The Quiet Warrior Quotes

“Detailers were both courted and held in contempt by other officers. Fleet Admiral Ernest J. King felt they were prone to vacillation and compromise. In his book, anyone associated with the Bureau of Navigation was a “fixer.” He would always be suspicious of Fleet Admiral Chester Nimitz during World War 11 because of Nimitz’s previous duty with the Bureau.”
― Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance

“The students’ study of the Russo-Japanese War impressed them with one certainty in the Japanese character: Japan would start a future war by launching a surprise attack before issuing a formal declaration.”
― Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance

“Halsey was Spruance’s reporting senior during the two years that Spruance commanded first Aaron Ward and later Percival. He extolled Spruance in fitness reports for his skill as a destroyerman as well as for his character and brains.”
― Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance

“George held, and Spruance believed, that large landowners inhibited economic progress and inflicted poverty upon the working classes. His solution was to impose a single tax on all land rental incomes and to abolish all other taxes.”
― Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance

“An idealistic contemporary of Spruance reflected sadly, “All of these things that I’d thought of as perfection in the way of midshipmen, I soon found were not so. My effort was to do everything perfectly the whole time I was a plebe, and eventually I found out that it just didn’t pay. You couldn’t do things that way.”
― Thomas B. Buell, The Quiet Warrior: A Biography of Admiral Raymond A. Spruance