quotations about war
Scarcely one stone remaineth upon another; but in the midst of sorrow we have abundant cause of thankfulness, that so few of our brethren are numbered with the slain, whilst our enemies were cut down like the grass before the scythe.
ABIGAIL ADAMS
letter to John Adams, June 22, 1775
A long war like this makes you realise the society you really prefer, the home, goats chickens and dogs and casual acquaintances. I find myself not caring at all for gardens flowers or vegetables cats cows and rabbits, one gets tired of trees vines and hills, but houses, goats chickens dogs and casual acquaintances never pall.
GERTRUDE STEIN
Wars I Have Seen
NIXON: The only place where you and I disagree ... is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about civilians and I don't give a damn. I don't care. KISSINGER: I'm concerned about the civilians because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.
RICHARD NIXON & HENRY KISSINGER
attributed, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
War among men defiles this world.
T. S. ELIOT
Murder in the Cathedral
When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though the war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Plague
It's hard to recapture the horror that earlier generations of Americans felt about preventive war when it was still something that other countries did to the United States and not merely something Americans contemplate doing to others. They viewed it the way some Americans still view torture: as liberation from the moral restraints that human beings require.
PETER BEINART
"How America Shed the Taboo Against Preventive War", The Atlantic, April 21, 2017
Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.
REBECCA WEST
attributed, Europe in Arms
Is war necessary? Can some conflicts only be solved by violence? Human history is indeed often presented as primarily a history of wars and battles, conquests and defeats. While that is only one perspective amongst many possible ones, violence of one sort or another has certainly been, if not centre-stage, at least lurking in the wings throughout the human story. Man (especially Man, but also Woman) clearly has the propensity not only to behave aggressively to other humans but also to do so in an organized way and not infrequently with calculated cruelty.
ROBERT AUBREY HINDE
War: The Bases of Institutionalized Violence
War is hell and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace-time.
IAN HAY
The First Hundred Thousand
The nation having the strongest war footing can easily find an excuse for going to war.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
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 may have hell if we have war, and we may have hell if we have peace. But if we have no vision for what we do, we have hell anyway.
GERALD STANLEY LEE
The Air-line to Liberty: A Prospectus for All Nations
War seldom enters but where wealth allures.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
War is a beastly business, it is true, but one proof we are human is our ability to learn, even from it, how better to exist.
M. F. K. FISHER
introduction to revised edition, How to Cook a Wolf
The line, broken into moving fragments by the ground, went calmly on through fields and woods. The youth looked at the men nearest him, and saw, for the most part, expressions of deep interest, as if they were investigating something that had fascinated them. One or two stepped with overvaliant airs as if they were already plunged into war. Others walked as upon thin ice. The greater part of the untested men appeared quiet and absorbed. They were going to look at war, the red animal--war, the blood-swollen god. And they were deeply engrossed in this march.
STEPHEN CRANE
The Red Badge of Courage
No one should be surprised at the prominence given to war. We are dealing with early ages: nation-making is the occupation of man in these ages, and it is war that makes nations.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
So far, war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Moral Equivalent of War
Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses
All bent upon killing, because their "of courses"
Are not quite the same.
AMY LOWELL
"A Ballad of Footmen"
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
All wars of interference, arising from an officious intrusion into the concerns of other states; all wars of ambition, carried on for the purposes of aggrandizement; and all wars of aggression, undertaken for the purpose of forcing an assent to this or that set of religious opinions; all such wars are criminal in their very outset, and have hypocrisy for their common base.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon