War Quotes

A cowardly leader is the most dangerous of men.

Stephen King

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

Benjamin Franklin

It should be noted that when he seizes a state the new ruler ought to determine all the injuries that he will need to inflict. He should inflict them once and for all, and not have to renew them every day.

Niccolo Machiavelli

War grows out of ordinary human nature.

Bertrand Russell

War is hell.

William Tecumseh Sherman

Those darling byegone times, Mr Carker,' said Cleopatra, 'with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated!

Charles Dickens

It was sometimes feebly argued, as the political and military war against this enemy ran into difficulties, that it was 'a war without end.' I never saw the point of this plaintive objection. The war against superstition and the totalitarian mentality is an endless war. In protean forms, it is fought and refought in every country and every generation. In bin Ladenism we confront again the awful combination of the highly authoritarian personality with the chaotically nihilist and anarchic one. Temporary victories can be registered against this, but not permanent ones. As Bertold Brecht's character says over the corpse of the terrible Arturo Ui, the bitch that bore him is always in heat. But it is in this struggle that we develop the muscles and sinews that enable us to defend civilization, and the moral courage to name it as something worth fighting for.

Christopher Hitchens

American credibility in the war on terrorism depends on a strong stand against all terrorist acts, whether committed by foe or friend.

Arlen Specter

The most disastrous phenomenon of the current situation is the factor that imperialism is employing for its own ends all the powers of the proletariat, all of its institutions and weapons, which its fighting vanguard has created for its war of liberation.

Clara Zetkin

I ended the war a horse ahead.

Nathan Bedford Forrest

In short, it may be said that on paper the obligations to settle international disputes peacefully are now so comprehensive and far-reaching that it is almost impossible for a state to resort to war without violating one or more solemn treaty obligations.

Arthur Henderson

The vast upheaval of the World War set in motion forces that will either destroy civilization or raise mankind to undreamed of heights of human welfare and prosperity.

Arthur Henderson

My youth passed at the time of the country's reconstruction from the ruins and ashes of the war in which my nation never bowed to the enemy paying the highest price in the struggle.

Lech Walesa

In war, whichever side may call itself the victor, there are no winners, but all are losers.

Neville Chamberlain

I have absolutely no regret about my vote against this war. The same questions remain. The cost in human lives, the cost to our budget, probably 100 billion. We could have probably brought down that statue for a lot less.

Nancy Pelosi

Five miles meandering with mazy motion,Through dale the sacred river ran,Then reached the caverns measureless to man,And sank the tumult to a lifeless ocean:And 'mid this tumult Kubla heard from farAncestral voices prophesying war!

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Kubla K

Are wars... anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated -- there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

Antoine De SaintExupery

If conquerors be regarded as the engine-drivers of History, then the conquerors of thought are perhaps the pointsmen who, less conspicuous to the traveler's eye, determine the direction of the journey.

Arthur Koestler

The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.

Arthur Koestler

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

TS (Thomas Stearns) Eliot