The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

As horrible as the death toll was in World War I, the millions who died were, by and large, killed on the battlefield--soldiers killed by soldiers, not civilians killed by lawless or random or planned savagery. The rough proportion of military to civilian casualties was ninety to ten. In World War II, the proportions were roughly even. Today, for every ten military casualties there are on the order of ninety civilian deaths. The reality of our era, as demonstrated in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya, is that torture is rampant, murdering civilians commonplace, and driving the survivors from their homes often the main goal of a particular military offensive.

War is more like a novel than it is like real life and that is its eternal fascination. It is a thing based on reality but invented, it is a dream made real, all the things that make a novel but not really life.

War ... should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.

War is such an indefeasible and unescapable Real that the good realist must accept it rather comprehensively. To keep out of it is pure quietism, an acute moral failure to adjust. At the same time, there is an inexorability about war. It is a little unbridled for the realist's rather nice sense of purposive social control. And nothing is so disagreeable to the pragmatic mind as any kind of an absolute. The realist pragmatist could not recognize war as inexorable--though to the common mind it would seem as near an absolute, coercive social situation as it is possible to fall into. For the inexorable abolishes choices, and it is the essence of the realist's creed to have, in every situation, alternatives before him.

What mother, with long-watching eyes

And white lips cold and dumb,

Waits with appalling patience for

Her darling boy to come?

Her boy! whose mountain grave swells up

But one of many a scar

Cut on the face of our fair land

By gory-handed war.

A long war like this makes you realise the society you really prefer, the home, goats chickens and dogs and casual acquaintances. I find myself not caring at all for gardens flowers or vegetables cats cows and rabbits, one gets tired of trees vines and hills, but houses, goats chickens dogs and casual acquaintances never pall.

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.

We are now in the midst of our first television war ... the television environment [is] total and therefore invisible. Along with the computer, it has altered every phase of the American vision and identity. The television war has meant the end of the dichotomy between civilian and military. The public is now a participant in every phase of the war, and the main actions of the war are now being fought in the American home itself.

War has been the most convenient pseudo-solution for the problems of twentieth-century capitalism. It provides the incentives to modernisation and technological revolution which the market and the pursuit of profit do only fitfully and by accident, it makes the unthinkable (such as votes for women and the abolition of unemployment) not merely thinkable but practicable.... What is equally important, it can re-create communities of men and give a temporary sense to their lives by uniting them against foreigners and outsiders. This is an achievement beyond the power of the private enterprise economy ... when left to itself.

Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.

When conflicting rights arise between nations, one party must give way, or war must be the issue; a right, therefore, which is essential to the existence of the possessor, ought to prevail over one which is not of such vital importance.

War being the greatest of evils, all its accessories necessarily partake of the same character.

It is idle to say that we are still able to carry on the war, if we cannot carry it on without renouncing, for the sake of revenue, the means of making war with effect. It is like a soldier selling his arms, to enable him to continue his march.

Weary war with the bated breath,

Skeleton boy against skeleton Death.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

A war undertaken without sufficient monies has but a wisp of force. Coins are the very sinews of battles.

War is hell and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace-time.

A “just war” is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.

War hath no fury like a non-combatant.

War ... has become impossible, except at the price of suicide.

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