Quotes About War

Thus the war was a struggle between two conflicting capitalist systems—one reactionary, based on slave labor, and fearful of change; the other progressive, competitive, innovative, and democratic.

The Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz had defined war as the pursuit of political goals by other means. Confederate strategy in 1864 certainly conformed to this definition. If southern armies could hold out until the election, war weariness in the North might cause the voters to elect a Peace Democrat who would negotiate Confederate independence.

The principal form of property in the South was, of course, slave property. Southern states had seceded because they feared that the Lincoln administration would interfere with the institution—despite the president's repeated assertions, well into the war, that he had neither the intention nor the power to do so.

We cannot change the hearts of those people of the South, but we can make war so terrible . . . [and] make them so sick of war that generations would pass away before they would again appeal to it."5

The Civil War started out as one kind of conflict and ended as something quite different.

Governor Beriah Magoffin

He had been willing to risk war rather than let the nation perish.

It began to appear that something larger than a lady's thimble might be needed to hold the blood shed in this war.

James M. McPherson

Politics seemed to have fallen to a new wartime low of spite and pettiness.

The means of defence against foreign danger have been always the instruments of tyranny at home. Among the Romans it was a standing maxim to excite a war, whenever a revolt was apprehended. Throughout all Europe, the armies kept up under the pretext of defending, have enslaved the people.

The Star-Spangled Banner,'" she scoffed. "I never did like that old lying, lollygagging, hypocritical, warring-ass drinking song. With the bombs bursting in air and so forth.

Everybody got God on their side in war. Problem is, God ain't tellin' nobody who He's for.

that Old Man kept writing letters and squawking and hollering 'bout slavery, sounding off like the devil to every newspaper in America that would listen, and they was listening, for them insurrections scared the devil out the white man. It set the table for the war that was to come, is what it did, for nothing scared the South more than the idea of niggers running 'round with guns and wanting to be free.

Anytime he said something about the will of God, it meant he weren't going to cooperate or do nothing but as he saw fit. He had no intentions of leaving Kansas Territory or turning himself in or paying attention to what any white soldier told him. He would tell a fib in a minute to help his cause. He was like everybody in war. He believed God was on his side. Everybody got God on their side in a war. Problem is, God ain't tellin' nobody who He's for.

Family love: It is firm footing, something to cling to in a frightened world that seems to spin out of control with war, turmoil, terrorism, and uncertainty. It is our highest calling and our greatest nobility.

This was not a just war after all—it was just a war: yet another exercise in consecrated barbarity and sanctified slaughter.

War presents itself as necessary for self-protection, when in fact it is necessary for self-identification.

I had a question. 'Why does the name Pearl Harbor sound so familiar?' The lieutenant colonel's eyes narrowed. 'Pearl Harbor is the most famous U.S. military base in the world,' he said crisply. 'It's the only place on U.S. soil that has been attacked in a wars, since the Revolutionary War.' None of this was ringing a bell, but you already know I'm totally uneducated. Gazzy leaned over to whisper, 'It was a movie with Ben Affleck.' Ah. Now I remembered.

Why is this happening? Who knows, really? Life and existence can never be fully understood. Stars are born only to explode. Creatures hunt other creatures, and then they die. The universe is a chaos of irrational forces wrestling with one another in a war without end. The human race is on the receiving end now.

When it comes to war, if you're going to pick up a gun, you cannot have an imbalance of commitment. You have to be ready to go, ready to fight, and ready to die.

The enemies we cannot kill, we must caress, and deception is the art of war, I remembered

The Vietnam vets? They got screwed, too. So did the ones who fought in Desert Storm. And now it's happening all over again for the soldiers who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. When is this going to stop? When are they going to fulfill their promises?

As Frederick the Great said, diplomacy without arms is like music without instruments. As the president found her seat in the