Quotes About War

Confirmands today are like young soldiers marching to war, the war of Jesus Christ against the gods of this world. It is a war that demands the commitment of one's whole life. Is not God, our Lord, worthy of this struggle? —DIETRICH BONHOEFFER

Christianity—and that is its greatest merit—has somewhat mitigated that brutal German love of war, but it could not destroy it. Should that subduing talisman, the cross, be shattered, the frenzied madness of the ancient warriors, that insane Berserk rage of which Nordic bards have spoken and sung so often, will once more burst into flame.

In one conversation that September in Geneva, Visser 't Hooft asked Bonhoeffer what he prayed for. "If you want to know the truth," Bonhoeffer replied, "I pray for the defeat of my nation. For I believe that is the only way to pay for all the suffering which my country has caused in the world.

Death tends to change people's focus and priorities—at least for a time. After the war deaths of several Bonhoeffer cousins, the younger members of the family would often lie in bed at night and talk about death and eternity. Do you spend much time thinking about eternity? Should a person concentrate on life after death, or is it better to keep one's focus solely on this life and what can be accomplished now?

This was one of the casualties of war, that trust itself seemed to die a thousand deaths.

War…next to love, has most captured the world's imagination" – Eric Partridge, famous lexicographer and author who served in the Australian Imperial Force during WWI

They will act in the name of a God they cannot hear, a God from whom they are more and more distant, and the result will be war, massacre, genocide, torture. In other words, the four faces of evil.

This system of chain wars can end only in two ways: either it will result in horrible physical destructions and concomitant revolutionary changes of social order beyond reasonable guesses; or, with the natural change of generations, it will lead to the abandoning of Gnostic dreaming before the worst has happened.

Za II. sv?tové války docházelo ke zlo?in?m, které nem?že pomstít žádná odveta, unést žádná láska, prominou žádné p?átelství a potrestat žádný zákon. Takové zlo?iny nelze proml?et.

But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony--Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

How senseless is everything that can ever be written, done, or thought, when such things are possible. It must be all lies and of no account when the culture of a thousand years could not prevent this stream of blood being poured out, these torture-chambers in their hundreds of thousands. A hospital alone shows what war is.

He fell in October 1918, on a day that was so quiet and still on the whole front, that the army report confined itself to the single sentence: All quiet on the Western Front. He had fallen forward and lay on the earth as though sleeping. Turning him over one saw that he could not have suffered long; his face had an expression of calm, as though almost glad the end had come.

Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony—Forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy?

We were eighteen and had begun to love life and the world; and we had to shoot it to pieces. The first bomb, the first explosion, burst in our hearts. We are cut off from activity, from striving, from progress. We believe in such things no longer, we believe in the war." - All Quiet On The Western Front, Ch. 5

But one of the facts we are always coming up against in our psychic experience is that growth takes place by fits and starts. There are retentions and blockages of libido which have to be breached by a new phase of development. Always the "old system" hangs on until the opposing forces are strong enough to overcome it. Here, too, "war is the father of all things.

I think the Peace Corps is a fine thing, don't you?" he said. "Well," I replied, "it's certainly better than War Corps.

Who understands war: the solders? the homeless ones? Mussolini? Or the leaders of the English and the Americans? No, nobody understands war, they only think they do. Maybe the earth that drinks up the blood understands it and says: "How foolish is man. Of all the animals that lives upon me, he is the cleverest and the most foolish.

Journeys of love can be stunning and desperately exhausting. Love implies hope, but numerous are the impediments and the road may be covered with shipwrecking obstacles, since love is mystery, doubt, fear, pain and sometimes war or hell. ( " Those journeys of love" - "Cape of good Hope " )

Generals, on the average, are far less bellicose than journalists or patriotic housewives: They know the horrors of a war and they dislike any break in the routine

Modifying Clausewitz' aphorism—war is the continuation of diplomacy by other means—one could say that in ideologically divided countries civil war is but the continuation of parliamentarism with other means.

If Gray Wing thinks he's going to take us by surprise, then he can think again! We'll be ready. He halted and stared between the trees. Beyond, the moor rose like a spine arching against the setting sun. You want battle? He pictured Gray Wing training his cats to fight. I'll give you war.

Before all is peacefull, blood will spill blood, and the lake will run red

Few Bibles were printed in the South before the war and the Confederate Bible Society had great difficulty in obtaining Testaments. Most of the Northern societies took the view that scriptures were contraband and stopped making their publications available for Southern distribution.