Quotes about war

"O can't you see, brother -- Death's a congested road for fighters now, and hero a cheap label."

Andrews, C. D. on war   

"The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene."

Arendt, Hannah on war   

"From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war."

Asquith, Margot on war   

"War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations."

Bagehot, Walter on war   

"The cannon thunders... limbs fly in all directions... one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice... it's Humanity in search of happiness."

Baudelaire, Charles on war   

"It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him."

Baudouin I on war
4 fans of this quote   

"If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits."

Benedict, Ruth on war   

"All war represents a failure of diplomacy."

Benn, Tony on war
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"The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of development, must be repeatedly emphasized."

Bernhardi, Friedrich Von on war   

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"If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia."

Bethe, Hans A. on war   

"Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war."

Bismarck, Otto Von on war
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"Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!"

Blok, Alexander on war   

"War is like love, it always finds a way."

Brecht, Bertolt on war
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"War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can."

Churchill, Winston on war
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"The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money."

Cicero, Marcus T. on war   

"War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of politics by other means."

Clausewitz, Karl Von on war   

"A just war is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience."

Cockburn, Alexander on war   

"That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together."

Coward, Noel on war   

"Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage. That is all true. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul a people."

Davis, Rebecca Harding on war   

"War is the trade of Kings."

Dryden, John on war   

"War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honor but an empty bubble."

Dryden, John on war   

"America is addicted to wars of distraction."

Ehrenreich, Barbara on war   

"The pioneers of a warless world are the young men and women who refuse military service."

Einstein, Albert on war
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"I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones."

Einstein, Albert on war
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"The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield."

Eisenhower, Dwight D. on war   

"The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without."

Eisenhower, Dwight D. on war
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"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."

Eisenhower, Dwight D. on war
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"Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children."

Eisenhower, Dwight D. on war
3 fans of this quote   

"War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted."

Eliot, T. S. on war   

"War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it."

Erasmus, Desiderius on war
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"Those who actually set out to see the fall of a city or those who choose to go to a front line, are obviously asking themselves to what extent they are cowards. But the tests they set themselves -- there is a dead body, can you bear to look at it? -- are nothing in comparison with the tests that are sprung on them. It is not the obvious tests that matter (do you go to pieces in a mortar attack?) but the unexpected ones (here is a man on the run, seeking your help -- can you face him honestly?)."

Fenton, James on war   

"I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again."

Frank, Anne on war   

"What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief."

Franklin, Benjamin on war
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"Morality is contraband in war."

Gandhi, Mahatma on war
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"Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination."

Gellhorn, Martha on war   

"I feel sure that coups d'?tat would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything."

Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De on war   

"War is the great scavenger of thought. It is the sovereign disinfectant, and its red stream of blood is the Condy's Fluid that cleans out the stagnant pools and clotted channels of the intellect. We have awakened from an opium-dream of comfort, of ease, of that miserable poltroonery of the sheltered life. Our wish for indulgence of every sort, our laxity of manners, our wretched sensitiveness to personal inconvenience, these are suddenly lifted before us in their true guise as the specters of national decay; and we have risen from the lethargy of our dilettantism to lay them, before it is too late, by the flashing of the unsheathed sword."

Gosse, Sir Edmund on war   

"Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves."

Hazlitt, William on war
3 fans of this quote   

"Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry."

Heller, Joseph on war   

"I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it."

Hemingway, Ernest on war