quotations about war
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
War is the ultimate realization of modern technology.
DON DELILLO
End Zone
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
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
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
War ... has become impossible, except at the price of suicide.
IVAN STANISLAVOVICH BLOCH
The Future of War
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Atlantic Monthly, November 1945
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
Why is it that all wars are won by bankers?
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Prisoner of Heaven
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
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
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.
GEORGE WASHINGTON
fifth annual address to Congress, December 13, 1793
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
So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps, life has a peace-time quality, into which war-like events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains.
DORIS LESSING
The Four-Gated City
Nations with nations mix'd confus'dly die, and lost in one promiscuous carnage lie.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
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
War ... it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
JOSEPH HELLER
Catch-22
Ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
Brave New World Revisited
The stock market tends to rally whenever the U.S. begins military operations overseas. Does that mean that investors prefer war? Not exactly. But they positively abhor uncertainty, and that's what typically characterizes the market environment in the weeks prior to the U.S. military becoming involved in a foreign military operation. Much of that uncertainty gets resolved soon after U.S.-led hostilities begin, and that's why the stock market typically soars in response.
MARK HULBERT
"War Is Hell--but Not for The Stock Market", Barron's, April 20, 2017
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"