War quotes
17K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"My only consolation for the failure of the Dardanelles was that God wished things to be prolonged in order to sicken mankind of war, and that therefore He had interfered with a project that would have brought the war to a speedier conclusion."
"There is more blood than paint upon these hands. All those thousands of men killed. We thought it would be a little job, and so it might have been if it had begun in the right way."
"In war, the truth must be guarded by a body guard of lies."
"The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought."
"This is a war of the unknown warriors; but let all strive without failing in faith or in duty, and the dark curse of Hitler will be lifted from our age."
"Now at last the slowly gathered, long-pent-up fury of the storm broke upon us. Four or five millions of men met each other in the first shock of the most merciless of all the wars of which record has been kept."
"We need to be strong in order to avoid war; and to win. A politician looks forward only to the next election. A statesman looks forward to the next generation. Any person who is over 30 and is not a conservative, has no brains."
"This is no war of chieftains or of princes, of dynasties or national ambition; it is a war of peoples and of causes. There are vast numbers, not only in this Island but in every land, who will render faithful service in this war, but whose names will never be known, whose deeds will never be recorded. This is a War of the Unknown Warriors"
"Historians are apt to judge war ministers less by the victories achieved under their direction than by the political results which flowed from them. Judged by that standard, I am not sure that I shall be held to have done very well."
"Those good at war aren't good at peace, and those good at peace aren't good at war."
"In war, truth is often the first casualty."
"It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilizationitself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things we have always carried closest to our hearts."
"The great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, and which has swept up within its flame so great a part of thecivilized world, has affected us very profoundly.... With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst we are not interested to search for or explore."
"It has become a people's war, and peoples of all sorts and races, of every degree of power and variety of fortune, are involved inits sweeping processes of change and settlement."
"The presidential office is not a rosewater affair. This is an office in which a man must put on his war paint."
"Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles. Government is too serious a matter to admit of meaningless courtesies."
"The Civil War created in this country what had never existed before - a national consciousness. It was not the salvation of the Union; it was the rebirth of the Union."
"It was necessary to put the South at a moral disadvantage by transforming the contest from a war waged against states fighting for their indepdence into a war waged against states fighting for the maintenance and extension of slavery...and the world, it might be hoped, would see it as a moral war, not a political; and the sympathy of nations would begin to run for the North, not for the South."
"Politics is a war of causes; a joust of principles."
"Then down came the lid--the day was lost, for art, at Sarajevo. World-politics stepped in, and a war was started which has not ended yet: a "war to end war." But it merely ended art. It did not end war."
