War

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  • "Wars are always fought for old men, by young boys" anon
  • "War is essential, yet disturbing" -anon
  • In war, truth is the first casualty - Aeschylus
  • A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war [World War II] is not at all a nice war. — Gertrude Stein
  • A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend. — J. William Fulbright
  • 'All wars are civil wars because all men are brothers.' - Francois Fenelon
  • All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and therefore induce the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them. ~ Emma Goldman
  • As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
  • Don't rejoice in his defeat, you men. For the world stood up and stopped the Bastard, the Bitch that bore him is in heat again. — Bertolt Brecht, 1945-05-06
  • Don't talk to me about atrocities; all war is an atrocity. — Field-Marshall Horatio Herbert, Lord Kitchener
  • Duty is heavier than iron, yet death is lighter than a feather. - Japanese Proverb
  • Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. — Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953, a speech to the American Society of Newspaper Editors
  • How good bad music and bad reasons sound when one marches against an enemy! — Friedrich Nietzsche
  • I can give no adequate description of the Horror Camp in which my men and myself were to spend the next month of our lives. It was just a barren wilderness, as bare as a chicken run. Corpses lay everywhere, some in huge piles, sometimes they lay singly or in pairs where they had fallen. It took a little time to get used to seeing men women and childen collapse as you walked by them and to restrain oneself from going to their assistance. One had to get used early to the idea that the individual just did not count. One knew that five hundred a day were dying and that five hundred a day were going on dying for weeks before anything we could do would have the slightest effect. It was, however, not easy to watch a child choking to death from diptheria when you knew a tracheotomy and nursing would save it, one saw women drowning in their own vomit because they were too weak to turn over, and men eating worms as they clutched a half loaf of bread purely because they had to eat worms to live and now could scarcely tell the difference. Piles of corpses, naked and obscene, with a woman too weak to stand proping herself against them as she cooked the food we had given her over an open fire; men and women crouching down just anywhere in the open relieving themselves of the dysentary which was scouring their bowels, a woman standing stark naked washing herself with some issue soap in water from a tank in which the remains of a child floated. It was shortly after the British Red Cross arrived, though it may have no connection, that a very large quantity of lipstick arrived. This was not at all what we men wanted, we were screaming for hundreds and thousands of other things and I don't know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tatooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.
  • I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. — Dwight David Eisenhower
  • I have not come to you except for the purpose of restoring your rights from the hands of the oppressors... (Napoleon Bonaparte's motivation for invading Egypt in 1798)
  • I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. — Franklin Delano Roosevelt
  • I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones. — Albert Einstein
  • I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes. — Douglas MacArthur
  • I regard the death and mangling of a couple thousand men as a small affair, a kind of morning dash — and it may be well that we become so hardened. — General William Tecumseh Sherman, 1864-07, letter to his wife, July 1864
  • I went into the British Army believing that if you want peace you must prepare for war. I believe now that if you prepare for war, you get war. — Major-General Frederick B. Maurice
  • If soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army. — Frederick the Great
  • 'If we don't end war, war will end us.' - H. G. Wells
  • If we give up all future wars we must give up our empires and all hope of empire. — Georges Clemenceau
  • If you are not ready, and did not know what to do, it could hurt you in different ways. It could knock you down, hard, or throw you against a tree or a wall. It is such a big explosion, it can smash in buildings and knock signboards over, and break windows all over town, but if you duck and cover, like Bert [the Turtle], you will be much safer.
    • from Duck and Cover (1951), about protecting yourself from an atomic explosion
  • If you want peace, prepare for war — an ancient Roman expression, derived from
    • Epitoma Rei Militaris — Vegetius.
    • Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. - Latin
      • Therefore, whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war.
  • If you're in a war, instead of throwing a hand grenade at some guys, throw one of those little baby-type pumpkins. Maybe it'll make everyone think of how crazy war is, and while they're thinking, you can throw a real grenade at them. -Jack Handey 12/11/93
  • In war there is no prize for the runner-up — General Omar Bradley
  • In wartime truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies. — Winston Churchill
  • It is a tribute to the humanity of ordinary people that horrible acts must be camouflaged [with words] like security, peace, freedom, democracy, the 'national interest'. — Howard Zinn, Boston University professor and former Second World War bomber pilot, USA.
  • It is missing the point to think that the martial art is solely in cutting a man down; it is in killing evil. It is in the strategem of killing the evil of one man and giving life to ten thousand -Yagyu Munemori ((Can be used to describe war))
  • It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it. — General Douglas MacArthur
  • It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell. — General William Tecumseh Sherman
  • It is well that war is so terrible — lest we should grow too fond of it. — Robert E. Lee
  • It makes me hate war, but it doesn't make me believe that we're in a world that can live without war yet.
    • Lt. Josh Rushing, Pentagon spokesman, in Control Room (2004), upon viewing footage of dead and wounded American soldiers in Iraq
  • Let no one ever, from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell, and those who institute it are criminals. Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said; for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages. — Robert Nichols
  • Look, there is one statement that bothers me more than anything else, and that's the idea that when the troops are in combat everybody has to shut up. Imagine if we put troops in combat with a faulty rifle, and that rifle was malfunctioning and troops were dying as a result. I can't think anyone would allow that to happen, that would not speak up. Well, what's the difference between a faulty plan and strategy that's getting just as many troops killed? — Gen. Anthony Zinni, U.S. Marine Corps (Ret.), former CENTCOM Commander-in-Chief, 2004-05-21, television interview on CBS's "60 Minutes"
  • Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out…and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel ... and in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" — with his mouth. ~ Mark Twain, What Is Man? (1906)
  • Men changed war, war changed men — unknown author
  • Might doesn't make right, it makes fact. --Elimelech Packouz
  • Nuclear war can ruin your whole compile. -- Karl Lehenbauer
  • Nobody ever won a war by dying for his country, he won it by making the other bastard die for his. — George S. Patton
  • O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. The War Prayer, Mark Twain.
  • Only the dead have seen the end of war. — Plato (Real)
  • Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country. — Bertrand Russell
  • Peace cannot be achieved by force, only by understanding — Albert Einstein
  • The Arabian Freedom Movement in the Middle East is our natural ally... In this connection special importance is attached to the liberation of Iraq... (Adolf Hitler's motive for supporting a 1941 coup in Baghdad)
  • The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums. — Arthur Koestler
  • The purpose of war is to push back the unrighteous enemy, not to exterminate the human race. — Marshal Daun of Austria.
  • Then, Sir, we will give them the bayonet! — Stonewall Jackson', 1861-07, in reply to Colonel B.E. Bee when he reported that the enemy were beating them back, first battle of Bull Run
  • There can only be peace when they will start to love their children more than they hate us. — Golda Meir
  • There is no war crimes, war is a crime. — D.R.I.
  • There is only one way to get rid of nuclear weapons... use them. -Rush Limbaugh
  • The struggle against war, properly understood and executed, presupposes the uncompromising hostility of the proletariat and its organizations, always and everywhere, toward its own and every other imperialist bourgeoisie... ~ Leon Trotsky
    • "Resolution on the Antiwar Congress of the London Bureau" (July 1936)
  • The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A 'neutral' position is tantamount to support of imperialism. ~ Leon Trotsky
    • "Resolution on the Antiwar Congress of the London Bureau" (July 1936)
  • War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it. — Benito Mussolini
  • War begins with One man's lack of Soul, Intellect and Reasoning. - William Cameron
  • War does not decide who is right, war decides who is left. — Bertrand Russell
  • War in our time has become an anachronism. Whatever the case in the past, war in the future can serve no useful purpose. A war which became general, as any limited action might, would only result in the virtual destruction of mankind. — General of the Army Dwight David Eisenhower
  • War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. - John Stuart Mill
  • War is cruel. There is no use trying to reform it. But the crueler it is, the sooner it's over. — General William Tecumseh Sherman
  • 'War is delightful to those who have not experienced it.' - Erasmus
  • War is God's way of teaching Americans geography. — Ambrose Bierce
  • War is harmful, not only to the conquered but to the conqueror. — Ludwig von Mises
  • War is not nice. — Barbara Bush
  • War is not a pathology that, with proper hygiene and treatment, can be wholly prevented. War is a natural condition of the State, which was organized in order to be an effective instrument of violence on behalf of society. Wars are like deaths, which, while they can be postponed, will come when they will come and cannot be finally avoided. — Philip Bobbitt, "The Shield of Achilles"
  • War is sweet to those who haven't tasted it. — Erasmus
  • War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies. — Charles Caleb Colton
  • War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. — Jimmy Carter
  • War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals. — Charles Evans Hughes
  • War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Edwin Starr
  • 'War would end if the dead could return.' - Stanley Baldwin
  • We have seen the enemy and he is us. — Walt Kelly
  • We make war that we may live in peace. — Aristotle
  • 'We'll fight them until Hell freezes over and then we'll fight them on ice' - Unknown
  • What is War Crimes when war in itself is a crime- Calvin Austin
  • When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing. — Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • When your mother and father are having a fight, do you want them to kill each other? Or do you just want them to stop fighting? -Ko Wakatsuki
  • Quand les riches se font la guerre, ce sont les pauvres qui meurent. — Jean-Paul Sartre
    • When the rich make war, it's the poor that die.
  • When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader. — Plato
  • Göring: "Why, of course, the people don't want war. Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece. Naturally, the common people don't want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a Parliament or a Communist dictatorship."
    Gilbert: "There is one difference. In a democracy, the people have some say in the matter through their elected representatives, and in the United States only Congress can declare wars."
    Göring: "Oh, that is all well and good, but, voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
    • In an interview with Gilbert in Göring's jail cell during the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials (18 April 1946)
  • You can't say civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way. — Will Rogers
  • You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you. ~ Leon Trotsky
  • I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it. -Jack Handey
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War quotations in fiction

  • Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence settled their fates quite nicely. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms. — Mr. Dubois in Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
  • It's all an accident, an accident of hands. Mine, others, all without mind, from one extreme to another, but neither works nor will ever. Yet we stand here in the middle of no man's land. — Sergeant Steiner considers the causes of WW2's eastern front as he releases a young russian soldier, Cross of Iron
  • Look, all I know is what they taught me at Command School. There are certain rules about a war. Rule #1 is young men die. And Rule #2 is doctors can't change Rule #1. - Henry Blake M*A*S*H (TV series)
  • Make love; not war!
  • Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more; or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace, there's nothing so becomes a man as modest stillness and humility; but when the blast of war blows in our ears, then imitate the action of the tiger; stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage — King Henry, in King Henry V, act 3 scene 1, by William Shakespeare
  • They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say 'Shit, it's raining!' — Ruby in Cold Mountain 2003
  • This is the field where the battle did not happen, where the unknown soldier did not die. This is the field where grass joined hands, where no monument stands, and the only heroic thing is the sky*
    • William Stafford
  • "War is good for business." 34th Rule of Acquisition (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 'Destiny')
  • "Peace is good for business." 35th Rule of Acquisition
  • War, what is it good for? Absolutely nothing! Edwin Starr
  • We few, we happy few, we band of brothers: for he today that sheds his blood with me shall be my brother; — King Henry, in King Henry V, act 4 scene 3, by William Shakespeare
  • War is sweet to those who have never experienced it. Pindar
  • The arms industry, with its false sense of security, puts in jeopardy the enterprising community. Amitrajit Raajan
  • The silence spreads. I talk and must talk. So I speak to him and say to him: "Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother, just like Kat and Albert. Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up--take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now." All Quiet on the Western Front
  • 'War is fought by human beings.' Karl von Clausewitz, from On War
  • "War. War never changes." — From introduction of Fallout (video game)
  • Honour? There ain't no honour in this war. The machine-guns killed it. And if the machine-guns didn't, then the artillery did. And if the artillery didn't, then the chlorine gas sure as hell did. - a soldier discussing the Great War, Great War: American Front
  • You have seen violence and death, but you know nothing of war. It is the antithesis of Life: Hope crying for its dead brother; Reason, grinning at its own dismembered limbs in its lap; Decency raped to death. - Urrkon of the D'avvrus, Joss Whedon's Fray
  • "It takes two sides to make war. It only takes one side to make a massacre." attrib. 2ACR, 1991, Al Samawah
  • "A really great people, proud and high-spirited, would face all the disasters of war rather than purchase that base prosperity which is bought at the price of national honor." Theodore Roosevelt
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