Quotes About Warfare

In 2012 about 56 million people died throughout the world; 620,000 of them died due to human violence (war killed 120,000 people, and crime killed another 500,000). In contrast, 800,000 committed suicide, and 1.5 million died of diabetes. Sugar is now more dangerous than gunpowder.

THE ANCIENT ROMANS WERE USED TO being defeated. Like the rulers of most of history's great empires, they could lose battle after battle but still win the war.

Of all human collective activities, the one most difficult to organise is violence.

Alamogordo, 16 July 1945, 05:29:53. Eight seconds after the first atomic bomb was detonated. The nuclear physicist Robert Oppenheimer, upon seeing the explosion, quoted from the Bhagavad Gita: 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

The kamikaze thus relied on combining state-of-the-art technology with state-of-the-art religious indoctrination.

military power cannot go far in the twenty-first century, and that waging a successful war means waging a limited war.

A common saying among European soldiers facing African enemies was, 'Come what may, we have machine guns, and they don't.

Los antiguos romanos estaban acostumbrados a ser derrotados. Al igual que los mandatarios de la mayor parte de los grandes imperios de la historia, podían perder batalla tras batalla pero aun así ganar la guerra.

If one must fight one should confine oneself to conventional weapons.

An army without culture is a dull-witted army, and a dull-witted army cannot defeat the enemy.

It's not right to respond to terrorism by terrorizing other people. And furthermore, it's not going to help. Then you might say, "Yes, it's terrorizing people, but it's worth doing because it will end terrorism." But how much common sense does it take to know that you cannot end terrorism by indiscriminately dropping bombs?

I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare.

With the indiscriminate nature of modern military technology (no such thing as a "smart bomb," it turns out) all wars are wars against civilians, and are therefore inherently immoral. This is true even when a war is considered "just," because it is fought against a tyrant, against an aggressor, to correct a stolen boundary.

Had Colonel Carrington visited the scene of the Sand Creek Massacre, which occurred only two years before the Fetterman Massacre, he would have seen the same mutilations—committed upon Indians by Colonel Chivington's soldiers. The Indians who ambushed Fetterman were only imitating their enemies, a practice which in warfare, as in civilian life, is said to be the sincerest form of flattery.

The Navahos could forgive the Rope Thrower for fighting them as a soldier, for making prisoners of them, even for destroying their food supplies, but the one act they never forgave him for was cutting down their beloved peach trees.

I now think a little powder and lead is the best food for them," he concluded. 7

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base. That bomb had more power than 20,000 tons of T.N.T.

The rich sought to conquer one another on battlefields of architectural grandeur. Society fought wars in ballrooms and twinkling parlors, wielding the most haute of designers and decor as their weapons of choice, Italian marble beneath their feet.

Fencing is more a sport than a martial art. It would be like basing your knowledge of roman phalanx warfare on NFL football.

The world is crazy about amassing guns, bombs and wealth of humongous proportions, but it will not give knowledge a second glance!

Roman matrons used to say to their sons: 'Come back with your shield or on it.' Later on, this custom declined. So did Rome... (but not before it created an Empire that changed the world -EM).

To furnish one hundred and fifty thousand men, on both sides of the Mississippi, in May, 1861, there were no infantry accoutrements, no cavalry arms or equipments, no artillery and, above all, no ammunition; nothing save arms, and these almost wholly the old pattern smooth-bore muskets, altered to percussion from flint locks.

Battlefield use of tactical nuclear weapons could perhaps qualify as purely tactical. But limited nuclear war need not be confined to a battlefield. Limited nuclear strikes against other than clearly battlefield targets, such as those located in the rear, on the territory of an ally, or, particularly, in the homeland of an opponent, could well be regarded as strategic, even if restricted to warfighting, or counterforce, targets.

Limited wars were not to be considered lesser-included cases. The ability to deter, fight, and win in the least likely contingencies — total wars —did not necessarily ensure the ability to deter, fight, and win in the most likely contingencies — limited wars.