WAR QUOTES IX

quotations about war

The modern State is by its very nature a military State; and every military State must of necessity become a conquering, invasive State; to survive it must conquer or be conquered, for the simple reason that accumulated military power will suffocate if it does not find an outlet.

MIKHAIL BAKUNIN

Statism and Anarchy

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War seldom enters but where wealth allures.

JOHN DRYDEN

The Hind and the Panther

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I like the War. It is only War that gives us a normal existence. What do you do in peace-time? You stay at home; you don't know what to do with your time; you argue with your parents, and your wife -- if you have one. Everyone thinks you are an insufferable egotist - and so you are. The War comes; you only go home every five or six months. You are a hero, and, what women appreciate much more, you are a change. You know stories that have never been published. You've seen strange men and terrible things. Your father, instead of telling his friends that you are embittering the end of his life, introduces you to them as an oracle. These old men consult you on foreign politics. I you are married, your wife is prettier than ever; if you are not, all the girls lay siege to you.

ANDRÉ MAUROIS

The Silence of Colonel Bramble

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The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.

MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.

Christmas sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, 1957

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Military arrangement, and movements in consequence, like the mechanism of a clock, will be imperfect and disordered by the want of a part.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

letter to the President of Congress, December 23, 1777

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The monk that invented gunpowder did as much to stop war as did all the sermons of his brethren.

AUSTIN O'MALLEY

Keystones of Thought

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What lackeys men are, who might be such fine fellows!
To be killing each other, unmercifully,
At an order, as though one said, "Bring up the tea."

AMY LOWELL

"A Ballad of Footmen"

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Free, open-eyed,
We rush like bridegrooms to Death's grisly arms:
Surely the very longing for that clasp
Proves us immortal. Immortality
Alone could teach this mortal how to die.
Perhaps, war is but Heaven's great ploughshare, driven
Over the barren, fallow earthly fields,
Preparing them for harvest; rooting up
Grass, weeds, and flowers, which necessary fall,
That in these furrows the wise Husbandman
May drop celestial seed.

DINAH CRAIK

"Looking Death in the Face"


All we've ever done is fight. Fight for freedom. Fight for justice. All we have to do is forgive.

ASHLYN RYAN

"War is bad -- why not talk out our problems?", The Altamont Enterprise, February 4, 2016


We don't call war hell because it is fought without restraint. It is more nearly right to say that, when certain restraints are passed, the hellishness of war drives us to break with every remaining restraint in order to win. Here is the ultimate tyranny: those who resist aggression are forced to imitate, and perhaps even to exceed, the brutality of the aggressor.

MICHAEL WALZER

Just and Unjust Wars

Tags: Michael Walzer


War settles nothing.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER

Quote Magazine, April 4, 1965


Eventually, you hope. Obviously, we're not in a position at the moment for the eradication of war to seem like anything but a far-off dream. But at one time, the eradication of slave markets in the United States seemed very far off. I mean, people have to begin somewhere. We can change. We can evolve as a species. It's not simple, and it's a very long and drawn-out process, but you can hope.

SUZANNE COLLINS

interview, Hogwarts Professor, August 15, 2010

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The term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people.

HOWARD ZINN

Terrorism and War

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Beware the toils of war ... the mesh of the huge dragnet sweeping up the world.

HOMER

The Iliad

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Want is both parent and child of war.

EDWARD COUNSEL

Maxims

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We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

HOWARD ZINN

The Progressive, November 2001


It is not the willingness to kill on the part of our soldiers which most concerns me. That is an inherent part of war. It is our lack of respect for even the admirable characteristics of our enemy -- for courage, for suffering, for death, for his willingness to die for his beliefs, for his companies and squadrons which go forth, one after another, to annihilation against our superior training and equipment. What is courage for us is fanaticism for him. We hold his examples of atrocity screamingly to the heavens while we cover up our own and condone them as just retribution for his acts.

CHARLES LINDBERGH

journal entry, July 21, 1944

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War is not a life: it is a situation,
One which may neither be ignored nor accepted.

T. S. ELIOT

A Note on War Poetry

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War is no strife
To the dark house and the detested wife.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

All's Well That Ends Well

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A great nation assailed by war has not only its frontiers to protect: it must also protect its good sense. It must protect itself from the hallucinations, injustices, and follies which the plague lets loose.

ROMAIN ROLLAND

preface, Above the Battle

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