quotations about 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
War is a curious sort of reciprocal mirror. We never see the slaughter and injury our shot causes, only the results of the inevitable retaliation. Hardly any wonder, therefore, that we fall into the error of believing that it's the enemy who are to blame, rather than ourselves.
K. J. PARKER
The Escapement
However just the cause, we should mourn for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.
JOHN MCCAIN
speech, August 30, 2004
Nations with nations mix'd confus'dly die, and lost in one promiscuous carnage lie.
JOSEPH ADDISON
The Campaign
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
A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
New Statesman, February 8, 1991
I have seen the unknown dead, those little men of the Republic. It was they who woke me up. If a stranger, an enemy, becomes a thing like that when he dies, if one stops short and is afraid to walk over him, it means that even beaten our enemy is someone, that after having shed his blood, one must placate it, give this blood a voice, justify the man who shed it. Looking at certain dead is humiliating. One has the impression that the same fate that threw these bodies to the ground holds us nailed to the spot to see them, to fill our eyes with the sight. It's not fear, not our usual cowardice. One feels humiliated because one understands--touching it with one's eyes--that we might be in their place ourselves: there would be no difference, and if we live we owe it to this dirtied corpse. That is why every war is a civil war; every fallen man resembles one who remains and calls him to account.
CESARE PAVESE
The House on the Hill
(1) Acknowledge war as an addiction. (2) Call upon a "higher power" to form a "coalition of the willing" to renounce war and promote human rights. (3) Admit the error of using war as a tool of foreign policy that has harmed millions, and make amends to those who have suffered. (4) Learn new ways of dealing with nations that abuse human rights, such as committing to a new code of international conduct, and working through the UN and International Court, rather than acting unilaterally to advance our own interests. (6) Halt the sale and stockpiling of weapons while finding new avenues for economic growth that promote life and do not destroy our planet.
CURT TORELL
letter to the Editor, Smoky Mountain News, February 3, 2016
Wars grew and mutated, finding ways to stay alive; they hung on with the grim tenacity of a weed growing in a crack in a wall, feeding on whatever nutrients their roots and tendrils could find.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
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
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
What they could use around here is a good war. What else can you expect with peace running wild all over the place? You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization. And when do you get organization? In a war. Peace is one big waste of equipment. Anything goes, no one gives a damn. See the way they eat? Cheese on pumpernickel, bacon on the cheese? Disgusting! How many horses have they got in this town? How many young men? Nobody knows! They haven't bothered to count 'em! That's peace for you! I've been in places where they haven't had a war for seventy years and you know what? The people haven't even been given names! They don't know who they are! It takes a war to fix that. In a war, everyone registers, everyone's name's on a list. Their shoes are stacked, their corn's in the bag, you count it all up -- cattle, men, et cetera -- and you take it away! That's the story: no organization, no war!
BERTOLT BRECHT
Mother Courage
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
For the conduct of the war: at the first, men rested extremely upon number: they did put the wars likewise upon main force and valor; pointing days for pitched fields, and so trying it out upon an even match and they were more ignorant in ranging and arraying their battles. After, they grew to rest upon number rather competent, than vast; they grew to advantages of place, cunning diversions, and the like: and they grew more skilful in the ordering of their battles.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Vicissitude Of Things", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned.
HOWARD ZINN
Howard Zinn on War
War ... should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.
JAMES MADISON
"Universal Peace"
Ez fer war, I call it murder--
There you hev it plain an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
War is such an indefeasible and unescapable Real that the good realist must accept it rather comprehensively. To keep out of it is pure quietism, an acute moral failure to adjust. At the same time, there is an inexorability about war. It is a little unbridled for the realist's rather nice sense of purposive social control. And nothing is so disagreeable to the pragmatic mind as any kind of an absolute. The realist pragmatist could not recognize war as inexorable--though to the common mind it would seem as near an absolute, coercive social situation as it is possible to fall into. For the inexorable abolishes choices, and it is the essence of the realist's creed to have, in every situation, alternatives before him.
RANDOLPH SILLIMAN BOURNE
War and the Intellectuals
In the days of peace every precaution should be taken to insure that there are no forces making for war. Just as we now forbid the trafficking in certain drugs, in the sale of poisons, just as we forbid the making of any imprint that suggests a coin or currency, just as experience has demonstrated that men may not make profit out of certain things because of the danger of abuse, so in the gravest of all dangers laws should be passed taking from those who might gain from war or preparations for war every hope that advantage could come to them by such a calamity.
FREDERIC CLEMSON HOWE
Why War
Even when just, was is the worst necessity. The method is savage, and it recoils terribly, as much on the victor as the vanquished.
JAMES PLATT
Platt's Essays