War Quotes

Whensoever hostile aggressions...require a resort to war, we must meet our duty and convince the world that we are just friends and brave enemies.

Thomas Jefferson

Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.

Marcus Tullius Cicero

The desire to conquer is itself a sort of subjection.

George Eliot

What is more immoral than war?

Marquis de Sade

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.

William Tecumseh Sherman

War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

Ron Paul

We did not go to war in Afghanistan or in Iraq to, quote, 'impose democracy.' We went to war in both places because we saw those regimes as a threat to the United States.

Paul Wolfowitz

This topic brings me to that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system, which I abhor... This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism -- how passionately I hate them!

Albert Einstein

One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.

Kurt Vonnegut

Berlin is still going through a transition since the Cold War - both in what used to be East and West Berlin. I can still sense the confusion and the struggle for identity there in the streets. There's a pulse to it.

Diane Kruger

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

Benjamin Franklin

After the thing went off, after it was a sure thing that America could wipe out a city with just one bomb, a scientist turned to Father and said, 'Science has now known sin.' And do you know what Father said? He said, 'What is sin?

Kurt Vonnegut

War was never so careful as to inflict suffering only where it was merited.

Orson Scott Card

The majority of pacifists either belong to obscure religious sects or are simply humanitarians who object to taking life and prefer not to follow their thoughts beyond that point. But there is a minority of intellectual pacifists, whose real though unacknowledged motive appears to be hatred of western democracy and admiration for totalitarianism. Pacifist propaganda usually boils down to saying that one side is as bad as the other, but if one looks closely at the writing of the younger intellectual pacifists, one finds that they do not by any means express impartial disapproval but are directed almost entirely against Britain and the United States

George Orwell

Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!

Alexander Blok

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

But when will our leaders learn - war is not the answer.

Helen Thomas

When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them.

Steven Spielberg

If you kill enough of them, they stop fighting.

Curtis LeMay

People say you favor assassination, what do you think war is? Except that it's assassination on a much larger scale, a much more horrific scale.

John Bolton