The Sand Pebbles Quotes

“A sailor without his own ship was like a hermit crab without a shell.”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“crenelated”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“He who lives under it and is disloyal to it is a traitor to the human race everywhere.”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“He was thinking it must be tough to be a woman. They were all needs and wants and wishes and the only real trade they had was going to bed.”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“I want you all to understand about moral courage. I know it is not easy. We are trained to fight men, not lies. We are trained to face death and wounds, not public scorn. But to win this fight against lies, we must find the moral courage to endure public scorn and even personal indignities without flinching or retaliating. That is the sacrifice the service of our nation demands of us now. I know we all have the moral courage to make it.”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“There were the men who gave and took death in battle. There were the other men who shuffled papers and cooked beans and such, logistic support for the fighters. The army could keep them separate. In a ship, they all went into battle together. You could not make the distinction between man and man. It had to be made within each man, and each man had constantly to make it for himself.”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“The flailing storm of lead crumpled and threw Jake Holman like a giant hand wadding wastepaper.”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“We [the military personnel here] serve the flag. The trade we all follow is the give and take of death. It is for that purpose that the American people maintain us. Any one of us who believes he has a job like any other, for which he draws a money wage, is a thief of the food he eats and a trespasser of the bunk in which he lies down to sleep.”
― Richard McKenna , The Sand Pebbles

“the whole world felt like a loaded gun on a hair trigger.”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“What could be saved, if the Flag of the American Nation were to perish?”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“Machinery only cared about what a man knew and what he could do with his hands,”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles

“Jake Holman loved machinery in the way some other men loved God, women and their country.”
― Richard McKenna, The Sand Pebbles