Quotes About War

A king or despot can maintain his power if he is astute in internal politics and successful externally. If he is quasi-divine, his dynasty may be prolonged indefinitely. But the growth of civilisation puts an end to belief in his divinity; defeat in war is not always avoidable; and political astuteness cannot be an invariable attribute of monarchs. Therefore sooner or later, if there is no external conquest, there is revolution, and the monarchy is either abolished or shorn of its power.

Santayana....reasoned that the young men who were being killed in the war would die anyhow sooner or later, and would be good for nothing while they lived.

To discover a system for the avoidance of war is a vital need of our civilization; but no such system has a chance while men are so unhappy that mutual extermination seems to them less dreadful than continued endurance of the light of day.

Whenever there is acute danger, the impulse of most people is to seek out Authority and submit to it; at such moments, few would dream of revolution. When war breaks out, people have similar feelings towards the Government.

The empires of Attila and Genghis Khan were transitory; and the nations of Europe lost most of their possessions in the New World. But with modern technique most empires are fairly safe except against external attack, and revolution is only to be expected after defeat in war.

Descubrir un sistema para evitar la guerra es una necesidad vital para nuestra civilización, pero ningún sidtema tiene posibilidades de funcionar mientras los hombres sean tan desdichados que el exterminio mutuo les parezca menos terrible que afrontar continuamente la luz del día.

The first of these rules out the Inquisition; the second rules out such methods as those of British war propaganda, which Hitler praises on the ground that propaganda "must sink its mental elevation deeper in proportion to the numbers of the mass whom it has to grip".

WAR AS AN INSTITUTION In spite of the fact that most nations at most times, are at peace, war is one of the permanent institutions of all free communities, just as Parliament is one of our permanent institutions in spite of the fact that it is not always sitting. It is war as a permanent institution that I wish to consider: why men tolerate it; why they ought not to tolerate it; what hope there is of their coming not to tolerate it; and how they could abolish it if they wished to do so.

The old primitive passions, which civilization has denied, surge up all the stronger for repression. In a moment imagination and instinct travel back through the centuries, and the wild man of the woods emerges from the mental prison in which he has been confined. This is the deeper part of the psychology of the war fever.

A great many of the impulses which now lead nations to go to war are in themselves essential to any vigorous or progressive life. Without imagination and love of adventure a society soon becomes stagnant and begins to decay. Conflict, provided it is not destructive and brutal, is necessary in order to stimulate men's activities, and to secure the victory of what is living over what is dead or merely traditional.

Democracy, as a form of government, has the advantage of making everybody a participant in war... This is one of the strongest reasons for expecting democracy to survive.

the broad rule is that it is easier now than in former days to exert power at a distance from the centre. The effect of this is to increase the intensity of competition between States, and to make victory more absolute, since the resulting increase of size need not impair efficiency. A World State is now a technical possibility, and might be established by a victor in some really serious world-war, or, more probably, by the most powerful of the neutrals.

The days that marked the war went on like the ticking of a clock that had no face and showed no time.

Benghazi sprawls in the path of war. Mars kicks the little city to earth and it rises again, stubbornly, and is reduced again, but not for long. It is a small city with a soul — a grubby soul, perhaps, but cities with souls seldom die.

The sun stood still and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on its enemies. Joshua 10:13

I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind. Romans 7:23

Could you imagine if the U.N. had endorsed the war in Iraq, what our reputation would be like?

When the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were growing up, that was at it's height and the War cemented that with photographs of the Royal Family having breakfast together and so on, by pinning their reputation so firmly on that particular issue.

One of the problems we currently have is there hasn't been in the population any serious engagement with the ethics of war because we have an all-volunteer army. I would think the return to the draft would be an intervention that would require discussion that might be more helpful in terms of our ability to limit war.

I think it is a mistake to focus - as we most often do - only on the sacrifice of life that war requires. War also requires that we sacrifice our normal unwillingness to kill.

I was there when they shut down the Pentagon; I've been going on protest marches my whole life... And now, this fight against controlling and policing women's bodies feels like a war.

As America prepared for war in 1941, discrimination largely shut black Americans out of job opportunities in the growing defense industry.

We're at economic war with China. It's in all their literature. They're not shy about saying what they're doing.

My father did not have a lot of security in his life. He did odd jobs. He had a real struggle to make money. He lost a lot of time in his 20s, after the war, because he was sent to a forced-labour camp in Siberia.