Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with War.
The Cold War isn't thawing it is burning with a deadly heat. Communism isn't sleeping it is, as always, plotting, scheming, working, fighting.
Richard M. Nixon
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.
Charles Baudelaire
Had he and I but metBy some old ancient inn,We should have sat us down to wetRight many a nipperkin!But ranged as infantry,And staring face to face,I shot at him as he at me,And killed him in his place.I shot him dead because--Because he was my foe,Just so: my foe of course he was;That's clear enough; althoughHe thought he
Thomas Hardy, The Man He Killed
There's only one proper way for a professional soldier to die. That's from the last bullet, of the last battle, of the last war.
General George Patton
Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base.
So you think you can tell heaven from hell - blue skies from pain? Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail, a smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts - hot ashes for trees, hot air for a cool breeze, cold comfort for change? Did you exchange a walk-on part in a war for a lead role in a cage?
Roger Waters, from the song "Wis
Military weapons are the means used by the Sage to punish violence and cruelty, to give peace to troublous times, to remove difficulties and dangers, and to succor those who are in peril. Every animal with blood in its veins and horns on its head will fight when it is attacked. How much more so will man, who carries in his breast the faculties of love and hatred, joy and anger! When he is pleased, a feeling of affection springs up within him; when angry, his poisoned sting is brought into play. That is the natural law which governs his beinghttp://unpress.bandersnatch.org/suntzu/artofwar.html#n0.58
Ssuma Ch`ien, Shih Chi, ch. 25,
What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.
John Hersey
A battle is won by the side that is absolutely determined to win. Why did we lose the battle of Austerlitz? Our casualties were about the same as those of the French, but we had told ourselves early in the day that the battle was lost, so it was lost.
Leo Tolstoy
I have no fear of war, said Arthur Stuart. That's when kings get to show their mettle. You're thinking of chess, said Margaret. In war, everyone has their chance to bleed.
Orson Scott Card
Cry havoc! and let loose the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.
William Shakespeare
We go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name.
In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
Watergate enabled the Democrats to cut off all aid to South Vietnam and ensure American defeat in a war their party entered and had effectively lost, before Nixon salvaged a non-Communist South Vietnam while effecting a complete American withdrawal.
Conrad Black
The war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture. It is like the battles between certain ruminant animals whose horns are set at such an angle that they are incapable of hurting one another. But though it is unreal it is not meaningless. It eats up the surplus of consumable goods, and it helps to preserve the special mental atmosphere that a hierarchical society needs. War, it will be seen, is now a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of the war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of society intact. The very word 'war', therefore, has become misleading. It would probably be accurate to say that by becoming continuous war has ceased to exist. The peculiar pressure that it exerted on human beings between the Neolithic Age and the early twentieth century has disappeared and been replaced by something quite different. The effect would be much the same if the three super-states, instead of fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed for ever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This
George Orwell, 1984, Chapter 17
Black people have always been used as a buffer in this country between powers to prevent class war.
Toni Morrison
With Vietnam, the Iraq War, so many American films about war are almost always from the American point of view. You almost never have a Middle Eastern character by name with a story.
Mira Nair
When I was in Pulp, I actively did more TV stuff because that was during the Great Britpop Wars, and it seemed important to prove that indie people could speak. That war doesn't exist anymore.
Jarvis Cocker
And once he had seen this, he could never again see it otherwise, just as we cannot reconstruct an illusion once it has been explained.
War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory, and good fortune.
Sir Walter Raleigh
