Quotes About War

Dean Rusk never beat his wife. He was a decent man. He was a liberal. He was head of the Ford Foundation. And as Secretary of State during the Vietnam war, he killed over a hundred thousand people in a useless, wasteful, unnecessary, stupid war. We would all be better off if he had found a better way to express his anger. His time is passing with the turn of the century.

When the next war comes—and it will (so history teaches us)—the burden of combat will not be carried by either strong women or weak men, although the sacrifice of the former will be warmly embraced by the best men.

and demanded ransom.22 Some angry Americans called for outright war. Others, such as President John Adams, thought the new nation was no match for the French. Fearing that public debate would fatally undermine the fledgling government, Adams sought to quell the discord by signing a set of four laws that became known as the Alien and Sedition Acts. These acts allowed the government to imprison and deport "dangerous" foreigners and made it a crime to criticize the government.23

Newark, New Jersey. The bad part. Almost a redundancy. Decay was the first word that came to mind. The buildings were more than falling apart - they actually seemed to be breaking down, melting from some sort of acid onslaught. Here urban renewal was about as familiar a concept as time travel. The surroundings looked more like a war newsreel - Frankfurt after the Allies' bombing - than a habitable dwelling.

Brecht was a cynical bohemian bogey of the middle classes, but also much more than a mere provocateur. He developed and dramatized his political knowledge in remarkable ways, and was an outspoken, radical opponent of the war, its nationalism and its capitalism

In war, truth is the first casualty. —AESCHYLUS

There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. —WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN

War is a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead. —ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Many of our countrymen came to hate the war we fought. Those who hated it the most—the professionally sensitive—were not, in the end, sensitive enough to differentiate between the war and the soldiers who had been ordered to fight it. They hated us as well, and we went to ground in the cross fire, as we had learned in the jungles.

We discovered in that depressing, hellish place, where death was our constant companion, that we loved each other. We killed for each other, we died for each other, and we wept for each other. And in time we came to love each other as brothers.

We Were Soldiers Once…and Young

this act is engraved in my mind deeper than any other experience in my two tours in Vietnam. A huge black enlisted man, clad only in shorts and boots, hands bigger than dinner plates, reached into my helicopter to pick up one of the dead white soldiers. He had tears streaming down his face and he tenderly cradled that dead soldier to his chest as he walked slowly from the aircraft to the medical station.

Dulce bellum inexpertis. ("War is delightful to those who have no experience of it.") —ERASMUS

Look at what the words start with W and E—meaning "WE." If the Army approved and supplied the pins, and you were my battalion and we were going to war, I would have every soldier wear a pin with the letters "WE," denoting "WE" as a family and "WE" as without equal. This is a war-winning theme that would not let us go down in any battle…ever!

Driver had his own rules of war, and he tried to teach them to me. You know, when you clean a weapon the first rule is always clear the chamber. Not Driver. His first rule was always check to make sure it's your weapon, so you don't end up cleaning somebody else's weapon.

We went to war because our country asked us to go, because our new president, Lyndon B. Johnson, ordered us to go, but more importantly because we saw it as our duty to go. That is one kind of love.

Those who hated it the most—the professionally sensitive—were not, in the end, sensitive enough to differentiate between the war and the soldiers who had been ordered to fight it.

James A. Mullartey from our 1st Platoon made it back to our lines. His story: The NVA had been shooting our wounded. One came up to him, stuck a pistol in his mouth, and fired. The bullet exited the back of his throat, knocked him out and they left him for dead. He survived and when he woke up at night he started crawling to us.

Then it came across the radio: Bravo Company had found one other survivor from our 2nd Platoon. He had been badly wounded in the legs and had propped himself up against a tree. He had been burned by napalm, waiting in the night, and some North Vietnamese had put a pistol to his eye and pulled the trigger. Shot him in the eye, blinded him, but he was still alive! I saw him being brought in on a stretcher, smoking a cigarette, all fucked up.

Mr. Avery said it was written on the Rosetta Stone that when children disobeyed their parents, smoked cigarettes and made war on each other, the seasons would change: Jem and I were burdened with the guilt of contributing to the aberrations of nature, thereby causing unhappiness to our neighbors and discomfort to ourselves.

Good God, girl!" shouted her uncle. "It was an army of individuals! They walked off their farms and walked to the War!

It seems quixotic today, with jet airplanes and overdoses of Nembutal, that a man would go through a war for something so insignificant as his state.

Jean Louise had a sinking feeling. The Hundred Years' War had progressed to approximately its twenty-sixth year with no indications of anything more than periods of uneasy truce.

I didn't go overseas, but I saw a lot of this country. I didn't have the itch to get back, so after the war I stayed away for ten years, but the longer I stayed away the more I missed Maycomb. I got to the point where I felt like I had to come back or die. You never get it out of your bones.