WAR QUOTES XV

quotations about war

There's this tradition that The Iliad is about war. It's very easy to support that tradition by picking out four or five main scenes. But when one reads the entirety of the epic, it is unambiguously clear at every turn that the poem is evoking the blighting effect of this war on every single participant in it. Old men, civilians, children, captive women or wives, as well as the warriors, like Achilles--they all decry it. Every adjective evokes the destruction and tragedy of war. It's literally a war of tears.

CAROLINE ALEXANDER

"War is Unavoidable--and Other Hard Lessons from Homer's Iliad", National Geographic, January 10, 2016


War is the ultimate realization of modern technology.

DON DELILLO

End Zone

Tags: Don DeLillo


Such is the nature of war that, at the top, there is hardly any aspect of human behavior, individual and collective, which does not impinge on its conduct. And which, as a result, those in charge do not have to take into account and act upon.

MARTIN VAN CREVELD

"Why the best teacher of war is war", OUP blog, April 9, 2017


It makes no difference what men think of war.... War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

CORMAC MCCARTHY

Blood Meridian

Tags: Cormac McCarthy


War ... has become impossible, except at the price of suicide.

IVAN STANISLAVOVICH BLOCH

The Future of War

Tags: Ivan Stanislavovich Bloch


War is a monster with snaky locks, and fiery bloodshot eyes, and harpy claws, passing over fair fields and leaving its footprints in burning villages, dying men, weeping wives and children, and needs to be seen by those who so eagerly clamour for it at every opportunity. The sight of that fearful phantom, girt round with skulls, chains reeking with blood and desolation and ruin in its track, would stop their eagerness for it, unless under real compulsion.

M. D. CONWAY

attributed, Platt's Essays


Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war. The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than anything else is that the term "mankind" feels vague and abstract. People scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity. They can scarcely bring themselves to grasp that they, individually, and those whom they love are in imminent danger of perishing agonizingly.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Tags: Bertrand Russell


When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man by victory or death.

THOMAS HOBBES

Leviathan

Tags: Thomas Hobbes


when a great war has cut off the young men of a nation it never can be told thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and great designers the country and the world have suffered.

JAMES VILA BLAKE

Essays


The decision to use military hard power is a serious one and never taken lightly. The military establishment does everything in its power to mitigate risk in a battlespace that can only be described as "murky" because, no matter the amount of intelligence or planning, the only certainty is uncertainty.

ROBERT MAKROS

"'Clean war' is the unicorn of armed conflict", The Hill, March 31, 2017


Why is it that all wars are won by bankers?

CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON

The Prisoner of Heaven

Tags: Carlos Ruiz Zafon


War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ

On War


Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

Human, All Too Human

Tags: Friedrich Nietzsche


All Wars are Follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones. When will Mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their Differences by Arbitration? Were they to do it, even by the Cast of a Dye, it would be better than by Fighting and destroying each other.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

letter to Mary Hewson, January 27, 1783

Tags: Benjamin Franklin


The breed of ancient times was impaired for war by trade and luxury, but the modern breed is not so impaired.

WALTER BAGEHOT

Physics and Politics

Tags: Walter Bagehot


War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it.

BENITO MUSSOLINI

"The Political and Social Doctrine of Fascism"

Tags: Benito Mussolini


The war is being conducted under a conspiracy of silence. It does not mean it does not exist, only that it is kept quiet.

URI MISGAV

"Israel Is in a Civil War, Not a War of Brothers", Haaretz


Wars start like this. Cultures gamble decadence and death will win them rebirth, watch themselves sliding into it, knowing it's an all-or-nothing bet.

GLEN DUNCAN

By Blood We Live

Tags: Glen Duncan


War is not clean, but it is a lot cleaner than it used to be. Today's wars look drastically different than yesterday's. Gone are the days when uniformed armies opposed each other in the open, using armor and aircraft to expose weakness and overpower. Gone are the days when it was acceptable to launch thousands of bombers against cities in Europe and the Pacific, attacks that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Today, the battlefield has changed, and the United States finds itself immersed in a new type of war, one best described as dynamically confusing, where the enemy plays by a different set of rules -- rules that, among other things, include hiding among civilians, making differentiating between civilian versus combatant and friend versus foe extremely difficult.

ROBERT MAKROS

"'Clean war' is the unicorn of armed conflict", The Hill, March 31, 2017


War must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and that peace is health.

DAN SIMMONS

The Fall of Hyperion

Tags: Dan Simmons