Men go back to the mountains, as they go back to sailing ships at sea, because in the mountains and on the sea they must face up."Henry David Thoreau

On Racing:

"The chance of mistakes are about equal to the number of crew squared"

Ted Turner

"Sailing is a good sport.  You don't have to beat up the other guy like you do in boxing and football; you just try to outsmart him, and then you go out and have a beer with him"

-John Kolius

"We don't just want the Cup, we want the whole damn island!"

-Tom Blackaller, on retrieving the Americas Cup from Australia

"Sailboat racing becomes a game of chance only when you are not prepared".

-Buddy Melges

"We won the race by twenty three seconds, and two seconds after we had crossed the line, the mast snapped.  Which solved the problem of stopping anyway".

-Philip Holland

"The Americas Cup is a race of management, money, technology, teamwork and, last and incidently, sailing."

-Bill Kock

Here's some thoughts on Philosophy of sailing....

"For whatever we lose, It's always ourselves we find in the sea".

-E.E. Cummings

"Anyone can hold the helm when the sea is calm".

-Syrus Publilius

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails". 

-William Arthur Ward

"He that will not sail till all dangers are over must never put to sea".

-Thomas Fuller.

"Without patience, a sailor I would never be".

-Lee Allred

On the Sea:

"The sea finds out everything you did wrong".
-Francis Stokes

"He who lets the sea lull him into a sense of security is in very grave danger"
-Hammond Ines

"It's out there at sea that you are really yourself"
-Vito Dumas

"Whenever your preparations for the sea are poor; the sea worms its way in and finds the problems".
-Francis Stokes

On Sailors:

" A tourist remains an outsider throughout his visit; but a sailor is part of the local scene from the moment he arrives".
-Anne Davison

"Men in a ship are always looking up, and men ashore are usually looking down".
-John Masefield

"To young men contemplating a voyage I'd say go."
-Joshua Slocum

"At sea, I learned how little a person needs, not how much."
-Robin Lee Graham

"A sailor is an artist whose medium is the wind".
-Webb Chiles

"Sailors, with their built in sense of order, service and discipline, should really be running the world".
-Nicholas Monsarrat

"Out of sight of land the sailor feels safe.  It is the beach that worries him".
-Charles C. Davis

On Boats:

"There is little man has made that approaches anything in nature, but a sailing ship does. There is not much man has made that calls to all the best in him, but a sailing ship does."
-Allan Villiers

"The perfection of a yachts beauty is that nothing should be there for only beauty's sake".
-John MacGregor

"There are only two colors to paint a boat, black or white, and only a fool would paint a boat black".
-Nathanael G. Herreshoff

"For one thing, I was no longer alone; a man is never alone with the wind-and the boat made three".
-Hilaire Belloc

"If you can not arrive in daylight, then stand off well clear, and wait until dawn. After all, that's one of the things God made boats for- to wait in."
-Tristan Jones

"There is but a plank between a sailor and eternity".
-Thomas Gibbons

"A small craft in an ocean is, or should be, a benevolent dictatorship".
-Tristan Jones

On Engines:

"Long ocean passages usually don't require engines; it's the ports and headlands at each end that may demand some expert sailing".
-Hal Roth

"At last, the god-damned engine is quiet!"
-William Snaith

"He was now convinced that the most valuable sail on board was the diesel".
-Ray Kauffman

On Weather:

"Headwinds are sore vexations and the more passengers the sorer."
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Confronting a storm is like fighting God. All the powers in the universe seem to be against you and, in an extraordinary way, your irrelevance is at the same time both humbling and exalting".
-Franciose LeGrande

"I once knew a writer who, after saying beautiful things about the sea, passed through a Pacific hurricane, and he became a changed man".
-Joshua Slocum

"Off Cape Horn there are but two kinds of weather, neither one of them a pleasant kind".
-John Masefield

"There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes".
-Old Norwegian Adage

"I loved cruising the coast of Maine. For one thing, it helped me conquer my fear of fog. Not that I have learned to feel secure in the fog, but at least I have learned how to grope without panic".
-Herb Payson

"Being hove to in a long gale is the most boring way of being terrified I know"
-Donald Hamilton

"Below 50 degrees south there is no law.  Below 60 degrees south there is no God".
-Old Sailors Adage

"I hate storms, but calms undermine my spirits".
-Bernard Moitessier

"It's scary to have a 30 foot wave chasing you. If you are steering, you don't look back. The crew looks back for you, and you watch their faces. When they look straight up, then get ready!"
-Magnus Olsson

"Wind is to us what money is to life on shore".
-Sterling Hayden

"I don't know who named them swells. There's nothing swell about them. They should have named them awfuls".
-Hugo Vihlen

"It's remarkable how quickly a good and favorable wind can sweep away the maddening frustrations of shore living".
-Ernest K. Gann

More on Boats:

"Boats, like whiskey, are all good".
-R.D. (Pete) Culler

"A ship is always referred to as "she" because it costs so much to keep her in paint and powder".
-ADM. Chester Nimitz

"I want a boat that drinks 6, eats 4, and sleeps 2".
-Earnest K. Gann

"It looks like frozen snot".
-L. Francis Herreshoff, looking at a Herreshoff Bullseye built of fiberglass.

"If a man is to be obsessed by something, I suppose a boat is as good as anything, perhaps a bit better than most".
-E. B. White

"You have no right to own a yacht if you ask that question".
-J. P. Morgan Sr., in answer to a question by Henry Clay Pierce on how much it costs to own and run a yacht.

"Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made".
-Robert N. Rose

"If you can't repair it, maybe it shouldn't be on board."
-Lynn and Larry Pardey

"The cabin of a small yacht is truly a wonderful thing;  not only will it shelter you from a tempest, but from the other troubles in life, it is a safe retreat."
-L. Francist Herreshoff

More on Sailors:

"Bad cooking is responsible for more trouble at sea than all other things put together".
-Thomas Fleming Day

"To the question, "When were your spirits at the lowest ebb?" the obvious answer seemed to be, "When the gin gave out".
-Sir Francis Chichester

"When a man comes to like a sea life, he is not fit to live on land".
-Dr. Samuel Johnson

"The wonder is always new that any sane man can be a sailor".
-Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Any fool can carry on, but a wise man knows how to shorten sail in time".
-Joseph Conrad

"The art of the sailor is to leave nothing to chance".
-Annie Van De Wiele

"Any damn fool can navigate the world sober. It takes a really good sailor to do it drunk".
-Sir Francis Chichester while loading his boat with gin.

"It isn't that life ashore is distasteful to me. But life at sea is better".
-Sir Francis Drake

"The only way to get a good crew is to marry one".
-Eric Hiscock

"A sailing ship is no democracy; you don't caucus a crew as to where you'll go anymore than you inquire when they'd like to shorten sail."
-Sterling Hayden

"I know who you are, but you'll have to wipe your feet".
-Capt. Richard Brown of the schooner America to Prince Albert of England, 1851

"Only two sailors, in my experience, never ran aground. One never left port and the other was an atrocious liar."
-Don Bamford

On the Sea:

"The sea hates a coward".
-Eugene O'Neill

"The ocean is an object of no small terror".
-Edmund Burke

"The sea drives truth into a man like salt".
-Hilaire Belloc

"I wanted freedom, open air and adventure. I found it on the sea".
-Alaine Gerbault

"Waves are not measured in feet or inches, they are measured in increments of fear".
-Buzzy Trent

"The ocean has always been a salve to my soul...the best thing for a cut or abrasion was to go swimming in salt water. Later down the road of life, I made the discovery that salt water was also good for the mental abrasions one inevitably aquires on land".
-Jimmy Buffett

On Sailing:

"To be successful at sea we must keep things simple".
-R. D. (Pete) Culler

"One of the best temporary cures for pride and affection is seasickness".
-Henry Wheeler Show

"The thing I realized this last few days is that the earth is a big place".
-Paul Cayard

"Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit".
-Brooks Atkinson

"Cruising has two pleasures. One is to go out in wider waters from a sheltered place. The other is to go into a sheltered place from wider waters".
-Howard Bloomfield

"Our voyage hade commenced, and at last we were away, gliding through the clean water, past the reeds. Care was lifted from our shoulders, for we were free from advice, pessimism, officialism, heat and hot air."
-K. Adlard Coles

"The single commandment of anchoring is "thou shall create scope".
-Reese Palley

There is nothing - absolutely nothing - half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats.
        - Water Rat, Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows

I find the great thing in this world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving: To reach the port of heaven, we must sail sometimes with the wind and sometimes against it - but we must sail, and not drift, nor lie at anchor.
        - Oliver Wendel Holmes

There was a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in.
        - Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi

Raise your sail one foot, and you get ten feet of wind.         - Chinese Proverb

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harm's way.
        - John Paul Jones

Give me a spirit that on this life's rough sea
Loves t'have his sails filled with a lusty wind,
Even till his sail-yards tremble, his masts crack,
And his rapt ship run on her side so low
That she drinks water, and her keel plows air.
        - George Chapman, 

There isn't no call to go talking of pushing and pulling. Boats are quite tricky enough for those that sit still without looking further for the cause of trouble.
        - Sam Gamgee, J. R. R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

On life's vast ocean diversely we sail,
Reason the card, but passion is the gale.
        - Alexander Pope, Essay on Man

A strong nor’-wester ’s blowing, Bill!
Hark! don’t ye hear it roar now?
Lord help ’em, how I pities them
Unhappy folks on shore now!
        -The Sailor’s Consolation

Liberty is to the collective body, what health is to every individual body. Without health no pleasure can be tasted by man; without liberty, no happiness can be enjoyed by society.

All the great things are simple, and many can be expressed in a single word: freedom; justice; honor; duty; mercy; hope.

A nation which makes the final sacrifice for life and freedom does not get beaten.

Only our individual faith in freedom can keep us free.

In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility -- I welcome it.

Freedom is the last, best hope of earth.

Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.

Freedom of opinion can only exist when the government thinks itself secure.

Freedom exists only with power.