Quotes About War

THE SUMMER OF 1863 marked a crucial transformation in the Union war effort—the organization and deployment of black regiments that would eventually amount to 180,000 soldiers, a substantial proportion of eligible black males.

Admiral Dahlgren's twenty-one-year-old son, Ulric, had lost a leg at Gettysburg. When he appeared at a Washington party, he was surrounded by pretty girls. They stayed by his side all night, refusing to dance, in tribute to the handsome colonel who had been known as an expert waltzer.

During the drive he was so gay, that I said to him, laughingly, 'Dear Husband, you almost startle me by your great cheerfulness,' he replied, 'and well I may feel so, Mary, I consider this day, the war, has come to a close—and then added, 'We must both, be more cheerful in the future—between the war & the loss of our darling Willie—we have both, been very miserable.' 

If ever there was a country unprepared for the war, it was the U.S. in 1940. And yet now, only four years later, the United States was clearly the most productive, most powerful country on the face of the earth.

The same magazines which not long before advertised products which would quickly allow women to return to their war work now extolled elaborate recipes which women could attempt if they stayed home and vacated jobs for men.

Find time and space in which to think. As Lincoln began to survey the darkening landscape of the war and consider a new strategy regarding slavery, he needed time to reflect upon both the constitutionality and the ramifications of issuing an emancipation order.

The worsening context of the war, which threatened the survival of the Union and the Constitution itself, provided a suitable resolution to this dilemma.

Lincoln had talked individually with each member of his cabinet. His views were not subject to change; emancipation, he was certain, was indispensable to victory in the war. While Chase considered graduated emancipation by the generals a safer course, he was now "fully" satisfied, he told the president, "that you have given to every proposition which has been made, a kind and candid consideration.

The author writes that key FDR aide Harry Hopkins was in such poor health near the end of his boss's second term that one observer said he didn't know how Hopkins could possibly report to the president. But, at the onset of war and genuine national emergency, Hopkins was animated with a new sense of purpose.

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders," Churchill observed in his memoirs, "but it may be doubted whether any mistake in history has equaled that of which Stalin and the Communist Chiefs were guilty when they . . . supinely awaited or were incapable of realizing, the fearful onslaught which impended upon Russia.

When the story of the war comes to be written," Harold Ickes testified at the hearings, "if it has to be written that it was lost, it may be because of the recalcitrance of ALCOA.

War...strengthened the position of the armament industries...to a point...that these industries dominated the economies and therefore the governments of all the participating nations...war barbarised and lowered the already very low level of accepted conduct.

Nothing is more powerful than this nihilism, an angry readiness to throw everything overboard, a willingness, a longing to become part of dissolution. This emotion is one of the strongest reasons why wars continue. And

themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable … in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

a family wanting no more than to live without challenge or drama could easily find a quiet street, and peace, provided they were fortunate enough to live in a comparatively sheltered and favoured geographical area, and provided they were able to make the mental adjustment to relegate war - and its consequences - into something that happened elsewhere and did not affect them; or something that had happened to them, but between such and such dates, and then taken itself off.

Is it being said too often how much we in the West have suffered because of the long wars between Islam and Christianity, leaving us biased and with gaps in our information? I think not.

It is only in love and in war that we escape from the sleep of necessity, the cage of ordinary life, to a state where every day is a high adventure, every moment falls sharp and clear like a snowflake drifting slowly past a dark glistening rock, or like a leaf spinning down to the forest floor.

In times of war, as everyone knows who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we re capable --- in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

It was a tragic and annihilating war, in which intellect fought naked with intellect, and the blows fell not upon the mind but upon the soul.

The war between England and Scotland was in its eighth year and there had been no raid for ten days: it had seemed possible to get married in peace.

I don't like this war. I don't like the cold-blooded scheming at the beginning and the carnage at the end and the grumbling and the jealousies and the pettishness in the middle. I hate the lack of gallantry and grace; the self-seeking; the destruction of valuable people and things. I believe in danger and endeavor as a form of tempering but I reject it if this is the only shape it can take.

There's some of them'll be nursing a guid scratch or two on their hinder-ends this night.… Man, it was a rout.' 'I imagine,' said Piero Strozzi, his dark face impassive, 'that my lord Grey's army would not relish their defeat either.' 'Oh, aye, the English,' said Buccleuch absently. 'We are, after all, at war with them and not with the Kerrs,' the Marshal said mildly.

Lymond is back." It was known soon after the Sea-Catte reached Scotland from Campvere with an illicit cargo and a man she should not have carried. "Lymond is in Scotland." It was said by busy men preparing for war against England, with contempt, with disgust; with a side-slipping look at one of their number. "I hear the Lord Culter's young brother is back." Only sometimes a woman's voice would say it with a different note, and then laugh a little.

I dislike untidy wars, as I dislike untidy peacemaking.