Quotes About War

I do not know whether this man is a traitor or not, but he is an individualist, and in war the two are the same.

Thomas, first Baron Wharton of Wharton, sat in his chair. "Boy," he said. "Listen to me, and learn the first lesson of man, the political animal. When you wage war, you wage it for ever. When war is over, it has never existed...

Boy,' he said. 'Listen to me, and learn the first lesson of man, the political animal. When you wage war, you wage it for ever. When war is over, it has never existed. There is a truce, and there will shortly be a peace between England and Scotland. Crawford of Lymond is the Queen's friend, and my friend, and your friend.

Warfare and trickery. It is your natural element.

War had given Francis his respite, and success had brought him his final reward: the freedom he wished from his marriage. The licence, if he desired it, to go back to Russia. The knowledge, one supposed, that, severed from Philippa, he could allow the past to lie in peace, and cease troubling him.

Meanwhile, battles are fought not by knights, as you well know, but by mercenaries. They are employed, as mastiffs are employed in the boar season, and victory goes to the deepest purse, while the people suffer the cost of them. That is war without pride ruled by chivalry, as the Master of Game rules the hunting field.

What I cannot control is the stupid man, launched upon a war which is against his material interests. And there is no scavenger of the air, or beast of the earth, or ooze of the sea which will offend nature like two such, opposed to one another.

People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the world lasts.

When the laws regulating human society are so formed as to come into collision with the nature of things, and in particular with the fundamental realities of human nature, they will end by producing an impossible situation which, unless the laws are altered, will issue in such catastrophes as war, pestilence and famine. Catastrophes thus caused are the execution of universal law upon arbitrary enactments which contravene the facts; they are thus properly called by theologians, judgments of God.

The cheery quality of Ford's voice was beginning to grate on the barman's ears. It sounded like someone relentlessly playing the kazoo during one of the more somber passages of a war requiem.

The mail lets fall a Xerox of something written by a man aged 27, a hostage, tortured in prison: My genitals have been the object of such a sadistic display they keep me constantly awake with the pain... Do whatever you can to survive. You know, I think that men love wars... And my incurable anger, my unbendable wounds break open further with ears, I am crying helplessly, and they still control the world, and you are not in my arms.

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure.

Where are my many promised gifts and spoils of war? Where are my bold and silver cups?

Ares ever loves to pluck all the fairest flower of an armed host.

She [Helen] brought to Ilium her dowry, destruction.

In war, truth is the first casualty.

In war, the first casualty is truth.

To be well prepared for war is the best guarantee of peace.

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

But one thing is certain, he is the master criminal of this age. He controls a marvellous organization. Most of the Peace propaganda during the war was originated and financed by him.

What a queer topsy turvy world it was. It used to be the man who went to the wars, the woman who stayed at home. But here the positions were reversed.

Was that really and truly what people were secretly feeling everywhere? Was that what, ultimately, war did to you? It was not the physical dangers—the mines at sea, the bombs from the air, the crisp ping of a rifle bullet as you drove over a desert track. No, it was the spiritual danger of learning how much easier life was if you ceased to think…

Horrible house! Iris shivered. She hated it. A gracious well-built house, harmoniously furnished and decorated (Ruth Lessing was never at fault!). And curiously, frighteningly vacant. They didn't live there. They occupied it. As soldiers, in a war, occupied some lookout post.

Poirot did not enter into a controversy. He had already learnt that every single individual had a different version of the theme "What did we fight the war for?