Browse through our collection of quotes tagged with War.
What we believe is more important than our material existence, therefore warfare is a legitimate extension of values.
Edward Johnson
I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently, innocently slay one another.
Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet
We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war.
The purpose of fighting is to win. There is no possible victory in defense. The sword is more important than the shield and skill is more important than either. The final weapon is the brain. All else is supplemental.
John Steinbeck
Don't one of you fire until you see the whites of their eyes.N.B.: A lesser-known version of this quotation was supposedly said by Frederick the Great at Prague in 1757: By push of bayonets, no firing till you see the whites of their eyes.
Colonel William Prescott, Battle
Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead!
David G. Farragut, Battle of Mob
A really strong woman accepts the war she went through and is ennobled by her scars.
Carly Simon
He was a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and I'll show you a loser, show me a hero and I'll show you a corpse.
Mario Puzo
People of the Philippines: I have returned. By the grace of Almighty God, our forces stand again on Philippine soil
General Douglas MacArthur, Remin
War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.
Hannah Arendt
Can treaties be more faithfully enforced between aliens than laws can among friends? Suppose you go to war, you cannot fight always; and when, after much loss on both sides, and no gain on either, you cease fighting, the identical old questions as to terms of intercourse are again upon you.
Abraham Lincoln, First Inaugural
A war is like when it rains in New York and everybody crowds into doorways, ya know? And they all get chummy together. Perfect strangers. The only difference, of course, is in a war it's also raining on the other side of the street and the people who are chummy over there are trying to kill the people who are over here who are chums.
Larry Gelbart, Hawkeye Pierce, M
What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.
General Robert E. Lee, letter to
There is no such thing as a man being too proud to fight; there is such a thing as a nation being so right that it does not need to convince others by force that it is right.
Woodrow Wilson, Speech in Philad
My centre is giving way, my right is retreating, situation excellent, I am attacking.
Marshal Ferdinand Foch, message
Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
SunTzu
Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.
Guns will make us powerful; butter will only make us fat.
Hermann Goering
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
Henry David Thoreau
I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
