Quotes About War

It is true we have won all our wars, but we have paid for them. We don't want victories anymore.

At sixteen I get drafted. When I read the draft notice, I cry. Not because I'm a coward - I'm not afraid of anyone. But I don't want to kill or be killed.

In America, we want a peaceful planet. We want people to be able to enjoy their lives and know they're going to have a bright and prosperous future, not be at war. That's our purpose.

Their foreign policy is so disjointed, confusing, and chaotic that, really, people need to reexamine those who want to be involved in every war.

I think the most important part of this now is, let's say the American people, but the polls show that the majority now don't want a war, anywhere, not only against Syria.

'Peace' is when nobody's shooting. A 'just peace' is when our side gets what it wants.

I think you got to keep in mind that Obama was raised among Muslims, and I think he really does not want to use the word war on terror because he was raised in that community.

When I'm describing wartime activities or violence I don't want to be too ornate, to prettify the picture. Once we trace them to the present, the prose becomes denser.

Since we became Buddhist, we have lived in peace with them. We did not invade them. We did not want them to invade us. We have never declared war on China.

No one really wants to send their kids off to die for oil.

Military commanders do not want to be tried for war crimes, even if those crimes are committed online.

They are a generation that has tasted blood, and where horror fades, nostalgia seeps in. In war all is simple, and there is appeal in this. Who among us is comforted by confusion, uncertainty?

Peace is the time of waiting for war. A time of preparation, or a time of wilful ignorance, blind, blinkered and prattling behind secure walls.

It was the last time I stood beside my brother, the last time he held my flank and I his. For a time, then . . .'and his voice fell away, 'we were happy.' Though Torrent knew nothing of these Wars of Shadow, nor the other players involved, he could not but hear the sorrow in Ruin's voice, and it stung him deep inside. Fucking regrets.

When we war against nature, we war against ourselves. There is no distinction, no dividing line, no enemy. We devour everything in a lust for self-destruction. As if that is intelligence's only gift.

He spoke to say, 'You cannot war against the man you were, And I cannot slay the man I shall one day become, Our enemy is expectation flung backward and fore, The memories you choose and the tracks I would run. Slayer of dreams, sower of regrets, all that we are.' Soldier at the End of his Days   (fragment) Des'Ban of Nemil

Pochyleni w wysokich siodÅ'ach swych quorlów Czarni Moranthowie lÅ›nili niczym Å›liskie od krwi diamenty w karmazynowym blasku cienkiej jak miecz smugi jutrzenki.

A civilization at war chooses only the most obvious enemy, and often also the one perceived, at first, to be the most easily defeatable. But that enemy is not the true enemy, nor is it the gravest threat to that civilization. Thus, a civilization at war often chooses the wrong enemy.

And so we weep for the fallen. We weep for those yet to fall, and in war the screams are loud and harsh and in peace the wail is so drawn-out we tell ourselves we hear nothing.

Only two kinds of people die in battle, Fiddler had once said, fools and the unlucky.

This is not war. This is…what? Errant save us, I have no answer, no way to describe the magnitude of this slaughter. It is mindless. Blasphemous. As if we have forgotten dignity. Theirs, our own. The word itself. No distinction between innocence and guilt, condemned by mere existence.

Language was war, vaster than any host of swords, spears and sorcery. The self waging battle against everyone else. Borders enacted, defended, sallies and breaches, fields of corpses rotting like tumbled fruit. Words ever seeking allies, ever seeking iconic verisimilitude in the heaving press.

War needs no gods, only mortal contestants, two enemies and whatever reasons they invent in order to justify killing each other.

Serious people never stopped waging their war on joy and pleasure, and they were both relentless and tireless.