All views in this blog are my own and represent the views of no other person, organization, or institution.
10 November 2025 is the 250th anniversary of the United States Marine Corps. I served in the Corps, and today I work for the Corps s a historian. I am proud to be a Marine, proud of my Corps. We celebrate our birthday every year with balls and ceremonies, and for the past few years I've celebrated by sharing quotes about Marines on line. Not all positive - loving the Corps means taking the bad with the good - but they all illustrate, in my opinion, some aspect of the Corps and the Marines who make it what it is. So, through 10 November, I'll share several quotes a day, a long with a iconic painting or photograph about Marines.
Today's Marine Quotes:
"On board the GANGES, about 12 mos. ago, Lt. Gale, was struck by an Officer of the Navy, the Capt. took no notice of the Business and Gale got no satisfaction on the Cruise; the moment he arrived he call’d the Lieut. out and shot him; afterwards Politeness was restor’d”
—Signed “Yr obdt. Svt, W. W. Burrows, LtCol Comdt, MC” (2d Commandant of the Marine Corps)
"The Continental ship Providence, now lying at Boston, is bound on a short cruise, immediately; a few good men are wanted to make up her complement."
—Marine Captain William Jones, Providence Gazette, 20 March 1779.)
Visit the Navy-Yard, and behold a marine, such a man as an American government can make, or such as it can make a man with its black arts, —a mere shadow and reminiscence of humanity, a man laid out alive and standing, and already, as one may say, buried under arms with funeral accompaniments…
—Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience, 1854
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| Charles Waterhouse's "Cutting Out of the Sandwich, Puerto Plata, 11 May 1800" depicts Marines capturing a French privateer during the Quasi War with France. |
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