Quotes About History

In the long run all battles are lost, and so are all wars.

Things move very slowly in politics. We seem to fight the same wars over and over again.

I never believed in the danger of a third world war.

It had been a war of kingly poisons, in the air, in the memory, in the blood.

Again and again, Americans have voted for a president to keep them out of a war, only to see the "peace" candidate elected who then brings the nation into war.

Still from the sire the son shall hear Of the stern strife, and carnage drear, Of Flodden's fatal field, When shiver'd was fair Scotland's spear, And broken was her shield!

My grandfather for example only died twice, once during the war and once in the 1980s.

Most books, after all, are ephemeral; their specifics, several years later, inspire about as much interest as daily battle reports from the Hundred Years' War.

Sixty years ago this week Hitler invaded Poland. This led to the creation of The History Channel.

When you look at the beginning of the actual war, it's not hard to recognize that the Pakistanis were the ones to attack.

The Italian government, a free French newspaper tartly observed, never finished a war on the same side it started on – unless the war lasted long enough to change sides twice.

I actually collect old First and Second World War memorabilia.

I collect old first and second World War artifacts and things. I'm a little secret history nerd. I've been lucky enough to do quite a few war movies too so I've taken little things off each film.

Politicians, like generals, have a tendency to fight the last war.

There was an unbelievable amount of animosity in that war [for America Independence] which people have forgotten, which was still around 50 years later.

Reducing military presence has never in history won a war.

The Mexican War was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.

It's taken a lot of presidents to get us where we are today, a lot of deployments, a lot of wars, a lot engagements. You add them all up.

War is just what we do. Yet, of course, the effects of it are repeatedly deeper, then deeper, then deeper.

Man is, perhaps, no more prone to war than he used to be and no more inclined to commit other evil deeds. But a given amount of ill will or folly will go further than it used to.

We had the great good fortune and shortcomings of character that marked every generation that had never seen war.

It would seem that in history it's never a tooth for a tooth, but a thousand, a hundred thousand for one.

The achievement of nationhood is a product not only of time and circumstance but usually of war and suffering as well.

It's very unfortunate that war has always been and probably always will be a part of human beings on this planet. It's a terrible thing.