Quotes About War

Mudd was the unknown soldier who had never had a chance, for that was the only thing anyone ever did know about all the unknown soldiers—they never had a chance. They had to be dead.

Joseph Heller

All over the world, boys on every side of the bomb line were laying down their lives for what they had been told was their country, and no one seemed to mind, least of all the boys who were laying down their young lives.

What is a country? A country is a piece of land surrounded on all sides by boundaries, usually unnatural. Englishmen are dying for England, Americans are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can't all be worth dying for.

In a democracy, the government is the people, Milo explained. We're people, aren't we? So we might just as well keep the money and eliminate the middleman. Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry. If we pay the government everything we owe it, we'll only be encouraging governmental control and discouraging other individuals from bombing their own men and planes. We'll be taking away their incentive.

Cum te simÈ›i, Yossarian? -Bine. Ba nu, sunt foarte speriat. -Asta-i bine, spuse maiorul Danby, dovedeÈ™te c? eÈ™ti înc? viu.

Suponho que não vão enviar um louco para a morte? – Então, quem iria?

and a great, choking moan tore from Yossarian's throat as McWatt turned again, dipped his wings once in salute, decided oh, well, what the hell, and flew into a mountain. Colonel

Would you like to see our country lose?' Major Major asked. 'We won't lose. We've got more men, more money and more material. There are ten million men in uniform who could replace me. Some people are getting killed and a lot more are making money and having fun. Let somebody else get killed.' 'But suppose everybody on our side felt that way.' 'Then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way. Wouldn't I?

Mrs. Daneeka, Doc Daneeka's wife, was not glad that Doc Daneeka was gone and split the peaceful Staten Island night with woeful shrieks of lamentation when she learned by War Department telegram that her husband had been killed in action. Women came to comfort her, and their husbands paid condolence calls and hoped inwardly that she would soon move to another neighborhood and spare them the obligation of continuous sympathy.

In a way the C.I.D. man was pretty lucky, because outside the hospital the war was still going on. Men went mad and were rewarded with medals.

For war there is always enough. It's peace that's too expensive.

To be sure, the Dickinson Draft has always been a tortured document that leaned toward a state-majority confederation. And it was always clear that the vast majority of Americans did not regard the war for Independence as a movement for American nationhood, to the extent they gave the matter any thought at all.

In the summer of 1776, the average British soldier was 28 years old with seven years experience in the Army. The average American soldier was 20 and had known military life for only six months.

William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, the acknowledged architect of the British victory in the French and Indian War, rose to condemn the decision to militarize the conflict. He recommended the withdrawal from Boston of all British troops, who could only serve as incendiaries for a provocative incident that triggered a war.

Pitt and Burke were two of the most eloquent and respected members of Parliament, and taken together, by early 1775, they were warning the British ministry that it was headed toward a war that was unwise, unnecessary, and probably unwinnable.

even before the war began to provide him with material, Peale had brandished his brush as a weapon and used it with considerably greater skill than he ever used his musket. In his autobiography he called himself a "zealous advocate for the Liberties of his Country" since the time when "Great Britain first attempted to lay a tax on America." 38 This was bragging, but it was also true;

In the late spring of 1781 word arrived in Philadelphia of some grand European conclave, led by France, Russia and Austria, that purportedly intended to put an end to the war and impose a peace based on the current state of forces.

He was a literate but not a well-read man. Adams had gone to Harvard, Jefferson to William and Mary, but Washington had gone to war, meaning that his education possessed a more primal quality that aligned itself nicely with his commanding physical presence.

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

You do not want a war. You have known violence, you have suffered loss, but you have seen nothing of war. War is not just the business of death; it is the anti-thesis of life. Hope, tortured and flayed, reason, dismembered, grinning at its limbs in its lap. Decency, raped to death... You will be a murderer and more.

War is not just the business of death, it is the antitheses of life.

I grow tired of the heartache Of every small and large war Passed from generation To generation. But it is not in me to give up. I was taught to give honor to the house of the warriors Which cannot exist without the house of the peacemakers.

We tried to pretend war wasn't going to happen. Though they began building their houses all around us and demanding more. They started teaching our children their god's story, A story in which we'd always be slaves.