Quotes About War

The reason I survived when others died is my business. War is rarely tidy, never clean. We all know that.

Patrick O'Brian

Patrick O'Brian

On and on she sailed, in warmer seas but void, as though they alone had survived Deucalion's flood; as though all land had vanished from the earth; and once again the ship's routine dislocated time and temporal reality so that this progress was an endless dream, even a circular dream, contained within an unbroken horizon and punctuated only by the sound of guns thundering daily in preparation for an enemy whose real existence it was impossible to conceive.

Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel amongst the bridge players and swillers of easy-come-by whisky. My chest got me out of active service and into guilt, as I wrote two, or is it three of the novels for which I am now acclaimed.

He knew it was necessary to drive the French out, but he had always imagined that this would be done gloriously, with thousands of men on horseback flashing their swords and calling upon Allah to aid them in their holy mission ... It was hard to see any connection between the splendid war of liberation and all this whispering and frowning.

At the root of all war is fear: not so much the fear men have of one another as the fear they have of everything," Merton declared.

Empathy doesn't necessarily mean being self-sacrificing. Far from it. Understanding how someone else sees things doesn't imply that you'll act in his interest; in some situations — in war, for example — you want to do exactly the opposite.

FDR misjudgment, one frequently ignored by historians: the president's refusal to concede Soviet culpability in the Katyn Wood massacre, one of the worst war crimes of the twentieth century.

Above all, he took America to war on false pretenses, and hundreds of thousands died as a result. Seeing voters reward that vileness was not a happy thing.

In a story on the U.S.-brokered security pact between the government of Sudan and southern rebel groups, the New York Times referred to the war in Sudan as a pet cause of many American religious conservatives. It is hard to imagine the Times describing the plight of Soviet Jewry as a pet cause of American Jews, or opposition to apartheid as a pet cause of African-Americans.

There were hundreds of worlds like it, most of them littered with the usual Elder Culture ruins, the usual secrets waiting to be unlocked. This one had been colonised by an atechnic cult sixty years ago. Maybe they were living the life of pastoral utopianism they'd planned; maybe they had descended into savagery and were roasting and eating prisoners of war captured in tribal wars fought with stone-tipped spears. No one knew nor cared.

Now we're known less for snipers' nests / than nests of singing birds

her father's generation must be the last generation of English people who would have such a choice. War or no war, it was all coming to an end, and the end could not come neatly. There would be people who had to be victims of the fact that it could not. She herself was surely one of them

The existence of well-to-do little neutral countries is a pointer to what global war is really all about

nothing is more indicative of a war going badly than valiant propaganda ... Anything officially denied was probably a fact.

An old Japanese friend recently confided to me: ' I can't forgive to americans for the fact that Hiroshima wasn't an act of war, but an experiment'.

In his clear view of the world, free from illusion--suddenly saw that the day of men like the Colonel was over. The Great War had created a new world in which the values of the Colonel and his kind had become outdated, even dangerous, for they assumed that men still adhered to a code of honour simply because they belonged to a particular class. And this was no longer true.

No matter what side you were on, if you had survived Gettysburg you were to be congratulated.

In a war, the first casualty is human dignity.

I had a dream, and I met with a king. I sold crystal and crossed the desert. And, because the tribes declared war, I went to the well, seeking the alchemist. So, I love you because the entire universe conspired to help me find you.

The battles may last for a long time, perhaps even years. There are powerful forces on both sides, and the war is important to both armies. It's not a battle of good against evil. It's a war between forces that are fighting for the balance of power, and, when that type of battle begins, it lasts longer than others-because Allah is on both sides.

I will lament your departure. I will hide my shame for having erred on some obscure point, for thinking that the justice of war is the same of peacetime.

In a war, the first casualty is human dignity. Your