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
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)
It islawful for Christianmen, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons, and serve in the wars.
— Articles of Religion, XXX VII Of the Civil Magistrates.
All wars are planned by old men In council rooms apart.
Grantland Rice— 1955 The Final Answer,'TheTwo Sides of War'.
Either the State for ever, crushing individual and local life, taking over in all fields of human activity, bringing with it its wars and its domestic struggles for power, its palace revolutions which only replace one tyrant by another, and inevitably at the end of this development there is ... death!Or the destruction of States, and new life starting again in thousands of centers on the principle of the lively initiative of the individual and groups and that of free agreement.The choice lies with you!
peter kropotkin— X, Closing lines
Most of the people who get sent to die in wars are young men who've got a lot of energy and would probably rather, in a better world, be putting that energy into copulation rather than going over there and blowing some other young man's guts out.
alan moore— "The Craft" - interview with Daniel Whiston, Engine Comics (January 2005)
A nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its laws made by cowards and its wars fought by fools.
Thucydides— Widely attributed to Thucydides in books and online. In fact misquoted from Sir William Francis Butler, Charles George Gordon (1889), p. 85, where it reads: "The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards." [3]
Such a stupid act. Sometimes heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination, the sort of unshowy soldiering that didn’t win medals but wars.
iain banks— Chapter VIII (p. 183)
It is probably well that we had the war when we did. We are better off now than we would have been without it, and have made more rapid progress than we otherwise should have made... But this war was a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars in the future.
ulysses s. grant— Conclusion
It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.
bertrand russell— "The Atomic Bomb and the Prevention of War" in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (1945-10-01).
A gay peninsula filled with sprightly people who ate peppered food, drank strong liquors , wore flamboyant clothes, loved and murdered easily and had a splendid talent for starting wars ".
— A Long Row of Candles by C. J. Sulzberger
It is the province of kings to bring wars about; it is the province of God to end them.
— Cardinal Pole, to Henry VIII. Quotes reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 841-60.
wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds, love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace.
u thant— "Buddhism and the Charter" in Religion and International Affairs (1968) edited by Jeffrey Rose and Michael Ignatieff, p. 114
