propelled grenade launchers held across their chests. "You know," Grover mumbled, "I bet Hades doesn't have trouble with door-to-door salesman.
When the mariner has been tossed for many days in thick weather, and on an unknown sea, he naturally avails himself of the first pause in the storm, the earliest glance of the sun, to take his latitude, and ascertain how far the elements have driven him from his true course. Let us imitate this prudence, and, before we float farther on the waves of this debate, refer to the point from which we departed, that we may at least be able to conjecture where we now are.
In 2001, we were told that the war in Afghanistan was a feminist mission.
The marines were liberating Afghan women from the Taliban. Can you really bomb feminism into a country? And now, after 25 years of brutal war - 10 years against the Soviet occupation, 15 years of US occupation - the Taliban is riding back to Kabul and will soon be back to doing business with the United States.
I want to build a wired ocean that helps us take back the seas from poachers and illegal fishers. To do this, we need the latest technology applied to large pelagic fish and sharks, surveillance technology that helps protect marine protected areas, and tags that help prevent shark finning and illegal fishing. We must use modern sensors to help protect our seas!