Quotes About War

Wo Hunger herrscht, ist auf die Dauer kein Friede." ("Where there is hunger, there cannot be lasting peace.) Speech before the United Nations General Assembly, September 26, 1973

While I worked at the laboratory, I went from being a Zionist to becoming a Communist. Although the word, "Communist" isn't the right word. I didn't actually become a member of the party until the beginning of the war; and left it shortly after the war. "Marxist" is a better word, because Marx's idea, that all people should work according to their abilities and receive according to their needs, is actually a good solution; I still think so.

1832: The Illinois militia effectively ended the Black Hawk War with the massacre of Black Hawk's tribe, including women, children, and old men.

In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity

In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.

Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonour. They chose dishonour. They will have war.

We will have no truce or parley with you [Hitler], or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst—and we will do our best.

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature.

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

When I warned [the French] that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their prime minister and his divided cabinet, "In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken." Some chicken; some neck.

I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.

This was their finest hour

We will have no truce or parlay with you Hitler, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst -- and we will do our best.

You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour, and you will have war.

Bubba then grabbed a hold of my leg and his eyes got all cloudy and that terrible pink sky seem to drain all the colour in his face. He was trying to say something, and so I bent over real close to hear what it was. But I never could make it out. So I asked the medic, ' You hear what he say?' And the medic say, 'Home. He said, home.' Bubba, he died, and that's all I got to say about that.

There was some people hurt far worst than I was in that hospital, let me tell you. Poor old boys with arms and legs and hands and who knows what else missing. Boys what had been shot in their stomach and chests and faces. At night the place sound like a torture chamber - them fellers be howling and crying and calling for their mamas.

After a while, they start landing some relief in helicopters, and I guess the napalm bomb have frightened away the gooks. They must of figured that if we was willing to do that to ourselves, then what the hell would we of done to them? They taking the wounded out of there, when along come Sergeant Kranz, hair all singed off, clothes burnt up, looking like he just got shot out of a cannon.

He unbutton his jacket an inside, on his shirt, is all his medals—Purple Heart, Silver Star—must of been ten or twelve of them. "They remind me of somethin," he said. "I'm not quite sure what—the war, of course, but that's jus a part of it. I have suffered a loss, Forrest, far greater than my legs. It's my spirit, my soul, if you will. There is only a blank there now—medals where my soul used to be.

Not that the title of top American ace wasn't flattering. After all, Rickenbacker had shot down seven enemy planes in as many months. It was just that all of the former recipients of the honor had all been killed, and he could not help but ruminate over what he called "the unavoidable doom that had overtaken its previous holders." Rickenbacker

After a trip to Japan Mitchell famously predicted that the next war would be fought in the Pacific after a Japanese sneak attack on a Sunday morning in Hawaii. Eddie Rickenbacker, who had served as Mitchell's driver before becoming an ace combat pilot, wryly quipped that "the only people who paid any attention to him were the Japanese." Most