quotations about war
Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil.
AMBROSE BIERCE
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"Epigrams of a Cynic"
The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Return of the King
To me, the feeling of war is falling in love with something and having it killed in front of you, over and over again.
CHRIS ROESSNER
"Iraq vet talks about his Netflix movie, pulling CQ in Saddam's palace, debunking 'dysfunctional veteran' stereotype", Army Times, April 21, 2017
All these things have a cost. There's genocide for every generation, there's conflict for every generation. You have to keep it contained.
WILLIAM SKUBY
"Can we handle another war? Vets weigh in", Asbury Park Press, April 17, 2017
The god of war is impartial: he hands out death to the man who hands out death.
HOMER
The Iliad
The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must--never for sport.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Time Enough For Love
As horrible as the death toll was in World War I, the millions who died were, by and large, killed on the battlefield--soldiers killed by soldiers, not civilians killed by lawless or random or planned savagery. The rough proportion of military to civilian casualties was ninety to ten. In World War II, the proportions were roughly even. Today, for every ten military casualties there are on the order of ninety civilian deaths. The reality of our era, as demonstrated in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya, is that torture is rampant, murdering civilians commonplace, and driving the survivors from their homes often the main goal of a particular military offensive.
RON GUTMAN & DAVID RIEFF
preface, Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know
War is the most readily available form of chaos.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
War is an environmental issue and a health issue that affects us all. Our entire planet is saturated by toxins due to these bombings in the long term because we share the same atmosphere.
SEELAI POPAL
"After MOAB, More Afghans Unite to Resist US War and Occupation", Truth-Out, April 20, 2017
There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives--when the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
O young men that shed your blood with so generous a joy for the starving earth! O heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction to reap under this splendid summer sun! Young men of all nations, brought into conflict by a common ideal, making enemies of those who should be brothers; all of you, marching to your death, are dear to me.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Above the Battle
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Atlantic Monthly, November 1945
War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
The Second World War, Volume III: The Grand Alliance
Only people who haven't lived through a war advocate it so eagerly.
DAVID GERROLD
Under the Eye of God
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
C. E. MONTAGUE
Disenchantment
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
One of the many, many things I hate about war is how it trivializes the personal. The big themes, the broad sweep, the emergency measures, the national identity, all the things that a particular kind of man with a particular kind of power urge adores, these are the things that become important. War gives the lie to the personal, drowns it in meetings, alarms, sacrifices. The personal is only allowed to return as death.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
news conference, August 11, 1954
As a U.S. taxpayer and a retired banker, I look for a good return on investment. I want my tax dollars used wisely, thank you very much -- and I've identified some smarter investments than war.
LORI DRAPER
"Conflict resolution is a much better investment than war", Alaska Dispatch News, January 6, 2016
Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime.
BAN KI-MOON
"Starvation 'as a weapon' is a war crime, UN chief warns parties to conflict in Syria", UN News Centre, January 14, 2016