Pirate Quotes
Pirates In Their Own Words
“It is a blessing for a man to have a hand in determining his own fate.” ― Blackbeard
“Under the leadership of a man you have all chosen to flee. We shall see how you prove yourselves under the hand of a woman.” ― Madame Ching Shih
“Pirates plunder the rich under the cover of their own courage.” – “Black” Sam Bellamy
“A merry life and a short one shall be my motto.” - Bartholomew Roberts
“I am a man of fortune and must seek my fortune.” – Henry Avery
“If there’s a man among ye, ye’ll come up and fight like the man ye are to be!” ― Mary Read
“People are what are scary…people.” ― Blackbeard
“Heaven, you fool? Did you ever hear of any Pyrates going thither? Give me hell, it’s a merrier place. I’ll give Roberts a Salute of 13 Guns at Entrance.” ― Thomas Sutton
“My Lord, it is a very hard sentence. For my part, I am the innocentest person of them all, only I have been sworn against by perjured persons.” ― William Kidd
“As to hanging, it is no great hardship. For were it not for that, every cowardly fellow would turn pirate and so unfit the sea, that men of courage must starve.” - Anne Bonny
“In an honest service there is thin commons, low wages, and hard labor; in this, plenty and satiety, pleasure and ease, liberty and power; and who would not balance creditor on this side, when all the hazard that is run for it, at worst, is only a sour look or two at choking. No, a merry life and a short one, shall be my motto.” ― Bartholomew Roberts
“Damn you villains, who are you? And from whence came you?” ― Edward ‘Blackbeard’ Teach
“There is none of you but will hang me, I know, whenever you can clinch me within your power.” - Bartholomew Roberts
“If you’ll turn sober, and mind your business, perhaps in time I may make you one of my Lieutenants, if not, here’s a boat alongside and you shall be set ashore.” - Henry Avery
“I am sorry to see you here, but if you had fought like a man, you needn’t be hanged like a dog.” ― Anne Bonny
“I am a free prince, and I have as much authority to make war on the whole world, as he who has a hundred sail of ships at sea and an army of 100,000 men in the field.” - “Black” Sam Bellamy
“Aye, tough mermaids are, the lot of them.” ― Blackbeard
“If you'd fought like a man, you would not have been hang'd like a dog." - Anne Bonny
“Since we met in love, let us part in love.” - Howell Davis
“Damnation seize my soul if I give you quarters, or take any from you.” - Blackbeard
“Come, don’t be in a fright, but put on your clothes, and I’ll let you into a secret. You must know that I am Captain of this ship now, and this is my cabin, therefore you must walkout. I am bound to Madagascar, with a design of making my own fortune, and that of all the brave fellows joined with me…if you have a mind to make one of us, we will receive you, and if you’ll turn sober, and mind your business, perhaps in time I may make you one of my Lieutenants, if not, here’s a boat alongside and you shall be set ashore.” - Henry Every
“I plead my belly.” - Mary Read
“If you’ll turn sober, and mind your business, perhaps in time I may make you one of my Lieutenants, if not, here’s a boat alongside and you shall be set ashore.” - Henry Avery
"If ye be brave or fool enough to face a pirates curse, proceed." "Take heed, wretched curs. Your fate is sealed." - Blackbeard
“Yes, I do heartily repent. I repent I had not done more mischief; and that we did not cut the throats of them that took us, and I am extremely sorry that you aren’t hanged as well as we.” - Anonymous Pirate
"Damn ye, you are a sneaking puppy, and so are all those who will submit to be governed by laws which rich men have made for their own security.” -”Black” Sam Bellamy
“Damn my blood, I am sorry they won’t let you have your sloop again, for I scorn to do anyone a mischief, when it is not for my advantage.” ― Sam Bellamy
“And what fate befalls mutineers?” ― Blackbeard
“Your words surround you like fog and make you hard to see.” ― Blackbeard
"You know when I feel closest to our Maker? When I see suffering, pain, and anguish. That's when the true design of this world is revealed." - Blackbeard
“A good dream is better than a bad reality." - Blackbeard
“Time and tide waits for none!" - Blackbeard
Pirate Quotes in Fiction
“You got the makings of greatness in you, but you got to take the helm and chart your own course!” - Long John Silver, Treasure Planet
“Fate has brought us together again. Well, actually, buried treasure and pirates brought us together.” - Kermit the Frog as Captain Abraham Smollet, Muppet Treasure Island
“If you choose to lock your heart away, you’ll lose it for certain.” - Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean
"Pieces of 8, Pieces of 8!" - "Captain Flint" the Parrot from Treasure Island
“Ah. Love. A dreadful bond.” - Davy Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean
“I may be a pirate, but I bristle at the thought of a woman losing her heart. Unless it’s over me.” - Captain Killian Hook, Once Upon a Time
“My heart will always belong to you.” - Davy Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean
“Death cannot stop true love. All it can do is delay it for a while." - Dread Pirate Roberts, The Princess Bride
“Actually, I quite fancy you from time to time. When you’re not yelling at me.” - Captain Killian Hook, Once Upon a Time
“Honestly, it’s the honest ones you want to watch out for, because you can never predict when they’re going to do something incredibly stupid.” - Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean
“I know you feel like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders, but at some point, even though we’re quite different, you’ve got to trust me.” - Captain Killian Hook, Once Upon a Time
“You'll not forget what I done good, not any more than you'll forget the bad.” - Long John Silver, Treasure Island
“One soul is not equal to another.” - Davy Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean
“The problem is not the problem. The problem is your attitude about the problem.” - Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean
“In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom in the dark once someone has illuminated it.” - Captain Flint, Black Sails
“For certain you have to be lost to find a place that can't be found. Elseways, everyone would know where it was.” - Captain Barbosa, Pirates of the Caribbean
“Look, I don't mean to be rude but this is not as easy as it looks so I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't distract me." - Dread Pirate Roberts, The Princess Bride
“The truth is far too much fun.” - Captain Hook, Hook
“Revenge may sate your being, but don’t misunderstand me, my dear. It’s an end, not a beginning.” - Captain Killian Hook, Once Upon a Time
“Nobody will believe it’s possible until we show them.” - Captain Flint, Black Sails
“I've just had a sublime vision. All the jagged parts of my life have come together to form a complete and mystical... whole.” - Captain Hook, Hook
“It's a pleasant thing to be young, and have ten toes, and you may lay to that.” - Long John Silver, Treasure Island
“You can be the gentleman and shoot the lady and starve to death yourself.” - Captain Barbosa, Pirates of the Caribbean
“You'll not forget what I done good, not any more than you'll forget the bad.” - Long John Silver, Treasure Island
“In the dark, there is discovery, there is possibility, there is freedom in the dark once someone has illuminated it.” ― Captain Flint, Black Sails
“Ahoy! Let’s trouble the water!” ― Bella De Pirate
"I have a rendezvous beyond my Beloved Horizon." ― Captain Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean
About Pirates and Piracy
“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirates’ loot on Treasure Island…” - Walt Disney
“Now and then we had a hope that if we lived and were good, God would permit us to be pirates.” - Mark Twain
“Ships are but boards, sailors but men; there be land-rats and water-rats, water-thieves and land-thieves, I mean pirates, and then there is the peril of waters, winds, and rocks.” - William Shakespeare
“Drinking rum before 10am makes you a pirate, not an alcoholic.” - Granger Smith
“Life’s pretty good, and why wouldn’t it be? I’m a pirate, after all.” - Johnny Depp
“The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a Pirate.” - Bernard Williams
“Why join the navy if you can be a pirate?” - Steve Jobs
“I’ve been a puppet, a pauper, a pirate, a poet, a pawn, and a king
I’ve been up and down and over and out and I know one thing
Each time I find myself flat on my face
I pick myself up and get back in the race” - Frank Sinatra
“It is a glorious thing to be a Pirate King.” - W. S. Gilbert
“Land was created to provide a place for boats to visit.” - Brooks Atkinson
“Yes, I am a pirate, two hundred years too late. Cannons don’t thunder, there’s nothing to plunder, I’m an over-forty victim of fate.” - Jimmy Buffett
“The pirate he will sink you with a kiss, he’ll steal your heart and sail away.” - Joni Mitchell
“A captured pirate was brought before Alexander the Great. “How dare you molest the sea?” asked Alexander. “How dare you molest the whole world?” the pirate replied, and continued: “Because I do it with a little ship only, I am called a thief; you, doing it with a great navy, are called an emperor.” - Noam Chomsky
“The same relation exists between merchant and pirate, who for a long period are one and the same person: where the one function appears to them inadvisable, they exercise the other.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
“I don’t really know much about pirates, or pirate culture. I’d be a contrarian pirate.” - Todd Barry
“When I was about 5 I think, I desperately wanted to be a pirate and have the hat and everything.” - Keira Knightley
“As a pirate, she once undressed a fencing instructor using only her sword!” - Kathy Reichs
“Every generation welcomes the pirates from the last.” - Lawrence Lessig
“There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.” - James Russell Lowell
“Philosophers, for the most part, are constitutionally timid and dislike the unexpected. Few of them would be genuinely happy as pirates or burglars. Accordingly, they invent systems which make the future calculable, at least in its main outlines.” - Bertrand Russell
“I’d rather be a pirate than join the Navy” - Steve Jobs
“It is a glorious thing To be a Pirate King.” - W. S. Gilbert
“Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate” - Johnny Depp
“It’s not every day you get to do a pirate movie, you might as well go for it.” - Keira Knightley
“It was a great experience for a kid because it was a bunch of kids playing on pirate ships and water slides, so looking back on it, it was the fondest experience of my childhood.” - Corey Feldman
“Thoughts of being a pirate and stealing her away to my ship race across my mind. Although I’m not a pirate, and she’s not my captured princess.” - Simone Elkeles
“I’m no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, by rowboat, or by book. Or, by dream. I do not see, for there is no I to see. That is what the pirates know. There is only seeing and, in order to go to see, one must be a pirate.” - Kathy Acker
“Yea, death, and prison we mete out To small offenders of the laws, While honor, wealth, and full respect On greater pirates we bestow. To steal a flower we call mean. To rob a field is chivalry; Who kills the body he must die, Who kills the spirit he goes free.” - Khalil Gibran
“Some pirates achieved immortality by great deeds of cruelty or derring-do. Some achieved immortality by amassing great wealth. But the captain had long ago decided that he would, on the whole, prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.” - Terry Pratchett
“Parrots have gone a bit quiet since pirates have gone.” - Karl Pilkington
“When a pirate grows rich enough, they make him a prince.” - George R. R. Martin
“Pirates could happen to anyone.” - Tom Stoppard
“I’m a big fan of pirates in general.” - Mike Leach
“Here’s your first problem,” he said, pointing at a sentence. “‘Religion is the opium of the people.’ Well, I don’t know about people, but I think you’ll find that the opium of pirates is actual opium.” - Gideon Defoe
“It is when pirates count their booty that they become mere thieves.” ― William Bolitho
“My biggest dream since I was a kid was to be the woman sneaking on the pirate ship dressed like a man, who was this great sword fighter, and the captain fell in love with her.” ― Maria Bello
“Loot is first and wimmen second. Because if ye have the first ye’ll have the second, but if ye have the second ye won’t have the first for long!” – Linda Meilink
“Keep calm and… drink a bottle of rum. Don’t ever let people that see what’s in your left hand, see what’s in the right…” – Lee Davies
“I feel underdressed without some pirate garb.” – Lisa Kessler
“There is nothing like the smell of cannon fire in the morning.” – Nyre Rose
“In politics and in trade, bruisers and pirates are of better promise than talkers and clerks.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Even pirates, before they attack another ship, hoist a black flag.” ― Bela Kiraly
“Pirates have always fascinated me.” ― Tanith Lee
“If you want to get my attention, wear a pirate outfit.” ― Michelle Branch
“All roads lead to rum” - W.C. Fields
“But I don’t want to be a pirate!” ― Jerry Seinfeld
