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The loss of reason in war seems to me honorable, like the death of a sentry at his post.
LEONID ANDREYEV, The Red Laugh
- War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight,
- The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, Queen Mab
The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN, The Return of the King
You wouldn't believe how many I've seen coming up the road here. But precious few going back. Well, that's what war is, I believe. I always try to tell myself they're still there -- I mean, wherever it was they went -- but you know and I know there's a lot that have gone to stay.
GENE WOLFE, The Claw of the Conciliator
In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible -- such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets?
MAXIM GORKY, Untimely Thoughts
- If I had rubies and riches and crowns
- I’d buy the whole world and change things around
- I’d throw all the guns and the tanks in the sea
- For they are mistakes of a past history
BOB DYLAN, "Let Me Die In My Footsteps"
War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values.
CESARE PAVESE, This Business of Living, Sep. 9, 1939
The term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.
HOWARD ZINN, Terrorism and War
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for ones country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
ERNEST HEMINGWAY, "Notes on the Next War," Esquire, Sep. 1935
What they could use around here is a good war. What else can you expect with peace running wild all over the place? You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization. And when do you get organization? In a war. Peace is one big waste of equipment. Anything goes, no one gives a damn. See the way they eat? Cheese on pumpernickel, bacon on the cheese? Disgusting! How many horses have they got in this town? How many young men? Nobody knows! They haven't bothered to count 'em! That's peace for you! I've been in places where they haven't had a war for seventy years and you know what? The people haven't even been given names! They don't know who they are! It takes a war to fix that. In a war, everyone registers, everyone's name's on a list. Their shoes are stacked, their corn's in the bag, you count it all up -- cattle, men, et cetera -- and you take it away! That's the story: no organization, no war!
BERTOLT BRECHT, Mother Courage
We have had over-much of war: I have seen too many of the noble, young, and gallant, fall by the sword. Brute force has had its day; now let us try what policy can do.
MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT SHELLEY, The Fortunes of Perkin Warbeck
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, Hogwarts Professor interview, Aug. 15, 2010
Man has no right to kill his brother, it is no excuse that he does so in uniform. He only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder.
PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY, "Declaration of Rights"
History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
RONALD REAGAN, address to the nation, Jan. 16, 1984
Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN, "A Secret Vice," The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
- Ez fer war, I call it murder—
- There you hev it plain an' flat;
- I don't want to go no furder
- Than my Testyment fer that.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL, The Biglow Papers
War is the ultimate realization of modern technology.
I have seen the unknown dead, those little men of the Republic. It was they who woke me up. If a stranger, an enemy, becomes a thing like that when he dies, if one stops short and is afraid to walk over him, it means that even beaten our enemy is someone, that after having shed his blood, one must placate it, give this blood a voice, justify the man who shed it. Looking at certain dead is humiliating. One has the impression that the same fate that threw these bodies to the ground holds us nailed to the spot to see them, to fill our eyes with the sight. It's not fear, not our usual cowardice. One feels humiliated because one understands–touching it with one's eyes–that we might be in their place ourselves: there would be no difference, and if we live we owe it to this dirtied corpse. That is why every war is a civil war; every fallen man resembles one who remains and calls him to account.
CESARE PAVESE, The House on the Hill
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