WAR QUOTES IX

quotations about war

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

REBECCA WEST

attributed, Europe in Arms

Tags: Rebecca West


I like the War. It is only War that gives us a normal existence. What do you do in peace-time? You stay at home; you don't know what to do with your time; you argue with your parents, and your wife -- if you have one. Everyone thinks you are an insufferable egotist - and so you are. The War comes; you only go home every five or six months. You are a hero, and, what women appreciate much more, you are a change. You know stories that have never been published. You've seen strange men and terrible things. Your father, instead of telling his friends that you are embittering the end of his life, introduces you to them as an oracle. These old men consult you on foreign politics. I you are married, your wife is prettier than ever; if you are not, all the girls lay siege to you.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

The Silence of Colonel Bramble

Tags: André Maurois


Free, open-eyed,
We rush like bridegrooms to Death's grisly arms:
Surely the very longing for that clasp
Proves us immortal. Immortality
Alone could teach this mortal how to die.
Perhaps, war is but Heaven's great ploughshare, driven
Over the barren, fallow earthly fields,
Preparing them for harvest; rooting up
Grass, weeds, and flowers, which necessary fall,
That in these furrows the wise Husbandman
May drop celestial seed.

DINAH CRAIK

"Looking Death in the Face"


We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

HOWARD ZINN

The Progressive, November 2001


When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though the war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

ALBERT CAMUS

The Plague

Tags: Albert Camus


While Congress cuts programs for basic human needs, our costs of post-9/11 wars -- including future veteran care -- stand at $4.4 trillion. We've spent $7.6 trillion on defense and homeland security. Yet spending those same dollars on peaceful industry -- education, health care, infrastructure, and renewable energy -- could produce many more and better paying jobs.

DOUG WINGEIER

letter to the Editor, Smoky Mountain News, February 3, 2016


For what can war but endless war still breed?

JOHN MILTON

On the Lord General Fairfax

Tags: John Milton


War is no strife
To the dark house and the detested wife.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

All's Well That Ends Well

Tags: William Shakespeare


The nation having the strongest war footing can easily find an excuse for going to war.

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts

Tags: Lewis F. Korns


War is not pretty from any angle, and the most vulnerable organ in the body is the brain.

FRANK LAWLIS

PTSD Breakthrough: The Revolutionary, Science-Based Compass RESET Program


We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.

CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ

On War

Tags: Carl von Clausewitz


Beware the toils of war ... the mesh of the huge dragnet sweeping up the world.

HOMER

The Iliad

Tags: Homer


War is not a life: it is a situation,
One which may neither be ignored nor accepted.

T. S. ELIOT

A Note on War Poetry

Tags: T. S. Eliot


It is not the willingness to kill on the part of our soldiers which most concerns me. That is an inherent part of war. It is our lack of respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy -- for courage, for suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation against our superior training and equipment. What is courage for us is fanaticism for him. We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts.

CHARLES LINDBERGH

journal entry, July 21, 1944

Tags: Charles Lindbergh


What lackeys men are, who might be such fine fellows!
To be killing each other, unmercifully,
At an order, as though one said, "Bring up the tea."

AMY LOWELL

"A Ballad of Footmen"

Tags: Amy Lowell


War is like air, in every house, in every land, on every sea.

STELLA BENSON

This Is the End

Tags: Stella Benson


Superiority in war ... cannot surely be a proof of justice, since wars are often unjustly undertaken, and successfully, though wickedly, carried on and concluded.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: Aristotle


Want is both parent and child of war.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims

Tags: Edward Counsel


Eventually, you hope. Obviously, we're not in a position at the moment for the eradication of war to seem like anything but a far-off dream. But at one time, the eradication of slave markets in the United States seemed very far off. I mean, people have to begin somewhere. We can change. We can evolve as a species. It's not simple, and it's a very long and drawn-out process, but you can hope.

SUZANNE COLLINS

interview, Hogwarts Professor, August 15, 2010

Tags: Suzanne Collins


Military arrangement, and movements in consequence, like the mechanism of a clock, will be imperfect and disordered by the want of a part.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

letter to the President of Congress, December 23, 1777

Tags: George Washington