"When the soldiers stand leaning on their spears, they are faint from want of food."
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War quotes
War
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War quotes (page 139 of 853)
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"He must be able to mystify his officers and men by false reports and appearances, and thus keep them in total ignorance."
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"When envoys are sent with compliments in their mouths, it is a sign that the enemy wishes for a truce. If the enemy's troops march up angrily and remain facing ours for a long time without either joining battle or removing demands, the situation is one that requires great vigilance and circumspection. To begin by bluster, but afterward to take fright at the enemy's numbers, shows a supreme lack of intelligence."
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"Thus, though I have heard of successful military operations that were clumsy but swift, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays."
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"If I determine the enemy's disposition of forces while I have no perceptible form, I can concentrate my forces while the enemy is fragmented. The pinnacle of military deployment approaches the formless: if it is formless, then even the deepest spy cannot discern it nor the wise make plans against it."
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"I do not believe in terrorism, violence, destruction, murder, pre-emption, or War."
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"War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves"
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"War tears, rends. War rips open, eviscerates. War scorches. War dismembers. War ruins."
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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."
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"I was enthralled and moved by Azar Nafisi's account of how she defied, and helped others to defy, radical Islam's war against women. Her memoir contains important and properly complex reflections about the ravages of theocracy, about thoughtfulness, and about the ordeals of freedom-as well as a stirring account of the pleasures and deepening of consciousness that result from an encounter with great literature and with an inspired teacher."
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"War is elective. It is not an inevitable state of affairs. War is not the weather."
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"War is a culture, bellicosity is addictive, defeat for a community that imagines itself to be history's eternal victim can be as intoxicating as victory. How long will it take for the Serbs to realize that the Milosevic years have been an unmitigated disaster for Serbia, the net result of Milosevic's policies being the economic and cultural ruin of the entire region, including Serbia, for several generations? Alas, one thing we can be sure of, that will not happen soon."
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"I could start a war in 30 seconds. But some countries spend 100 years trying to find peace. Just like good manners, peace has to be learned."
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"If every soldier refused to take arms ... there would be no wars; but no one has the courage to be the first to live according to Christ and Socrates, because in a world of opportunists they would be martyred."
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"The United States particularly abandoned Liberia after the end of the Cold War."
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"Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone, not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev."
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"Cyber Leader: Daleks, be warned. You have declared war upon the Cybermen. Dalek Sec: This is not war - this is pest control! Cyber Leader: We have five million Cybermen. How many are you? Dalek Sec: Four. Cyber Leader: You would destroy the Cybermen with four Daleks? Dalek Sec: We would destroy the Cybermen with one Dalek! You superior in only one respect. Cyber Leader: What is that? Dalek Sec: You are better at dying."
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"War, I thought, was the most negative aspect of male heterosexuality. If more men were homosexual, there would be no wars, because homosexual men would never kill other men, whereas heterosexual men love killing other men."
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"The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must-never for sport."
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"Instead of tug o' war, let's play hug o' war."
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