Sailing Motivational Quotes

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal.

Goals are my north star.  My compass.  The map that guides me along the road I wish to travel.  Goals are motivations with wind in their sails—they carry me forward despite the storms.

When all seems to be against you, remember, a ship sometimes has to sail against the current, not with it.

True spirituality is not taught, it's caught. Once our sails have been unfurled to the Spirit, henceforth our motivation for the journey toward holiness and wholeness is immense gratitude.

Every time you try and fail, Every time your hope gets stuck in the deeps, And you wonder just how you'd get through the sail- Don't forget that underneath your pain, Is an anchor of great strength and fortitude Keep digging until you find it... And when you do, RISE!

The storm only comes to teach you how to skillfully sail your ship.

Some jump down off the bridges, some sail towards the horizon… Meaning is always under construction.

Your mind is a ship; it can sail across the universe as long as you don't allow negative thoughts to sink it.

A sailor is not defined as much by how many seas he has sailed than by how many storms he has overcome.

And here’s an example of deliberate violation of a Fake Rule:   Fake Rule: The generic pronoun in English is he. Violation: “Each one in turn reads their piece aloud.”   This is wrong, say the grammar bullies, because each one, each person is a singular noun and their is a plural pronoun. But Shakespeare used their with words such as everybody, anybody, a person, and so we all do when we’re talking. (“It’s enough to drive anyone out of their senses,” said George Bernard Shaw.) The grammarians started telling us it was incorrect along in the sixteenth or seventeenth century. That was when they also declared that the pronoun he includes both sexes, as in “If a person needs an abortion, he should be required to tell his parents.” My use of their is socially motivated and, if you like, politically correct: a deliberate response to the socially and politically significant banning of our genderless pronoun by language legislators enforcing the notion that the male sex is the only one that counts. I consistently break a rule I consider to be not only fake but pernicious. I know what I’m doing and why.

When the sails are strong a ship has no reason to fear turbulence.

Leaders lead the way and people follow them to achieve the desired goal. If we assume the business a ship, then a leader acts as the captain. Being a prolific leader, Aman Mehndiratta has proved the definition of a true leader. He leads, motivates, commands and sails with the co-workers, apart from throwing orders only.

Anyone can sail the ocean when it is calm.

My mother's mother came to this country in the usual way--she got on a boat with other immigrants and sailed from Sicily. She wasn't one of them, however: neither tired nor poor or part of any huddled mass. Instead, she traveled alone, with her money in one sock and a knife in the other, coming to the new world with an old world motive--to murder the man that had left her for America.

They were too focused on their own inner lives to appreciate the subtleties of character that might have alerted them to the true motives of those who did not share in their beliefs. Time and time again during their preparations to sail for America, the Pilgrims demonstrated an extraordinary talent for getting duped.

A long while ago, a great warrior faced a situation which made it necessary for him to make a decision which insured his success on the battlefield. He was about to send his armies against a powerful foe, whose men outnumbered his own. He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, “You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice—we win, or we perish! They won.

The seemingly impossible is not the path of the least resistance, but definitely the most rewarding one. Believe that it’s going to happen and tell everyone it’s going happen. Then it will happen. You just need willpower, determination and a smile on your face.

My use of their is socially motivated and, if you like, politically correct: a deliberate response to the socially and politically significant banning of our genderless pronoun by language legislators enforcing the notion that the male sex is the only one that counts. I consistently break a rule I consider to be not only fake but pernicious. I

The winds of change may unsettle sails, yet they also carry the promise of new horizons waiting to be explored.

It takes brave thinking to sail to your own periphery, to see your boundaries, and break them through.

Dreams are meant to be pursued, not postponed.

If people aren't on board with your dreams, there is still that one man canoe. Sail on and slay on with it.

As sure as stars appear on cloudless nights, As warm as sunbeams swaddle summer days, I love myself with perfect mind and might, The one who shan’t forsake or sail away.

The pessimist complains about the wind. The optimist expects it to change. The leader adjusts the sails.” - John C. Maxwell

When the tide gets high, Sail on. You'll make it safe to the shore, ...And all the hidden treasures will be Yours!

It is easier to sail a calm ocean than to conquer a turbulent river.

A small boat that sails the sea is better than a large ship that fails to cross the ocean.

In spite of the circumstance, a person who abides in dignity and grace will use the lessons learned as ballast for their ship as they sail through stormy waters—taking the wisdom gained from life and using it to anchor their confidence.

Travel is just as much a journey inward as it is a journey out. As we soar the skies and sail the waters and crack the virgin soils of the earth, we too delve into our own caverns, peek around the corners of our dreams, tremble before our fire-breathing terrors, axe to splinters our biases and judgments and beliefs, and discover the uncharted wonders of our psyches and our hearts.

The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody; the idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system.

A beautiful, majestic, and awe-inspiring sea awaits you. And you are welcome to enter however you see fit - to wade, to walk lightly, to swim for your life, or to sail. The decision is yours. No one will stop you from returning to the sandy towel on the shore if you desire. But I’d like to think you chose to come to the sea for a reason. You have been called to the sea. There is something here that you need, and it has awaited your arrival for quite some time.

Top 10 Reasons to Establish Written Goals for Your Life       10. Written goals strengthen your character by promoting a long-term perspective.       9. Written goals allow you to lead your life as opposed to simply managing it.       8. Written goals provide internal, permanent, and consistent motivation.       7. Written goals help you stay focused—to concentrate on what’s most important.       6. Written goals enhance your decision-making ability.       5. Written goals simultaneously require and build self-confidence.       4. Written goals help you create the future in advance.       3. Written goals help you to control changes—to adjust your sails, to work with the wind rather than against it.       2. Written goals heighten your awareness of opportunities that are consistent with your goals.       1. And finally, the most important benefit of setting effective goals is the person you become as a result of the pursuit!

Life without challenges is a boring life, isn’t it? Unless, of course, if you love gossiping and watching TV most of the time. Challenges are directly related to opportunities and growth. As they say, “A good sailor is the one who has sailed through the rough sea”. Similarly, a wise man is the one who has overcome different challenges in life and yet ready to face another one. If one wants to live a purposeful life, they must get comfortable with the unevenness of life. A man becomes wise with the variation of his experiences, not by his age.

WAKE UP OR PERISH The world’s problems are, by and large, human problems—the unavoidable consequence of egoic sleepwalking. If we care to look, all the signs are present to suggest that we are not only sleepwalking, but at times borderline insane as well. In a manner of speaking, we have lost (or at the very least forgotten) our souls, and we try very, very hard not to notice, because we don’t want to see how asleep we are, how desolate our condition really is. So we blindly carry on, driven by forces we do not recognize or understand, or even acknowledge. We are no doubt at a very critical point in time. Our world hangs in the balance, and a precarious balance it is. Awakening to Reality is no longer a possibility; it is an imperative. We have sailed the ship of delusion about as far as she can carry us. We have run her ashore and now find ourselves shipwrecked on an increasingly desolate land. Our options have imploded. “Wake up or perish” is the spiritual call of our times. Did we ever need more motivation than this? And yet all is eternally well, and more well than can be imagined.

But if adventure has a final and all embracing motive it is surely this: We go out because it is in our nature to go out, to climb mountains and to sail the seas, to fly to the planets and plunge into depths of the oceans. By doing these things we make touch with something outside or behind, which strangely seems to approve our doing them. We extend our horizon, we expand our being, we revel in the mastery of ourselves which gives an impression, mainly illusory, that we are masters of the World. In a word, we are men and when man ceases to do these things, he is no longer man.’ Wilfred Noyce

Sometimes taking the longer route may also find you pretty destinations along the way. Does it really matter, what path you take when everything is already predestined? Perhaps, it does simply because the path you take represents your soul, because somewhere it shows your growth and your journey as an individual, because it always makes way for a clear distinction of what your choices are paving way for you to understand how firm and how flexible you are as a person and how strong and how resilient you are as a soul. So set sail and walk along the way, in whichever path your heart opens up to you, for your heart always knows the way, even if the route is a little bit longer one, because sometimes taking the longer route may also find you pretty destinations along the way.

And all the while everyone who uses his brain knows that Socialism, as a world-system and wholeheartedly applied, is a way out. It would at least ensure our getting enough to eat even if it deprived us of everything else. Indeed, from one point of view, Socialism is such elementary common sense that I am sometimes amazed that it has not established itself already. The world is a raft sailing through space with, potentially, plenty of provisions for everybody; the idea that we must all cooperate and see to it that everyone does his fair share of the work and gets his fair share of the provisions seems so blatantly obvious that one would say that no one could possibly fail to accept it unless he had some corrupt motive for clinging to the present system. Yet the fact that we have got to face is that Socialism is not establishing itself. Instead of going forward, the cause of Socialism is visibly going back. At this moment Socialists almost everywhere are in retreat before the onslaught of Fascism, and events are moving at terrible speed. As I write this the Spanish Fascist forces are bombarding Madrid, and it is quite likely that before the book is printed we shall have another Fascist country to add to the list, not to mention a Fascist control of the Mediterranean which may have the effect of delivering British foreign policy into the hands of Mussolini. I do not, however, want here to discuss the wider political issues. What I am concerned with is the fact that Socialism is losing ground exactly where it ought to be gaining it. With so much in its favour—for every empty belly is an argument for Socialism—the idea of Socialism is less widely accepted than it was ten years ago. The average thinking person nowadays is not merely not a Socialist, he is actively hostile to Socialism. This must be due chiefly to mistaken methods of propaganda. It means that Socialism, in the form of which it is now presented to us, has about it something inherently distasteful—something that drives away the very people who ought to be nocking to its support.

Chief among these motives was the overwhelming idea of the great whale himself. Such a portentous and mysterious monster roused all my curiosity. Then the wild and distant seas where he rolled his island bulk; the undeliverable, nameless perils of the whale; these, with all the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds, helped to sway me to my wish. With other men, perhaps, such things would not have been inducements; but as for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. Not ignoring what is good, I am quick to perceive a horror, and could still be social with it—would they let me—since it is but well to be on friendly terms with all the inmates of the place one lodges in. By reason of these things, then, the whaling voyage was welcome; the great flood-gates of the wonder-world swung open, and in the wild conceits that swayed me to my purpose, two and two there floated into my inmost soul, endless processions of the whale, and, mid most of them all, one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air.

I confess, I have setbacks like anyone. But they don’t cause distress or coalesce in a mess for I’ve learned to step back, to reflect and assess where I’m at and enact a simple plan of attack — to press forward, progress; not digress, not give up nor express my despair but address what I can, my mistakes and my faults, with a head-on assault. For I’m blessed with my faith and belief and a chest that encases a heart that does not know the meaning of “quit" or “give up" or “there there” or “oh well”, “never-mind” or “bad luck” or “just try something else”, no. Me and myself, my reflection and I, we are not of that ilk, we aren’t ones to comply. We aren’t ones to conform or accept that the norm is a one-size-fits-all way to simply exist for we strive to be different, incredible, unique. Not irrelevant, invisible, insignificant or meek. We strive to resist and we fight to excel, so setbacks to us are a thing to be quashed, to be quelled, to be squished, to be left in our wake as we go on our way, as we sail right on by to impossible ends, to what few dare to try. This is why – this is why – as my reflection attests, there is no time to rest. The struggle is unending … but I will give it my best.

Why leave the comfort of the harbor? Because you are a ship captain, and a ship captain sails.

When you struggle to sail through the waters, have Faith and watch as God rescues you to a safe place.

Life's a melody, a symphony of highs, Once so happy, now rollercoaster skies. Unpredictable, like whispers in the breeze, A journey through time, an odyssey of unease. Hold your decisions, let not the winds sway, For it's your right to stand firm and say, In the dance of chaos, in the cosmic play, Wait and watch, let not resolve decay. Life's capricious, like a fickle tide, But within you, a power to abide. Be positive, face the storm with pride, For in the chaos, dreams will not hide. Creator of destiny, author of your tale, In the crucible of struggle, where dreams prevail. Compromise not with dreams, let them set sail, You're the brightest star, let the world exhale. Struggle, a chapter, God's narrative grand, Your story, the echo, across the land. Known by the world, your destiny's hand, A tale that weeps, where dreams withstand. Fear not the struggle, be a rebel true, Not for the world, but for the "you." Ask daily, are you living your dream in view, In this one life, make your dreams breakthrough. Be the positive force in the universe's scheme, As I write this, I feel the motivation gleam. Creating a story, a powerful beam, Hold your promise, let your dreams redeem. You possess the power to dismantle the night, A force within, burning bright. Destiny's architect, shaping with might, Hold your dream, set the universe alight.

Set sail for a better tomorrow by making conscious choices today.

The ship of relations sails smoothly only when the rowing of ship by two or all or majority sailors on board is in the same direction, having same speed and same frequency. Otherwise, there would be only wastage of time & energy of all on board, without any movement towards the natural goal & purpose of joyous, fruitful journey.

The ship of relations sails smoothly only when the rowing of ship by two or all or majority sailors on board is in the same direction, having same speed and same frequency. Otherwise, there would be only wastage of time & energy of all on board, without any movement towards the natural goal & purpose of joyous, fruitful journey

Work smart and adapt to changes that come your way. Like the captain of a ship, learn how to navigate and adjust the sails according to the wind and the waves.

We are the makers of our own fate. The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled Don’t catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind?

Kings and Queens aren't made from smooth sailing. They fight, they struggle, they take what's theirs, they survive and when they fall, they rise up again.

Kings and Queens aren't made from smooth sailing.They fight, they struggle, they take what's theirs, they survive and when they fall, they rise up again.

I was your anchor when you were lost, but you sailed away without looking back.

We cannot change the wind, we can only adjust our sails.

Studies show that enthusiastic people get better breaks. They’re promoted more often, have higher incomes, and live happier lives. That’s not a coincidence. The word enthusiasm comes from the Greek word entheos. Theos is a term for “God.” When you’re enthusiastic, you are full of God. When you get up in the morning excited about life, recognizing that each day is a gift, you are motivated to pursue your goals. You will have a favor and blessing that will cause you to succeed. The eight undeniable quality of a winner is that they stay passionate throughout their lives. Too many people have lost their enthusiasm. At one time they were excited about their futures and passionate about their dreams, but along the way they hit some setbacks. They didn’t get the promotions they wanted, maybe a relationship didn’t work out, or they had health issues. Something took the wind out of their sails. They’re just going through the motions of life; getting up, going to work, and coming home. God didn’t breathe His life into us so we would drag through the day. He didn’t create us in His image, crown us with His favor, and equip us with His power so that we would have no enthusiasm. You may have had some setbacks. The wind may have been taken out of your sails, but this is a new day. God is breathing new life into you. If you shake off the blahs and get your passion back, then the winds will start blowing once again--not against you, but for you. When you get in agreement with God, He will cause things to shift in your favor. On January 15, 2009, Capt. Chelsey “Sully” Sullenberger successfully landed a jet airplane in the Hudson River after the plane’s engines were disabled by multiple bird strikes. Despite the dangers of a massive passenger plane landing in icy waters, all 155 passengers and crew members survived. It’s known as the “Miracle on the Hudson.” Just after the successful emergency landing and rescue, a reporter asked a middle-aged male passenger what he thought about surviving that frightening event. Although he was shaken up, cold and wet, the passenger had a glow on his face, and excitement in his voice when he replied: “I was alive before, but now I’m really alive.” After facing a life-and-death situation, the survivor found that his perspective had changed. He recognized each moment as a gift and decided that instead of just living, he would start really living.

A ship's strength is not in its size, but in its ability to sail against the tides.

When turbulence hits your sails remind yourself it is an opportunity to get to the shore quicker.

Allow yourself the Freedom to Fail before you see Success Sail!

however, the round trip was a very long one (fourteen months was in fact well below the average). It was also hazardous: of twenty-two ships that set sail in 1598, only a dozen returned safely. For these reasons, it made sense for merchants to pool their resources. By 1600 there were around six fledgling East India companies operating out of the major Dutch ports. However, in each case the entities had a limited term that was specified in advance – usually the expected duration of a voyage – after which the capital was repaid to investors.10 This business model could not suffice to build the permanent bases and fortifications that were clearly necessary if the Portuguese and their Spanish allies* were to be supplanted. Actuated as much by strategic calculations as by the profit motive, the Dutch States-General, the parliament of the United Provinces, therefore proposed to merge the existing companies into a single entity. The result was the United East India Company – the Vereenigde Nederlandsche Geoctroyeerde Oostindische Compagnie (United Dutch Chartered East India Company, or VOC for short), formally chartered in 1602 to enjoy a monopoly on all Dutch trade east of the Cape of Good Hope and west of the Straits of Magellan.11 The structure of the VOC was novel in a number of respects. True, like its predecessors, it was supposed to last for a fixed period, in this case twenty-one years; indeed, Article 7 of its charter stated that investors would be entitled to withdraw their money at the end of just ten years, when the first general balance was drawn up. But the scale of the enterprise was unprecedented. Subscription to the Company’s capital was open to all residents of the United Provinces and the charter set no upper limit on how much might be raised. Merchants, artisans and even servants rushed to acquire shares; in Amsterdam alone there were 1,143 subscribers, only eighty of whom invested more than 10,000 guilders, and 445 of whom invested less than 1,000. The amount raised, 6.45 million guilders, made the VOC much the biggest corporation of the era. The capital of its English rival, the East India Company, founded two years earlier, was just £68,373 – around 820,000 guilders – shared between a mere 219 subscribers.12 Because the VOC was a government-sponsored enterprise, every effort was made to overcome the rivalry between the different provinces (and particularly between Holland, the richest province, and Zeeland). The capital of the Company was divided (albeit unequally) between six regional chambers (Amsterdam, Zeeland, Enkhuizen, Delft, Hoorn and Rotterdam). The seventy directors (bewindhebbers), who were each substantial investors, were also distributed between these chambers. One of their roles was to appoint seventeen people to act as the Heeren XVII – the Seventeen Lords – as a kind of company board. Although Amsterdam accounted for 57.4 per cent of the VOC’s total capital, it nominated only eight out of the Seventeen Lords.

Allow yourself the Freedom to Fail before you see Success Sail!-RVM

Every Journey has it's own set of dark tunnels,diversions , exits and sources of lights. If we are not focussed enough, we will keep wandering and wandering in the dark tunnels.

When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal. If you give up before your goal has been reached, you are a “quitter.” A

Walking on water is safer than sailing in a leaking boat.

He loaded his soldiers into boats, sailed to the enemy’s country, unloaded soldiers and equipment, then gave the order to burn the ships that had carried them. Addressing his men before the first battle, he said, “You see the boats going up in smoke. That means that we cannot leave these shores alive unless we win! We now have no choice—we win, or we perish! They won. Every

By forgiving another, I am trusting that God is a better justice-maker than I am. By forgiving, I release my own right to get even and leave all issues of fairness for God to work out. I leave in God’s hands the scales that must balance justice and mercy.”29 This is the great irony. It is the forgiving people who have the real authority and confidence. Unforgiveness offers only a pseudo feeling of power. We say, “I hold something over you because of what you did to me.” All the while, that person, alive or dead, holds the power because we are the ones who are locked up! Life is sucked from you while you stare at the scales, judging whose sin is weightier than your own: “Whenever someone wrongs you, you caricature them in your heart, making huge their worst feature. Deep in every human soul is a deep desire to justify yourself. We’re afraid that we’re not okay, that we’re not desirable. That fear is behind how you caricature the person who wrongs you. You need to feel noble, you need to feel superior, you need to feel better.”30 Demeaning the personhood of another fictitiously elevates us, and judging another leaves us full of arrogance, entitlement, and unforgiveness. “Playing God” in judging someone’s motives only infuses us with an increasingly cancerous preoccupation with self that sends us plummeting into the abyss of perceived superiority or the fears of possible inferiority. We chain ourselves to the dock, watching the life of adventure sail on without us. It is self-imposed imprisonment. We think there is so much power in unforgiveness, when the reality is we live as the forlorn castaway, powerless and pitiful.

Cut all cords Sail at your own pace Sail with no fear in your mind and heart Be the captain of your life.

Adept sailors emerge after sailing tough storms.

The wind of life is ever-present. We can fight against it and waste our energy, or we can use it to our advantage and redirect our sails towards a brighter future. Embrace the wind as an opportunity to push yourself beyond the limits and come out stronger on the other side!

Hurdles have come, will come in future too. The one who stands out hard will be the one who will sail out fast.

Don’t wait for your ship to sail in, you have got to swim out to it and get on.

Life is not as easy as it sounds. It is about sailing troubled waters, navigating unprecedented times. and carving new paths.

Life will sometimes force you to sail through uncharted waters. Always use to your advantage, such life-changing encounters.

Life is not as easy as it sounds. It is about sailing troubled waters, navigating unprecedented times, and carving new paths.

To make yourself even more relatable, adjust your choice of words, your breadth and depth of vocabulary, and your expressions to suit your audience: focus on their fields of interest and choose metaphors from those domains. If they’re into golf and you want to talk about success, speak of hitting a hole in one. If they sail, a catastrophe becomes a shipwreck. One of my clients, a Deutsche Bank analyst, told me she couldn’t seem to establish a good relationship with her boss. She described him as rather brusque, almost militaristic in his demeanor, “and, in fact, he often uses battle language in our daily interactions.” That, to me, was just the clue we needed. I suggested adopting military analogies in which she would liken herself to a “loyal soldier” or a “good lieutenant,” and gradually increasing the use of military vocabulary in their conversations. Within a week, she told me that their interactions had significantly improved—he now seemed to regard her as “one of his people,” and someone he could count on. This was a high return on investment for just adding a few words to her vocabulary!

Author’s Note: There is no evidence that any of the claims of this news article are correct and plenty of witness testimony to the contrary. For example, the engines were shut down almost immediately due to the infusion of water into the engine rooms. Also, there is no evidence that Ismay had any conversations with the Captain about any issues, including the need to continue the ship to keep sailing.  The apparent motivation underlying the article was simply the need of the granddaughter of Lightoller to cash in on her family legacy by selling books.

2. Let go of the anchor and sail to greater heights

I'd never been a practical person. I had a way of falling in love with ideas -- romantic notions of places, concepts of things.... I craved contemplation...and much preferred searching out other people's motives to examining my own.

You can’t always control the wind of the Universe, but you can certainly control the sail of your internal divinity to change the world.

How much the sea became very small, when the first ship sailed.

Never loose your calm when you are at stormy seas because that teach you how to sail .

Never loose your calm when you are at stormy seas because that teach you how to sail

Life is too short for fearmongering and becoming ensnarled in lengthy periods of depression. We must use our time judiciously and never waver in our scared quest striving to achieve what one seeks. A person whom encounters no difficulties along the way, or only finds relatively minor troubles, probably does not want much out of life. When times are too tame, it is probable that we allowed a certain pall of inertia to set in. One cannot sail on a meek wind. When life is too tranquil, we should be suspicious of our charted designation. When life is too calm, it is possible that we will shortly run aground. When we experience no resistance in our path, we probably did not depart on a worthwhile journey in the first place. One must act diligently to scout out a meaningful destination. I must rest when tired, but I can never become complacent and snooze through life. I can never surrender what I seek. Striving means a willingness to make mistakes in good faith and to continue to go on undeterred by past mistakes. Any motivated person is bound to make mistakes pursing challenging goals and occasionally fall short of his or her intended short-term or midrange mark. In order to achieve worthy long-term goals, person must exhibit mental flexibility and adapt to every obstacle blocking their path.

We, the people of 21st century, get into the cars first and then decide where to go But that's okay because we chose (in front of distances) not to bow Let's just look out of the window and summon the way Let the roads on their own sail, carry the sleigh...

God’s wisdom, power and grace do not allow His infallible Word to fail, for it is forever set in sail.

If you have not yet reached your destination, and the wind has changed, then you must be prepared to lower the sail and start rowing, in order to cover the remaining distance.

On May 30, 1539, Hernando De Soto landed his private army near Tampa Bay in Florida. De Soto was a novel figure: half warrior, half venture capitalist. He grew very rich very young in Spanish America by becoming a market leader in the nascent slave trade. The profits helped to fund the conquest of the Inka, which made De Soto wealthier still. He accompanied Pizarro to Tawantinsuyu (aka, The Inka Empire), burnishing his reputation for brutality - he personally tortured Challcochima (a leading Inka general of the north) before his execution. Literally looking for new worlds to conquer, De Soto returned to Spain soon after his exploits in Peru. In Charles V's court he persuaded the bored monarch to let him loose in North America with an expedition of his own. He sailed to Florida with six hundred soldiers, two hundred horses, and three hundred pigs. From today's perspective, it is difficult to imagine the ethical system that culd justify De Soto's subsequent actions. For four years his force wandered through what are now Florida, Georgia, North and South Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana, looking for gold and wrecking most everything it touched. The inhabitants often fought back viorously, but they were baffled by the Spaniards' motives. De Soto and his soldiers managed to rape, torture, enslave, and kill countless Indians. But the worst thing he did, some researchers say, was entirely without malice - he brought pigs.