War quotes

War

17K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.

17K quotes

Explore further

Browse quotes that often appear alongside war — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.

Quote collection

War quotes (page 210 of 853)

Follow a thought to its author, or read the full quote page.

Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
War

"If you have a nation of men who have risen to that height of moral cultivation that they will not declare war or carry arms, for they have not so much madness left in their brains, you have a nation of lovers, of benefactors, of true, great, and able men."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
War

"The President proclaims war, and those Senators who dissent are not those who know better, but those who can afford to...Democracy becomes a government of bullies tempered by editors."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
War

"There are geniuses in trade as well as in war, or the state, or letters; and the reason why this or that man is fortunate is not to be told. It lies in the man: that is all anybody can tell you about it."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
War

"A state of war or anarchy, in which law has little force, is so far valuable, that it puts every man on trial. The man of principle is known as such, and even in the fury of faction is respected."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
War

"There is a tendency in things to right themselves, and the war or revolution or bankruptcy that shatters rotten system, allows things to take a new and natural order."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
War

"For, the advantages which fashion values, are plants which thrive in very confined localities, in a few streets, namely. Out of this precinct, they go for nothing; are of no use in the farm, in the forest, in the market, in war, in the nuptial society, in the literary or scientific circle, at sea, in friendship, in the heaven of thought or virtue."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
War

"All history is the decline of war, though the slow decline. All that society has yet gained is mitigation; the doctrine of the right of war still remains."

Read quote 3 likes
Ralph Waldo Emerson Essayist, Philosopher, Poet
War

"If it costs ten years, and ten to recover the general prosperity, the destruction of the South is worth so much."

Read quote 3 likes
Ram Dass Spiritual Teacher, Author
War

"There are wars and poverty and so on - it's based on fear. You can cure that with your being by not being afraid."

Read quote 3 likes
Teju Cole Author, Photographer
War

"Our biggest art forms are film and television, and there hasn't been a great film about 9/11 yet, nor has there been a great television series. Something like The Wire gives us a rich and fully achieved picture of the wasteful, cruel War on Drugs; something like The White Ribbon gives a perspective on World War I that could only have been presented long after the event itself."

Read quote 3 likes
Teju Cole Author, Photographer
War

"There was a feeling during the years of George W. Bushs presidency that his gracelessness as well as his appetite for war were linked to his impatience with complexity. He acted from the gut, and was economical with the truth until it disappeared."

Read quote 3 likes
Teju Cole Author, Photographer
War

"The novelist loses, every time. Politics is insidious, the modern conduct of war (from shoulder-launched rockets to drone strikes) is insidious. Someone presses a button in California and twenty people are incinerated at a wedding in Pakistan. The killer is spared the sight of the corpses."

Read quote 3 likes
Terence McKenna Ethnobotanist, Philosopher, Writer
War

"The war on drugs was never meant to be won. Instead, it will be prolonged as long as possible in order to allow various intelligence operations to wring the last few hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits from the global drug scam; then defeat will have to be declared. "Defeat" will mean, as it did in the case of the Vietnam War, that the media will correctly portray the true dimensions of the situation and the real players, and that public revulsion at the culpability, stupidity and venality of the Establishment's role will force a policy review."

Read quote 3 likes
Samuel Johnson Lexicographer, Essayist, Critic
War

"You need a good editor because every writer thinks he can write a War and Peace, but by the time he gets it on paper, it's not War and Peace anymore; it's comic-book stuff. Your manuscript is both good and original. But the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good."

Read quote 3 likes
Samuel Johnson Lexicographer, Essayist, Critic
War

"Yet reason frowns in war's unequal game, Where wasted nations raise a single name; And mortgag'd states their grandsire's wreaths regret, From age to age in everlasting debt; Wreaths which at last the dear-bought right convey To rust on medals, or on stones decay."

Read quote 3 likes
Samuel Johnson Lexicographer, Essayist, Critic
War

"Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A peace will equally leave the warrior and the relater of wars destitute of employment; and I know not whether more is to be dreaded from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie."

Read quote 3 likes