Quotes About War

Born in England during the First World War, of Belgian parents with partly German roots, I grew up in the cosmopolitan city of Antwerp, where I had the benefit of a classical education taught in the two national languages of Belgium: French and Dutch.

Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders this time?

She doesn't understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought in world war eleven.

The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism: a complex interplay of nation-state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism.

Everybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.

We're a nation of celebrity and hero worshipers, so much so that we make heroes out of those who aren't, such as John Wayne: a patriotic, red-blooded, two-fisted American who spent the Second World War in the trenches on the movie lots of Hollywood.

I can completely take a second World War gun apart and put it back together again thanks to 'Band Of Brothers.' That's always useful. I've got lots and lots of random skills I'll probably never need again.

What distinguished the First World War from all wars before it was the massive power of the antagonists.

Syria may appear to be a small country, but it is just the type of entangled conflict that can lead to a world catastrophe. It does not take much imagination to see Syria as the Sarajevo of the 21st century, leading to world war.

Warsaw's historic heart was deliberately almost entirely destroyed towards the end of the Second World War by the German occupying troops. After the war, it was painstakingly rebuilt and that reconstruction is perceived as expressing the nation's determination to survive, to conserve its history and its culture.

Economic, political and military intervention following the first world war is frequently blamed for current friction between east and west.

I didn't realise the depth of horror that happened in the Second World War every day.

The Second World War simplified things like race, and people came down on very clear lines.

The great leaders of the second world war alliance, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, understood the twin sides of destruction and salvation. Their war aims were not only to defeat fascism, but to create a world of shared prosperity.

I looked back on the roaring Twenties - with its jazz, 'Great Gatsby,' and the pre-Code films - as a party I had somehow managed to miss. After World War Two, I expected something similar, a return to the period after the first war, but when the skirt lengths went down instead of up, I knew we were in big trouble.

The First World War not only destroyed European civilisation and the empires at its heart; its aftermath led to a second conflagration, the Second World War, which divided the continent until the end of the century.

After the turmoil of the Second World War, my family ended up in Russian-occupied East Germany. When I attended fourth grade, I had to learn Russian as my first foreign language in school. I found this quite difficult because of the Cyrillic alphabet, but as time went on, I seemed to do all right.

Readers want to have the confidence that you understand the era in which the book is set, so for 'The Perfumer's Secret,' I needed to know everything about the First World War from a French perspective. I had to understand those people and that town in 1914.

During the Second World War, evacuated to non-Jewish households, I encountered Christianity at home and in school.

The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls.

Dad was in the First World War in the Royal Field Artillery from 1914 to 1918, as well as uncle Leonard.

At 11, I passed the scholarship - only just; I wasn't very good at maths - to Ilford County High for Girls. When the Second World War started we were evacuated, first of all to Ipswich, and then to Aberdare, Queen of the Valleys, in south Wales.

In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

I don't really think much about how I would have fared in the Second World War. It's a topic that has to be treated with respect and subtlety, and you can't just go in all guns blazing and make an epic action film.