War quotes
17K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
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"And finally, and most importantly, the next time we go to war, don't give a specific reason for the war that the left can seize upon and later flog us with it ad nauseam, just do it. Remember, the first rule of Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club."
"My war brought me many things; let yours bring you as much. Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself. No one will be much or little except in someone else's mind, so be careful of the minds you get into, and remember Lady Macbeth, who had her mind in her hand. We can't all be as safe as that."
"When you appeal to force, there's one thing you must never do - lose."
"In the final choice a soldier's pack is not so heavy as a prisoner's chains."
"We need a war every 10 years, so we can stay match fit in case the Germans try again."
"You'd help if you could, wouldn't you, boy?" I said. "It's no wonder they call you man's best friend. Faithful and loyal and true, you share in our sorrows and rejoice with us in our triumphs, the truest friend we ever have known, a better friend than we deserve. You have thrown in your lot with us, through thick and thin, on battlefield and hearthrug, refusing to leave your master even when death and destruction lie all around. Ah, noble dog, you are the furry mirror in which we see our better selves reflected, man as he could be, unstained by war or ambition, unspoilt by-"
"We've been talking about this for a good while, the immorality of drones, dropping bombs on innocent people. It's been over 200 children so far. These are war crimes."
"To lead uninstructed people to war is to throw them away."
"When the War ended in 1945, I started selling vacuum cleaners door to door. Then I sold insurance door to door. I even tried selling cars."
"For the Spartans, it wasn’t walls or magnificent public buildings that made a city; it was their own ideals. In essence, Sparta was a city of the head and the heart. And it existed in its purest form in the disciplined march of a hoplite phalanx on their way to war!"
"I understand how every healthy child, every new road, puts a country on a better path, but instability and war will arise from time to time, and I'm not an expert on how you get out of those things."
"The power of one! If I can't stop war in my life, how can I expect politicians to stop war in the world? I can't. And we all have equal wisdom, so if I can do it then I know that anyone can do it if their mind is open to answering just four simple questions and beginning there."
"Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after."
"Mere praise of peace is easy and ineffective. What is needed is acitve participation in the fight against war and everything which leads to it."
"Today we must abandon competition and secure cooperation. This must be the central fact in all our considerations of international affairs; otherwise we face certain disaster. Past thinking and methods did not prevent world wars. Future thinking must prevent wars...The stakes are immense, the task colossal the time is short. But we may hope- we must hope- that man's own creation, man's own genius, will not destroy him."
"Consider the problem of over-population. Rapidly mounting human numbers are pressing ever more heavily on natural resources. What is to be done?... The annual increase of numbers should be reduced. But how? We are given two choices -- famine, pestilence and war on the one hand, birth control on the other. Most of us choose birth control."
"It sometimes strikes me that the whole of science is a piece of impudence; that nature can afford to ignore our impertinent interference. If our monkey mischief should ever reach the point of blowing up the earth by decomposing an atom, and even annihilated the sun himself, I cannot really suppose that the universe would turn a hair."
"We are in a new Civil War, and just like the last, it is a struggle for the sanctity of the Union - and it's hardly civil."
"If we have an honest discussion on whether the war on poverty should be fought with welfare or with economic growth in the private sector, Democrats will lose black votes."
"A war regarded as inevitable or even probable, and therefore much prepared for, has a very good chance of eventually being fought."
