Quotes About War

Let him who will not proffer'd peace receive, Be sated with the plagues which war can give: And well thy hatred of the peace is known, If now thy soul reject the friendship shown. Hoole's Tasso.

When you are old you can look back and see yourself when you are young. It is almost like looking down from heaven. And you see yourself as a young woman, just a big girl really, half awake to the world. You see yourself happy, holding in your arms a good, decent, gentle, beloved young man with the blood keen in his veins, who before long is going to disappear, just disappear, into a storm of hate and flying metal and fire. And you just don't know it.

From the union of power and money, from the union of power and secrecy, from the union of government and science, from the union of government and art, from the union of science and money, from the union of ambition and ignorance, from the union of genius and war, from the union of outer space and inner vacuity, the Mad Farmer walks quietly away.

How would you describe the difference between modern war and modern industry—between, say, bombing and strip mining, or between chemical warfare and chemical manufacturing? The difference seems to be only that in war the victimization of humans is directly intentional and in industry it is "accepted" as a "trade-off.

Jesus' military career has never compelled my belief.

This new war, like the previous one, would be a test of the power of machines against people and places; whatever its causes and justifications, it would make the world worse. This was true of that new war, and it has been true of every new war since... I knew too that this new war was not even new but was only the old one come again. And what caused it? It was caused, I thought, by people failing to love one another, failing to love their enemies.

The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful.

In Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy, the wizard Saruman turns from wisdom to rapacity in his taste for power. He rips out the ancient trees and flattens the land to make room for the industries of war. The lesson is simple: All technology, along with its blessings, also carries a temptation—an appetite for control, a willingness to flatten the world (if needed) to make space for the human will. And

The Sorrow and the Pity,

eight hundred small boats had loaded 338,000 men into larger ships during the legendary evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk, including 500 French officers and 18,000 French sailors, to prevent them from being captured or killed by the Germans.

all but 50 of these officers and 200 of these sailors will return home to occupied France, rather than stay in Britain to fight the Germans. "Their idea was to get out of the war

recalled Sir Edward Spears, the wartime liaison between Churchill and de Gaulle. "We had 15,000 French sailors at Liverpool. I went to speak to them. I tried to persuade them to continue the fighting. Impossible …

if the French army was defeated, it was impossible to imagine that the English would survive.

right from the start most German generals knew that Hitler was psychotic. But as long as he was winning the war, almost all of them were happy to overlook that detail

Obama doesn't like this terror war. He particularly dislikes its unfortunate religious coloration, which is why "Islamist" is banished from his lexicon. But soothing words, soothing speeches in various Muslim capitals, soothing policies—"open hand," "mutual respect"—have yielded nothing. The war remains. Indeed, under his watch, it has spread. And as commander in chief he must defend the nation.

And who is the hero of that story? Who slew the dragon [totalitarianism]? Yes, it was the ordinary man, the taxpayer, the grunt who fought and won the wars. Yes, it was America and its allies. Yes, it was the great leaders: FDR, de Gaulle, Adenauer, Truman, John Paul II, Thatcher, Reagan. But above all, victory required one man without whom the fight would have been lost at the beginning. It required Winston Churchill.

Take away Churchill in 1940...Nazism would have prevailed. Hitler would have achieved what no other tyrant, not even Napoleon, had ever achieved: mastery of Europe. Civilization would have descended into a darkness the likes of which it had never known.

Terror attacks are now 'man-caused disasters.' And the 'global war on terror' is no more. It is an 'overseas contingency operation.' Nidal Hassan proudly tells a military court that he, a soldier of Allah, killed 13 American soldiers in the name of jihad. but the massacre remains officially classified as an act not of terrorism but of 'workplace violence.

John] Adams saw clearly that politics is the indispensable foundation for things elegant and beautiful. First and above all else, you must secure life, liberty and the right to pursue your own happiness. That's politics done right, hard-earned, often by war.

International law is useful in regulating fishery rights off Newfoundland but they have nothing to say about matters of war and peace, particularly between civilized states and terrorist states.

only Churchill carries that absolutely required criterion: indispensability. Without Churchill the world today would be unrecognizable--dark, impoverished, tortured.

Speculations and loans in foreign fields are likely to bring us into war... The war-for-profit group has counterfeited patriotism.

Well, I know about loneliness. I won't talk about it, but I was very lonely after the war. I know what it feels like to spend a whole weekend all by yourself and no one wants you at all.

I know this: that in your own hearts and your own souls, you are as much responsible for the Vietnam War as I am for killing these people.