WAR QUOTES IV

quotations about war

In former days, when wars arose from individual causes, from the policy of a Minister or the passion of a King, when they were fought by small regular armies of professional soldiers, and when their course was retarded by the difficulties of communication and supply, and often suspended by the winter season, it was possible to limit the liabilities of the combatants. But now, when mighty populations are impelled on each other, each individual severally embittered and inflamed--when the resources of science and civilisation sweep away everything that might mitigate their fury, a European war can only end in the ruin of the vanquished and the scarcely less fatal commercial dislocation and exhaustion of the conquerors. Democracy is more vindictive than Cabinets. The wars of peoples will be more terrible than those of kings.

WINSTON CHURCHILL

speech in the House of Commons, May 13, 1901

Tags: Winston Churchill


All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

JOHN STEINBECK

introduction, Once There Was a War

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In war--a country's hopes stagnate,
In war--her strong are slain.
In war--dark evils desecrate
Her council hall and fane.
In war--with wings of omen dark
Her wrongs and debts increase,
Prosperity and progress mark
The golden realm of Peace.

MARTHA LAVINIA HOFFMAN

"The Song of Peace"

Tags: Martha Lavinia Hoffman


The abolition of war is no longer to be set down as a creation of fancy, a dream of enthusiastic philanthropy. War rests on opinion; and opinion is more and more withdrawing its support. War rests on contempt of human nature; on the long mournful habit of regarding the mass of human beings as machines, or as animals; having no higher use than to be shot at and murdered for the glory of a chief, for the seating of this or that family on a throne, for the petty interests and selfish rivalries which have inflamed states to conflict. Let the worth of a human being be felt, and a main pillar of war will fall.

WILLIAM E. CHANNING

Thoughts


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.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

speech, April 16, 1953


My opposition to war is not based upon pacifist or non-resistant principles. It may be that the present state of civilization is such that certain international questions cannot be discussed; it may be that they have to be fought out. But the fighting never settles the question. It only gets the participants around to a frame of mind where they will agree to discuss what they were fighting about.

HENRY FORD

My Life and Work


Those who ignore history's lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them ... they may be forced to die by them.

DAN SIMMONS

The Fall of Hyperion

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Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, contrary to what you've just seen, war is neither glamorous nor fun. There are no winners, only losers. There are no good wars, with the following exceptions: The American Revolution, World War II, and the Star Wars trilogy. If you'd like to learn more about war, there's lots of books in your local library, many of them with cool, gory pictures. Well, good night, everybody! Peace, man.

BART SIMPSON

"Bart the General", The Simpsons

Tags: The Simpsons


For most of history, war has been a more or less functional institution, providing benefits for those societies that were good at it, although the cost in money, in lives, and in suffering was always significant. Only in the past century have large numbers of people begun to question the basic assumption of civilized societies that war is inevitable and often useful.

GWYNNE DYER

War: The Lethal Custom

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War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you.

FRANK HERBERT

Chapterhouse: Dune

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Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.

THOMAS HOBBES

Leviathan


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

HERMAN MELVILLE

Omoo

Tags: Herman Melville


But if war itself is Mars, as speech is Mercury, I wish it were as true that there were no war to be falsely called a god, as it is true that it is not a god.

ST. AUGUSTINE

The City of God

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Does it make a difference if warriors go to battle changing their appearance or not? Does it make a difference if they're anonymous, in how they treat their victims? We know in some cultures, they go to war, they don't change their appearance. In other cultures, they paint themselves like "Lord of the Flies." In some, they wear masks. In many, soldiers are anonymous in uniform. So this anthropologist, John Watson, found 23 cultures that had two bits of data. Do they change their appearance? Do they kill, torture, mutilate? If they don't change their appearance, only one of eight kills, tortures or mutilates. The key is in the red zone. If they change their appearance, 12 of 13 -- that's 90 percent -- kill, torture, mutilate. And that's the power of anonymity.

PHILIP ZIMBARDO

TED talk, September 2008

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In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable ... in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

DORIS LESSING

Prisons We Choose to Live Inside


The only religion which seems to have a function in time of war is the tribal religion which invokes a God as the exclusive protector of the nation which calls upon him.

JOSEPH ALEXANDER LEIGHTON

The Nation and the Ethics of War and Preparedness: An Address

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War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view "realistically"; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent--war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.

SUSAN SONTAG

AIDS and Its Metaphors

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A fighter should not think only of his shete, just because he has a shete in his hand. Everything is a weapon in the warrior's mind.

S. M. STIRLING

The Sunrise Lands

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History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

RONALD REAGAN

Address to the Nation, January 16, 1984

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All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues.

JOHN LOCKE

Some Thoughts Concerning Education

Tags: John Locke