Esprit De Corps Quotes

• The Marines fought almost solely on esprit de corps, I was certain. It was inconceivable to most Marines that they should let another Marine down, or that they could be responsible for dimming the bright reputation of their Corps. The Marines simply assumed that they were the world's best fighting men.

  Robert Sherrod

  Military, Fighting, Marine

  Robert Sherrod (2013). “Tarawa: The Incredible Story of One of World War II's Bloodiest Battles”, p.35, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• Morale is the state of mind. It is steadfastness and courage and hope. It is confidence and zeal and loyalty. It is élan, esprit de corps and determination.

  George C. Marshall

  Loyalty, Determination, Persistence

  Military Review, October 1948.

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• Individual ambition is undoubtedly a strong motive in student work, but there is such a thing among students everywhere as ambition for others, call it class spirit, esprit de corps, good fellowship, or good will to men.

  Herbert Baxter Adams

  Strong, Ambition, Men

  Herbert Baxter Adams (1887). “The Study of History in American Colleges and Universities”

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• My entire life has been an attempt to get back to the kind of feelings you have on a field. The sense of brotherhood, the esprit de corps, the focus - there being no past or future, just the ball. As trite as it sounds, I was happiest playing ball.

  David Duchovny

  Past, Focus, Feelings

  Interview with Lawrence Grobel, www.playboy.com. December 1998.

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• Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few. The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day or it is rotten. The living sap of today outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand entrusted with power becomes, either form human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.

  Wendell Phillips

  Hands, Yesterday, People

  25 Copy quote

• Morale is the state of mind. It is steadfastness and courage and hope.

  George C. Marshall

  Courage, Attitude, Mind

  Military Review, October 1948.

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• Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; power is ever stealing from the many to the few.

  Wendell Phillips

  Liberty, Stealing, Vigilance

  Wendell Phillips (1863). “Speeches, Lectures, and Letters”, p.52

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• 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."

  Joshua R. Sands

  Military, War, Marine

  47 Copy quote

• A priest is a man vowed, trained, and consecrated, a man belonging to a special corps, and necessarily with an intense esprit de corps. He has given up his life to his temple and his god. This is a very excellent thing for the internal vigour of his own priesthood, his own temple. He lives and dies for the honour of his particular god. But in the next town or village is another temple with another god. It is his constant preoccupation to keep his people from that god. Religious cults and priesthoods are sectarian by nature; they will convert, they will overcome, but they will never coalesce.

  H. G. Wells

  Religious, Men, People

  H. G. Wells (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of H. G. Wells (Illustrated)”, p.10332, Delphi Classics

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• Clearly, if Confederation is to survive another 100 years, Canada must find a national esprit de corps. Cohesion cannot depend indefinitely on hating Toronto.

  Eric Nicol

  Hate, Years, Toronto

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• The hand entrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people

  Wendell Phillips

  Hands, People, Enemy

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• If the heart has its reasons, perhaps the body
  Has its own lumbering sort of carnal spirit,
  Felt in the tingling bruises of collision,
  And known to captains as esprit de corps.

  Anthony Hecht

  Sports, Heart, Bruises

  Anthony Hecht (2012). “Collected Earlier Poems”, p.206, Knopf

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• However much pains may be taken to combine the soldier and the citizen in one and the same individual, whatever may be done to nationalize wars, never will it be possible to do away with the professionalism of the business; and if that cannot be done, then those who belong to it will always look upon themselves as a kind of guild, in the regulations, laws, and customs in which the "Spirit of War" finds its expression. It would be very wrong to look down upon this corporate spirit, or esprit de corps, which may and should exist more or less in every Army.

  Carl von Clausewitz

  Pain, War, Taken

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• I always make the business case for sustainability. It's so compelling. Our costs are down, not up. Our products are the best they have ever been. Our people are motivated by a shared higher purpose - esprit de corps to die for. And the goodwill in the marketplace - it's just been astonishing.

  Ray Anderson

  Business, People, Purpose

  19 Copy quote

• That typically English characteristic for which there is no English name -esprit de corps.

  F. E. Adcock

  Names, Characteristics

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• Wherever the Government does not emanate...from the people, the principle of the Government, the esprit de corps, the point of honour, in all those connected with it, and raised by it to privileges above the law and above humanity, will be hatred to the people.

  William Hazlitt

  Government, Law, People

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• If young gentlemen get from their years in college only manliness, esprit de corps, a release of their social gifts, a training ingive and take, a catholic taste in men and the standards of true sportsmen, they have gained much but they have not gained what a college should give them. It should give them insight into the things of the mind and the spiritthe consciousness of having taken on them the vows of true enlightenment and of having undergone the discipline, never to be shaken off, of those who seek wisdom in candor, with faithful labor and travail of spirit.

  Woodrow Wilson

  Taken, College, Men

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• The people of Southwest have always been my pride, my joy and my love. Their indomitable dedication and esprit de corps have taken Southwest from a three-airplane dream to a 500-airplane reality.

  Herb Kelleher

  Dream, Taken, Airplane

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• A coach has to worry not so much about creating motivation, esprit de corps, as about destroying it. The true competitor has it; he wouldn't be a star if he didn't. So you have to mold all these egos together and make sure in your selection of people that you don't destroy the feeling of togetherness or morale, because it is a fragile thing.

  Dick Motta

  Sports, Stars, Motivation

  8 Copy quote

• You don't spend twenty years of your life in the service and not have a warm, nostalgic feeling left in you. It's a small service, and there's a lot of esprit de corps.

  Alex Haley

  Years, Feelings, Twenties

  4 Copy quote