Quotes About War

Toys and fooleries at home, wars abroad: sometimes terror, sometimes torpor, or stupid sloth: this is thy daily slavery.

By my twenty-second birthday, you know, I had killed eight men. Eight that I was certain of, eight that I could plainly count. That information was stuffed deep within my gut, and if anyone ever asked if I killed someone during the war, particularly if a child ever asked, I vowed I'd shake my head no, that information was never coming out.--SHIFTY'S WAR

My thoughts always go back to the parents – here's their kid who wouldn't be coming back. I got this feeling all the way through. It didn't matter if I saw a dead American or German, I always figured he belonged to somebody. You knew somebody was going to miss him. - Forrest Guth

For us in Easy Company, a new hope stirred. It wasn't a carefree hope, one that fills a man with energy. But an undeclared hope that drives a man to caution. It's when you sense you might actually come through this thing alive.

Liebgott stuck the Luger between the mayor's eyes and pulled the trigger. The Luger misfired. Right when it clicked, this German went off running down the road. Speirs said, 'Shoot him.' One of our men shot and missed. I shot about thirty feet over the mayor's head. Another man brought him down. I won't say who. --Don Bond

One of the five new replacements went right on guard duty. He was hit in the neck within forty-five minutes. I don't know if he lived, but he never did come back. His war was pretty short. - Don Bond

The terrible truth is that our world has never established peace through victory. Victory establishes not peace, but lull. Thereafter, violence returns once again, and always worse than before. And it is that escalator violence that then endangers our world.

Those wars are unjust which are undertaken without provocation. For only a war waged for revenge or defense can be just.

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

The result of the British war is a source of anxiety. For it is ascertained that the approaches to the island are protected by astonishing masses of cliff. Moreover, it is now known that there isn't a pennyweight of silver in that island, nor any hope of booty except from slaves, among whom I don't[Pg 283] suppose you can expect any instructed in literature or music.

A good country does not begin a war except to defend its honor or to protect itself. ... Wars are unjust if they are undertaken without cause. Only a war waged in retaliation or defense can be considered just. ... No war is honorable unless it is announced and declared or it is for the recovery of property.

U sjeni stabala, Liesel je promatrala dje?aka. Kako li su se stvari promijenile: od kradljivca vo?a do davatelja kruha. Njegova plava kosa, iako je tamnila, bila je poput svije?e. ?ula je kako mu kruli u želucu - a davao je ljudima kruh. Je li to bila Njema?ka? Je li to bila nacisti?ka Njema?ka?

In the sex-war thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male, vindictiveness of the female. —CYRIL CONNOLLY

It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.

Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge.

Why is war so much like a practical joke? she thinks. Hiding behind bushes, leaping out, with not much difference between Boo! and Bang! except the blood.

The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later.

The trouble some people have being German, I thought, I have being human. In a way it was stupid to be more disturbed by a dead bird than by those other things, the wars and riots and the massacres in the newspapers. But for the wars and riots there was always an explanation, people wrote books about them saying why they happened: the death of the heron was causeless, undiluted.

Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake's view. Next they'd be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war.

My mother took the train to Halifax to see my father off. It was crammed with men en route to the Front; she could not get a sleeper, so she travelled sitting up. There were feet in the aisles, and bundles, and spittoons; coughing, snoring - drunken snoring, no doubt. As she looked at the boyish faces around her, the war became real to her, not as an idea but as a physical presence.

For every year of peace there have been four hundred years of war.

Actually, they took turns trying to avoid being the victims. That's the whole point about war!

Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we're in trouble. Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake's view. Next they'd be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war. Snowman longs to question them—who first had the idea of making a reasonable facsimile of him, of Snowman, out of a jar lid and a mop? But that will have to wait.

Watch out for art, Crake used to say. As soon as they start doing art, we're in trouble. Symbolic thinking of any kind would signal downfall, in Crake's view. Next they'd be inventing idols, and funerals, and grave goods, and the afterlife, and sin, and Linear B, and kings, and then slavery and war.