WAR QUOTES VIII

quotations about war

Weakness and ambivalence lead to war.

GEORGE H. W. BUSH

RNC acceptance speech, August 18, 1988

Tags: George H. W. Bush


A long war like this makes you realise the society you really prefer, the home, goats chickens and dogs and casual acquaintances. I find myself not caring at all for gardens flowers or vegetables cats cows and rabbits, one gets tired of trees vines and hills, but houses, goats chickens dogs and casual acquaintances never pall.

GERTRUDE STEIN

Wars I Have Seen


When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though the war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

ALBERT CAMUS

The Plague

Tags: Albert Camus


War among men defiles this world.

T. S. ELIOT

Murder in the Cathedral

Tags: T. S. Eliot


NIXON: The only place where you and I disagree ... is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about civilians and I don't give a damn. I don't care. KISSINGER: I'm concerned about the civilians because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.

RICHARD NIXON & HENRY KISSINGER

attributed, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers


War is a beastly business, it is true, but one proof we are human is our ability to learn, even from it, how better to exist.

M. F. K. FISHER

introduction to revised edition, How to Cook a Wolf

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We shall not enter into any of the abstruse definitions of war used by publicists. We shall keep to the element of the thing itself, to a duel. War is nothing but a duel on an extensive scale.

CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ

On War

Tags: Carl von Clausewitz


It's hard to recapture the horror that earlier generations of Americans felt about preventive war when it was still something that other countries did to the United States and not merely something Americans contemplate doing to others. They viewed it the way some Americans still view torture: as liberation from the moral restraints that human beings require.

PETER BEINART

"How America Shed the Taboo Against Preventive War", The Atlantic, April 21, 2017


We are now in the midst of our first television war ... the television environment [is] total and therefore invisible. Along with the computer, it has altered every phase of the American vision and identity. The television war has meant the end of the dichotomy between civilian and military. The public is now a participant in every phase of the war, and the main actions of the war are now being fought in the American home itself.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

War and Peace in the Global Village

Tags: Marshall McLuhan


The nation having the strongest war footing can easily find an excuse for going to war.

LEWIS F. KORNS

Thoughts

Tags: Lewis F. Korns


War is hell and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace-time.

IAN HAY

The First Hundred Thousand

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Is war necessary? Can some conflicts only be solved by violence? Human history is indeed often presented as primarily a history of wars and battles, conquests and defeats. While that is only one perspective amongst many possible ones, violence of one sort or another has certainly been, if not centre-stage, at least lurking in the wings throughout the human story. Man (especially Man, but also Woman) clearly has the propensity not only to behave aggressively to other humans but also to do so in an organized way and not infrequently with calculated cruelty.

ROBERT AUBREY HINDE

War: The Bases of Institutionalized Violence

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We don't call war hell because it is fought without restraint. It is more nearly right to say that, when certain restraints are passed, the hellishness of war drives us to break with every remaining restraint in order to win. Here is the ultimate tyranny: those who resist aggression are forced to imitate, and perhaps even to exceed, the brutality of the aggressor.

MICHAEL WALZER

Just and Unjust Wars

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War seldom enters but where wealth allures.

JOHN DRYDEN

The Hind and the Panther

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The modern State is by its very nature a military State; and every military State must of necessity become a conquering, invasive State; to survive it must conquer or be conquered, for the simple reason that accumulated military power will suffocate if it does not find an outlet.

MIKHAIL BAKUNIN

Statism and Anarchy

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No one should be surprised at the prominence given to war. We are dealing with early ages: nation-making is the occupation of man in these ages, and it is war that makes nations.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

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All we've ever done is fight. Fight for freedom. Fight for justice. All we have to do is forgive.

ASHLYN RYAN

"War is bad -- why not talk out our problems?", The Altamont Enterprise, February 4, 2016


Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses
All bent upon killing, because their "of courses"
Are not quite the same.

AMY LOWELL

"A Ballad of Footmen"

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While Congress cuts programs for basic human needs, our costs of post-9/11 wars -- including future veteran care -- stand at $4.4 trillion. We've spent $7.6 trillion on defense and homeland security. Yet spending those same dollars on peaceful industry -- education, health care, infrastructure, and renewable energy -- could produce many more and better paying jobs.

DOUG WINGEIER

letter to the Editor, Smoky Mountain News, February 3, 2016


We may have hell if we have war, and we may have hell if we have peace. But if we have no vision for what we do, we have hell anyway.

GERALD STANLEY LEE

The Air-line to Liberty: A Prospectus for All Nations

Tags: Gerald Stanley Lee