Quotes About War

WW2 films on the history channel show the desperate courage of the men and women who fought the battles. What a painful contrast with the cheap cowardice of the politicians who got them into such a mess in the first place.

When war is not just it is subsequently justified; so it becomes many things. In reality, an unjust war is merely piracy. It consists of piracy, ego and, more than anything, money. War is our century's prostitution.

The sense of national emergency engendered by war transforms the destruction of dissident opinion into patriotism.

In times of peace and prosperity cities and individuals alike follow higher standards, because they are not forced into a situation where they have to do what they do not want to do. But war is a stern teacher; in depriving them of the power of easily satisfying their daily wants, it brings most people's minds down to the level of their actual circumstances.

The longer a war lasts, the more things tend to depend on accidents. Neither you nor we can see into them: We have to abide their outcome in the dark.

when people are entering upon a war they do things the wrong way round. Action comes first, and it is only when they have already suffered that they begin to think.

Difficulty of subsistence made the invaders reduce the numbers of the army to a point at which it might live on the country during the prosecution of the war.

Yet we know that in war fortune sometimes makes the odds more level than could be expected from the difference in numbers of the two sides. And if we surrender, then all our hope is lost at once, whereas, so long as we remain in action, there is still a hope that we may yet stand upright.

war is a matter not so much of arms as of money

The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.

Thus spoke the Lacedaemonians, thinking that the Athenians, who had formerly been desirous of making terms with them, and had only been prevented by their refusal, would now, when peace was offered to them, joyfully agree and would restore their men. But the Athenians reflected that, since they had the Lacedaemonians shut up in the island, it was at any time in their power to make peace, and they wanted more.

the Locrians had already agreed with him to enter into a treaty with the Athenians. At the general reconciliation of the Sicilians, they alone of the allies had not made peace with Athens. And they would have continued to hold out had they not been constrained by a war with the Itoneans and Melaeans, who were their neighbours and colonists from their city.

Once you come forward in the role of liberators, you will find that your strength in the war is enormously increased. -p201

It was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in Sparta that made war inevitable.

they will neither become over-confident because of their successes in war, nor, because of the charms and blessings of peace, will they put up the acts of aggression. -p104

beginning at the moment that it broke out

would be a great war and more worthy of relation than any that had preceded it.

had almost said of mankind.

But here, as on so many other occasions, the Lacedaemonians proved the most convenient people in the world for the Athenians to be at war with.

THE HISTORY OF THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR

By Thucydides 431 BC

150 miles outside Baghdad and began shooting children. By his own account, he 'saw that children were in the room kneeling down. I

They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die. Grief, terror, love, longing--these were intangibles, but the intangibles had their own mass and specific gravity, they had tangible weight. They carried shameful memories. They carried the common secret of cowardice.... Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to.

Certain blood was being shed for uncertain reasons.