Wars Quotes
More Wars Quotes
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)
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".
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.
wars not make one great.
Yoda— Voiced by Frank Oz in Star Wars: Episode V - The Empire Strikes Back (1980).
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]
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)
"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.
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)
All wars are useless to the dead.
— 1969 Leaflets,'Implosions'.
I am not from your world or this one; I was born on the Sun. Sometimes our world becomes overcrowded because our people live so long. Our people are almost free of wars and illness, and sometimes our government officials send colonies to neighboring worlds.
cyrano de bergerac— Sun-being to Cyrano
I had won notable victories on paper and the map with the aid of greaseproof pencils and a typewriter. In the course of this very campaign, if one may dignify the disaster thus, I had seen French generals create imaginary "masses of manoeuvre" with strokes of the crayon and dispose of hostile concentrations, that unahappily were on the ground as well as on the map, with sweeps of the eraser. Who was I to criticise them, hero as I was of a hundred "Chinagraph wars" of make-believe?
frederick e. morgan— Peace and War: A Soldier's Life (1961), p. 138
Strictly speaking, no person who believes that wars between classes and nations are inevitable is fit to be in charge of the destiny of children. To believe in the unity of the human race and get children to believe it in early youth would mean the creation of that unity and the end of war.
dora russell— Ch. V, p. 205
Far from making peace, wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war.
wendell berry— "A Statement against the War in Vietnam"
All, all of a piece throughout: Thy chase had a beast in view; Thy wars brought nothing about; Thy lovers were all untrue. 'Tis well an old age is out, And time to begin a new.
john dryden— Lines 86-91.
It is utterly and irrevocably possible to empty all hurts and, therefore, to love, to have compassion. To have compassion means to have passion for all things, not just between two people, but for all human beings, for all things of the earth, the animals, the trees, everything the earth contains. When we have such compassion we will not despoil the earth as we are doing now, and we will have no wars.
jiddu krishnamurti— Talks in Saanen (1974), p. 71
At the height of their madness The night winds pause, Recollecting themselves; But no lull in these wars.
Herman Melville— The Armies of the Wilderness, Pt. II, st. 5
What of wars we have survived, genocides and hollow costs/holocausts? Have our hopes for humankind like scriptures and mass graves been lost?
dawud wharnsby— "What Has Become"
wars are often the cause of further wars because they fuel deep hatreds, create situations of injustice and trample upon people's dignity and rights. wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore, in addition to causing horrendous damage, they prove ultimately futile. War is a defeat for humanity. Only in peace and through peace can respect for human dignity and its inalienable rights be guaranteed.
— Message for the celebration of XXXIII World Day of Peace, 8 December 1999
— Source:
The genuine Anarchist looks with sheer horror upon every destruction, every mutilation of a human being, physical or moral . He loathes wars , executions and imprisonments, the grinding down of the worker's whole nature in a dreary round of toil, the sexual and economic slavery of women, the oppression of children, the crippling and poisoning of human nature by the preventable cruelty and injustice of man to man in every shape and form.
— Charlotte Wilson, in "Anarchism and Homicidal Outrage" in What Is Anarchism? : An Introduction edited by Donald Rooum (1992, 1995) p. 43
wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true .
— Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of General U. S. Grant (1885), Ch. 67.
