WAR QUOTES VIII

quotations about war

War seldom enters but where wealth allures.

JOHN DRYDEN

The Hind and the Panther

Tags: John Dryden


You wouldn't believe how many I've seen coming up the road here. But precious few going back. Well, that's what war is, I believe. I always try to tell myself they're still there -- I mean, wherever it was they went -- but you know and I know there's a lot that have gone to stay.

GENE WOLFE

The Claw of the Conciliator

Tags: Gene Wolfe


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


War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to "feel good" about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure.

ADRIENNE RICH

What is Found There

Tags: Adrienne Rich


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

Tags: Ian Hay


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


In time of actual war, great discretionary powers are constantly given to the Executive Magistrate. Constant apprehension of War, has the same tendency to render the head too large for the body. A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger, have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

JAMES MADISON

speech at Constitutional Convention, June 29, 1787

Tags: James Madison


The term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.

HOWARD ZINN

Terrorism and War

Tags: Howard Zinn


War among men defiles this world.

T. S. ELIOT

Murder in the Cathedral

Tags: T. S. Eliot


War is not pretty from any angle, and the most vulnerable organ in the body is the brain.

FRANK LAWLIS

PTSD Breakthrough: The Revolutionary, Science-Based Compass RESET Program


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"

Tags: Amy Lowell


A holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it.

ELIE WIESEL

Nobel Lecture, December 10, 1986

Tags: Elie Wiesel


Superiority in war ... cannot surely be a proof of justice, since wars are often unjustly undertaken, and successfully, though wickedly, carried on and concluded.

ARISTOTLE

Politics

Tags: Aristotle


War has been the most convenient pseudo-solution for the problems of twentieth-century capitalism. It provides the incentives to modernisation and technological revolution which the market and the pursuit of profit do only fitfully and by accident, it makes the unthinkable (such as votes for women and the abolition of unemployment) not merely thinkable but practicable.... What is equally important, it can re-create communities of men and give a temporary sense to their lives by uniting them against foreigners and outsiders. This is an achievement beyond the power of the private enterprise economy ... when left to itself.

ERIC J. HOBSBAWM

London Observer, May 26, 1968

Tags: Eric Hobsbawm


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


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

Tags: Robert Aubrey Hinde


History shows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive, just wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars; we actively participate in them.

MAO ZEDONG

"On Protracted War", May 1938

Tags: Mao Zedong


The monk that invented gunpowder did as much to stop war as did all the sermons of his brethren.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

Tags: Austin O'Malley


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

Tags: Michael Walzer


Military arrangement, and movements in consequence, like the mechanism of a clock, will be imperfect and disordered by the want of a part.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

letter to the President of Congress, December 23, 1777

Tags: George Washington