Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with 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.
Rebecca Harding Davis
As a result of my philosophy, I wasn't even upset about Hitler. I was willing to go to war to knock him off, but I didn't hate him. I hated what he was doing.
Albert Ellis
Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.
St. Jerome
We the unwilling. <br>Led by the unqualified. <br>To kill the unfortunate. <br>Die for the ungrateful.
GI in Vietnam War
To hold a pen is to be at war.
Voltaire
We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country.
Bertrand Russell
...On they come, with the old swinging route step and swaying battle flags. In the van, the proud Confederate ensign. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood; men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond; was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word, nor whisper or vain-glorying, nor motion of man, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!
Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
In glades they meet skull after skullWhere pine cones lay-the rusted gun,Green shoes full of bones, the mouldering coatAnd cuddled up skeleton;And scores of such. Some start as in dreams,And comrades lost bemoan;By the edge of those wilds Stonewall had charged-But the year and the Man were gone.
Herman Melville
Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey 'people.' People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war... Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.
C. S. Lewis
For the first time in the history of mankind, one generation literally has the power to destroy the past, the present and the future, the power to bring time to an end.
Hubert Humphrey
It was necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power -- the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns -- should consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals...
Leo Tolstoy
When people don't understand that the government doesn't have their interests in mind, they're more susceptible to go to war.
Howard Zinn
Until such time as people reject the power of government to govern, to legislate, and to punish, war will never stop.
Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.
John F. Kennedy
When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.
Plato
There is always inequality in life. Some men are killed in a war and some men are wounded and some men never leave the country. Life is unfair.
Once the command of the air is obtained by one of the contending armies, the war becomes a conflict between a seeing host and one that is blind.
H. G. Wells
Nowadays it is the fashion to emphasize the horrors of the last war. I didn't find it so horrible. There are just as horrible things happening all round us today, if only we had eyes to see them.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?- Only the monstrous anger of the guns. Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattleCan patter out their hasty orisons.No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells; Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs, - The shrill, demented choirs of wailing shells; And bugles calling for them from sad shires.What candles may be held to speed them all?Not in The hands of boys but in their eyesShall shine The holy glimmers of goodbyes. The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds, And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.
Wilfred Owen, Anthem for Doomed
