Quotes About Wars

In the long term we can hope that religion will change the nature of man and reduce conflict. But history is not encouraging in this respect. The bloodiest wars in history have been religious wars.

In 2016, despite wars in Syria, Ukraine, and several other hot spots, fewer people died from human violence than from obesity, car accidents, or suicide.

The decline of violence is due largely to the rise of the state. Throughout history, most violence resulted from local feuds between families and communities. (Even today, as the above figures indicate, local crime is a far deadlier threat than international wars.)

History shows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive, just wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars; we actively participate in them.

The boys organized air-soft gun wars, so eight sweaty, stinky boys are running through my house wielding semiautomatic pellet guns dressed in sweatshirts though it was 97 degrees yesterday. My rule on this boy business: "Don't cry if you get pinged, and if one stray pellet hits me, I will run over your guns with my car." This is life with sons, people.

Not enough has been written about the treachery of middle life," the old man mused, his voice carrying over the wind. "Dante went to hell to escape it, and I've seen plenty of other men do the same, metaphorically speaking. Be patient, Dexter. Wars have a way of shifting the terrain into configurations we can't foresee, hard as we might try. This is no time for bold moves.

most of the Universe's major wars had been caused by zealots aggressively spreading their own religion, so

Information has always been important in geopolitics, but for most of history physical resources mattered more. Whoever had better farmland, healthier livestock, bigger armies, sturdier fortresses, better weapons, and faster ships prospered. Tangible assets generated trade, transformed societies, and won wars.

We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars.

In the past Terra had been racked by wars of religion, one fanatically held opinion opposed to another. There was no righteousness in such struggles, only fatal ends. The Reds had no right to this new knowledge—but neither did they. It must be locked against the meddling of fools and zealots.

Only influence there—prior to any actual decision to intervene—could prevent feckless civilians from committing the nation to wars or quasi-wars not to the military's own liking. In

Rebels in Darfur have learned the value of mobilizing western human rights groups to prolong wars, and this lesson is working gloriously for them.

Western governments have generally tried to contain genocide by appeasing its architects. But the sad record of the last century shows that the walls the United States tries to build around genocidal societies almost inevitably shatter.

No doubt Western civilization has in the past been full of wars and revolutions, and the national elements in our culture, even when they were ignored, always provided an unconscious driving force of passion and aggressive self-assertion.

As the old saw goes, the Irish songs are full of happy wars and unhappy lovers.

over the last 16 years, we have spent trillions of dollars on wars when we could have been investing that money productively.

And then, after publication of Bob Woodward's book Obama's Wars

He became aware that the doctrinal differences among Hinduism and Buddhism and Taoism are not anywhere near as important as doctrinal differences among Christianity and Islam and Judaism. Holy wars are not fought over them because verbalized statements about reality are never presumed to be reality itself.

During that long span of time, then, Jewish history would have to be written in other ways. It would become the story not of power, but of ideas and beliefs. And its most important turning points would not be the winning of wars or the building of monuments, but the writing of books.

She stopped, picked up the paper, stood there to read the headlines. But nothing seemed changed, or at least the paper made the current crises sound like all the old ones; the ferment of politics, the clash of minor foreign wars, the dismay over local crime seemed of a pattern she'd always known.

We know our land was here before we came and that it will be here long after we are gone. With our wine, we have survived wars, the Revolution and phylloxera. Each harvest renews promises made in the spring. We live with the continuing cycle. This gives us a taste of eternity.

Hubris is an incurable American disease. As incurable as the military-industrial machine that keeps coming up with the armaments that make wars seem like slam dunks, but which last for decades; wars that are fought by a very small percentage of the population and, regular effusive acknowledgement of veterans notwithstanding, can be ignored for years.

The U.S. government has in recent years fought what it termed wars against AIDS, drug abuse, poverty, illiteracy and terrorism. Each of these wars has budgets, legislation, offices, officials, letterhead—everything necessary in a bureaucracy to tell you something is real. —Bruce Jackson Keynote address "Media and War" symposium, University of Buffalo November 17–18, 2003

Republicans remained purely about small government until they started their unlawful and unnecessary wars. The first was Nixon's and later Reagan's and Bush's War on Drugs, and the second was George W. Bush's War on Terror. These wars enlarged government, increased spending, enhanced regulation, took away the rights of the American people, and were largely ineffective.