“Never, however, do I take shortcuts. There is not path of least resistance in my training. What I do equates to hard manual labor, disciplined grunt work. Once you permit yourself to compromise, you fail yourself. You might be able to fool some people, but you can never fool yourself. Your toughest critic is the one you face every morning in the mirror.”

“If you make a fool of yourself, you can do it with dignity, without taking your pants down. And if you do take your pants down, you can still do it with dignity.”

“The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, "How would I do this if I were a fool?" Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you will never go wrong.”

“Remember when we met? Before you left, you said you were going to make a fool of yourself over me. That's still what you're worried about. That you'll find yourself doing things you never dreamed of doing, things you laughed at in others, and you'll make a fool of yourself.”

“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people, some of the time, but you can fool yourself anytime you need to badly enough.”

“Pretend you are foolish to the foolish, and be yourself when you are alone or with others like you, because if you take the foolish seriously as your friend, you might be a fool yourself.”