War quotes
17K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside war — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"I was trying to hold up a mirror to this country, to reflect the past years or so, and the varying degrees in which we've been affected by the war(s) that doesn't seem to end. And we've all been affected somehow, even if we have no connection to the military, even if we don't know anyone who's killed or been killed. No one escapes something so large."
"When you go to war, both sides lose totally."
"The war industry people are very together; they know exactly what they want; they don't even have to talk to each other. The peace industry people are just intellectuals who are very critical of each other... Unless the peace industry is powerful, we're always going to have war. It is as simple as that."
"If people want to make war they should make a color war, and paint each others’ cities up in the night in pinks and greens."
"In the Second World War, I was a little girl. I was evacuated in my country."
"Some people are saying there's going to be a third World War. I hope not. I really think this is a time that people can start to mend things by negotiations, dealings. We know about dealings, don't we? We have brilliant lawyers. Why don't we have brilliant lawyers standing up and working for peace?"
"For Beirut it was the civil war, and the dividing of the city - which is something that is shared among Beirut, Berlin and Baghdad. And Cairo is a city that has a scar that was born after many decades of dictatorship - oppression shaped the people's lives, and forced people to grow up accompanied by fear. I belong to a generation that, whether we like it or not, was shaped by this fear of death or loosing the people you love, the threat of war, not allowed to be yourself, forced to be silent - as you watch ignorance occupying everything around you. And this is a deep scar."
"And now that you are out? How does the world seem to you?" he says. "Mostly the same," I say. "People are just divided by different things, fighting different wars."
"I can't tell him I need him. I can't need him, period -- or really, we can't need each other, because who knows how long either of us will last in this war?"
"Focusing on being a person instead of an Asian or an [anything] seems to promote a worldview that encourages people to treat others based on what each person has specifically done in their life, which seems like it would reduce such things as war, racism, unfairness, "hate crimes," [other things most people feel aversion toward]."
"The West and its media have barely covered the recent wave of repression in Turkey. The reason is simple. They are paying billions to Ankara to control and take back the refugees of the Syrian war. They are fearful that if they offend Tayyip Erdogan he will use the refugees as a political weapon. So they keep quiet."
"The U.S. is telling the Northern Alliance to kill Taliban prisoners. It's totally a breach of all the known conventions of war. Western television networks aren't showing this, but Arab networks are showing how prisoners are being killed and what's being done to them. Instead, we're shown scenes that are deliberately created for the Western media: a few women without the veil, a woman reading the news on Kabul television, and 150 people cheering."
"Tony Blair is a war criminal."
"I've called David Cameron worse things than joker....and a former Prime Minister Tony Blair is widely referred to as a war criminal."
"It has become necessary to call the attention of European governments to a fact which is apparently so insignificant that the governments seem not to notice it. The fact is this: an entire people is being annihilated. Where? In Europe. Are there witnesses? One witness, the entire world. Do the governments see it? No."
"That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity."
"I only take a half share in the civil war; I am willing to die, I am not willing to kill."
"The only compensation which war offers for its manifold mischiefs, is in the great personal qualities to which it gives scope and occasion."
"War, to sane men at the present day, begins to look like an epidemic insanity, breaking out here and there like the cholera or influenza, infecting men's brains instead of their bowels."
"War disorganizes, but it is to reorganize."
