Wars Quotes
More Wars Quotes
wars not make one great.
Yoda— Voiced by Frank Oz in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.
miriam makeba— As quoted in Nkrumah, Gamal (1–7 November 2001)
All interstate wars intensify aggression – maximize it … some wars are even more unjust than others. In other words, all government wars are unjust, although some governments have less unjust claims…
murray rothbard— As quoted in an interview in Reason magazine (February 1973)
But thou shall flourish in immortal youth, Unhurt amidst the wars of elements, The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.
joseph addison— Joseph Addison, Cato, A Tragedy (1713), Act V, scene 1.
Those who start wars never fight them, and those who fight wars never like them.
michael franti— Time to Go Home, Yell Fire! (2006)
It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived.
harper lee— Pt. 1, ch. 11
— Jean Louise (Scout) Finch
All the wars and strifes between tribes, races, nations, from the beginning until now, have been the result of man's effort to govern himself and the world, rather than to submit to the government of God.
david lipscomb— p. 10 (Civil Government : Its Origin, Mission, and Destiny (1889))
The invasion of Iraq will surely go down in history as one of the most cowardly wars ever fought. It was a war in which a band of rich nations, armed with enough nuclear weapons to destroy the world several times over, rounded on a poor nation, falsely accused it of having nuclear weapons, used the United Nations to force it to disarm, then invaded it, occupied it, and are now in the process of selling it.
Arundhati Roy— From a speech accepting the Sydney Peace Prize, November 07, 2004 [7]
When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the cruelest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases.
erik erikson— "The Problem of Ego Identity" (1956), published in Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 4:56-121
All wars are accordingly so many attempts (not in the intention of man, but in the intention of Nature) to establish new relations among states, and through the destruction or at least the dismemberment of all of them to create new political bodies, which, again, either internally or externally, cannot maintain themselves and which must thus suffer like revolutions; until finally, through the best possible civic constitution and common agreement and legislation in external affairs, a state is created which, like a civic commonwealth, can maintain itself automatically.
Immanuel Kant— Seventh Thesis
History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
ronald reagan— Address to the nation from the White House (16 January 1984)
It goes without saying that when survival is threatened, struggles erupt between peoples, and unfortunate wars between nations result.
Hideki Tojo— Quoted in "The Journal of Historical Review", by Institute for Historical Review (1992, pg. 34)
"Paint me as I am," said Cromwell, "Rough with age and gashed with wars; Show my visage as you find it, Less than truth my soul abhors."
james thomas fields— James Thomas Fields, On a Portrait of Cromwell. In Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 576-77.
It was somewhere between the interview with the Indian entrepreneur who wanted to do my taxes from Bangalore and the one who wanted to write my software from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to read my x-rays from Bangalore, and the one who wanted to trace my lost luggage from Bangalore...I was realizing that, while I had been sleeping, while I had been off covering the 9/11 wars, I had missed something really fundamental in this globalization story. I had lost the thread, and I found it in Bangalore.
— Thomas Friedman, "The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century".
The consensus is that no more than five to ten people in a hundred who die by gunfire in Los Angeles are any loss to society. These people fight small wars amongst themselves. It would seem a valid social service to keep them well-supplied with ammunition.
jeff cooper— Jeff Cooper, Guns and Ammo Magazine, April 1991.
I have seen men march to the wars, and then I have watched their homeward tread, And they brought back bodies of living men, But their eyes were cold and dead. So, Buddy, no matter what else the fame, No matter what else the prize, I want you to come back thru The Flame With the boy-look still in your eyes!
— Edmund Vance Cooke, The Boy-Look.
wars are fought by teenagers, you realize that. They really ought to be fought by the politicians and old people who start these wars.
james clavell— Interview with Don Swaim of CBS Radio (1986) (RealAudio file)
All of us who served in one war or another know very well that all wars are the glory and the agony of the young.
— Gerald Ford, Address to the 75th annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Chicago, Illinois (19 August 1974)
wars are Spinach. Life in general is the tough part. In war all you have to do is not worry and know how to read a map and co-ordinates.
ernest hemingway— Letter to Marlene Dietrich (27 June 1950)
For the great Gaels of Ireland Are the men that God made mad, For all their wars are merry, And all their songs are sad.
— 1911Ballad of the White Horse, bk.2.
She saw that in all wars, the first stage was to dehumanize the enemy, reduce the enemy to a lower level so that he might be killed without compunction. When the enemy was not human to begin with, the task was easier.
greg bear— p. 76 (Hardfought (1983))
The Balkan wars led to a further inconsistency in U.S. policy. … America asked Europe to carry more of the defense burden, and then grew resentful when the EU did as asked.
charles a. kupchan— Chapter one: "Grand Strategy and the Paradox of American Power"
Generals do not always run wars the way they would like to, nor the troops under them.
christopher vokes— Sicily, p. 109
Sociologists and historians have avoided looking for the family sources of wars and social violence. Whenever a group produces murderers, the early parental relationship must have been abusive and neglectful. Yet this elementary truth has not even begun to be considered in historical research; just stating that poor mothering lies behind wars seems blasphemous.
lloyd demause— Ch. 6, p. 153.
That smile could end wars and cure cancer.
john green— An Abundance of Katherines, Colin Singleton (2006, p. 32)
Radical changes of identity, happening suddenly and in very brief intervals of time, have proved more deadly and destructive of human values than wars fought with hardware weapons.
Marshall McLuhan— p. 97 ("The Agenbite of Outwit")
The struggle against war and its social source, capitalism, presupposes direct, active, unequivocal support to the oppressed colonial peoples in their struggles and wars against imperialism. A 'neutral' position is tantamount to support of imperialism.
— "Resolution on the Antiwar Congress of the London Bureau" (July 1936)
wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead.
omar bradley— As quoted in Peace Pilgrim: Her Life and Work in Her Own Words (1992) by Peace Pilgrim, p. 113
