quotations about war
In every trade save war men of talent and vigor prosper. In war they die.
CORMAC MCCARTHY
The Crossing
I've fought for and against pretty much every cause there is. There will always be war of some kind. At first it was over fertile soil and good water, then precious metal and then the most popular version of human disagreement, "My God is better than your God." Whether you draw your faith from Jeremiah and Jesus, Allah and Muhammad or Brahma and Buddha, it doesn't matter. Someone will tell you you're wrong, and he'll fight you over it. Me, I believe in aliens, and to hell with all earthly gods. In the grand scheme of a trillion planets in the universe we're just not that damn important anyway. And humans are rotten to the core.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Camel Club
Ares ever loves to pluck all the fairest flower of an armed host.
AESCHYLUS
fragment, Europe
A righteous war is a legacy from heaven--oftentimes the handmaid of a nation's liberty.
EDWARD COUNSEL
Maxims
War is the sure result of the existence of armed men. That country which maintains a large standing army will sooner or later have a war. The man who prides himself on fisticuffs is going, some day, to meet a man who considers himself the better man, and they will test the issue.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
To me, the feeling of war is falling in love with something and having it killed in front of you, over and over again.
CHRIS ROESSNER
"Iraq vet talks about his Netflix movie, pulling CQ in Saddam's palace, debunking 'dysfunctional veteran' stereotype", Army Times, April 21, 2017
I believe that, tragically, war is inescapable. I know that's not a very politically correct thing to say. But when you read the scenes of rampage and battle in The Iliad, which Achilles casually evokes when he says, "I've stormed these cities from my ship," and then look at what is happening with, say, ISIS, and the carnage and brutality there, you can see a lot of similarities. But the fact The Iliad still speaks true doesn't just mean that it has prophetic powers. It means that those truths have always been there. They are enduring truths.
CAROLINE ALEXANDER
"War is Unavoidable--and Other Hard Lessons from Homer's Iliad", National Geographic, January 10, 2016
This is also a war followed in real time by anyone with a smart device, a technology that delivers instant updates, and oftentimes partial truths, to smart screens across the globe.
ROBERT MAKROS
"'Clean war' is the unicorn of armed conflict", The Hill, March 31, 2017
The wars of latter ages seem to be made in the dark, in respect of the glory, and honor, which reflected upon men from the wars, in ancient time. There be now, for martial encouragement, some degrees and orders of chivalry; which nevertheless are conferred promiscuously, upon soldiers and no soldiers; and some remembrance perhaps, upon the scutcheon; and some hospitals for maimed soldiers; and such like things. But in ancient times, the trophies erected upon the place of the victory; the funeral laudatives and monuments for those that died in the wars; the crowns and garlands personal; the style of emperor, which the great kings of the world after borrowed; the triumphs of the generals, upon their return; the great donatives and largesses, upon the disbanding of the armies; were things able to inflame all men's courages. But above all, that of the triumph, amongst the Romans, was not pageants or gaudery, but one of the wisest and noblest institutions, that ever was. For it contained three things: honor to the general; riches to the treasury out of the spoils; and donatives to the army. But that honor, perhaps were not fit for monarchies; except it be in the person of the monarch himself, or his sons; as it came to pass in the times of the Roman emperors, who did impropriate the actual triumphs to themselves, and their sons, for such wars as they did achieve in person; and left only, for wars achieved by subjects, some triumphal garments and ensigns to the general.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of the True Greatness Of Kingdoms And Estates", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
The loss of reason in war seems to me honorable, like the death of a sentry at his post.
LEONID ANDREYEV
The Red Laugh
In war it is necessary to kill as many people as possible -- such is the cynical logic of war. Brutality in a fight is unavoidable; have you seen how cruelly children fight in the streets?
MAXIM GORKY
Untimely Thoughts
For wide, ah! wide is the woe when the foeman has mounted the wall;
There is havoc and terror and flame, and the dark smoke broods over all,
And wild is the war-god's breath, as in frenzy of conquest he springs,
And pollutes with the blast of his lips the glory of holiest things!
AESCHYLUS
The Seven Against Thebes
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse.... A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice--is often the means of their regeneration.
JOHN STUART MILL
"The Contest in America", Dissertations and Discussions
It is a much easier thing to unloose the demon war than to chain him up again.
M. D. CONWAY
attributed, Platt's Essays
Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
My Early Life: A Roving Commission
Man kills without ceasing, to nourish himself; but since in addition he needs to kill for pleasure, he has invented the chase! The child kills the insects he finds, the little birds, all the little animals that come in his way. But this does not suffice for the irresistible need of massacre that is in us. It is not enough to kill beasts; we must kill man too. Long ago this need was satisfied by human sacrifice. Now, the necessity of living in society has made murder a crime. We condemn and punish the assassin! But as we cannot live without yielding to this natural and imperious instinct of death, we relieve ourselves from time to time, by wars. Then a whole nation slaughters another nation. It is a feast of blood, a feast that maddens armies and intoxicates the civilians, women and children, who read, by lamplight at night, the feverish story of massacre.
GUY DE MAUPASSANT
"The Diary of a Madman"
In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible. It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Moral Equivalent of War
As horrible as the death toll was in World War I, the millions who died were, by and large, killed on the battlefield--soldiers killed by soldiers, not civilians killed by lawless or random or planned savagery. The rough proportion of military to civilian casualties was ninety to ten. In World War II, the proportions were roughly even. Today, for every ten military casualties there are on the order of ninety civilian deaths. The reality of our era, as demonstrated in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya, is that torture is rampant, murdering civilians commonplace, and driving the survivors from their homes often the main goal of a particular military offensive.
RON GUTMAN & DAVID RIEFF
preface, Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know
All these things have a cost. There's genocide for every generation, there's conflict for every generation. You have to keep it contained.
WILLIAM SKUBY
"Can we handle another war? Vets weigh in", Asbury Park Press, April 17, 2017
The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Return of the King