quotations about war
Looking at the world today, we know that we face real threats, but we also know that smart and strong American leadership starts with a clear-eyed approach that recognizes that another endless war is not the way to keep our country safe and strengthen global security.
JIM MCGOVERN
"America Cannot Afford an Endless War in Afghanistan", Huffington Post, February 4, 2016
This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
"The War Universe"
Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
"A Secret Vice", The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try to make ours light before her!
ROMAIN ROLLAND
preface, Above the Battle
For wide, ah! wide is the woe when the foeman has mounted the wall;
There is havoc and terror and flame, and the dark smoke broods over all,
And wild is the war-god's breath, as in frenzy of conquest he springs,
And pollutes with the blast of his lips the glory of holiest things!
AESCHYLUS
The Seven Against Thebes
We could make no more tragic mistake than merely to concentrate on military strength. For if we did only this, the future would hold nothing for the world but an Age of Terror.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
State of the Union Address, January 9, 1958
No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
letter to Harry Truman, March 22, 1948
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
G. K. CHESTERTON
A Song of Defeat
War is a most uneconomical, foolish, poor arrangement, a bloody enrichment of that soil which bears the sweet flower of peace.
M. E. W. SHERWOOD
An Epistle to Posterity
I have never believed that war settled anything satisfactorily, but I am not entirely sure that some times there are certain situations in the world such as we have in actuality when a country is worse off when it does not go to war for its principles than if it went to war.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
attributed, Eleanor and Franklin
Armies are not bad things in themselves; it's war that's evil.
JUAN GOMEZ-JURADO
God's Spy
This is also a war followed in real time by anyone with a smart device, a technology that delivers instant updates, and oftentimes partial truths, to smart screens across the globe.
ROBERT MAKROS
"'Clean war' is the unicorn of armed conflict", The Hill, March 31, 2017
I believe that, tragically, war is inescapable. I know that's not a very politically correct thing to say. But when you read the scenes of rampage and battle in The Iliad, which Achilles casually evokes when he says, "I've stormed these cities from my ship," and then look at what is happening with, say, ISIS, and the carnage and brutality there, you can see a lot of similarities. But the fact The Iliad still speaks true doesn't just mean that it has prophetic powers. It means that those truths have always been there. They are enduring truths.
CAROLINE ALEXANDER
"War is Unavoidable--and Other Hard Lessons from Homer's Iliad", National Geographic, January 10, 2016
To me, the feeling of war is falling in love with something and having it killed in front of you, over and over again.
CHRIS ROESSNER
"Iraq vet talks about his Netflix movie, pulling CQ in Saddam's palace, debunking 'dysfunctional veteran' stereotype", Army Times, April 21, 2017
No matter how young, weak or vulnerable their victims, the killers wanted no survivors. By the time they had finished their work, at least 27 people including six children and a heavily-pregnant woman, lay clubbed or stabbed to death. This was no spontaneous massacre. At least four of the dead, including the mother-to-be, were positioned as if their hands or feet had been bound while their heads, knees and limbs were smashed. There were no burials -- the bodies of some were thrown into an adjoining lagoon while others were seemingly left to die where they fell. It may sound like an act of medieval barbarity or even an atrocity from the current killing fields of Syria. But this act of indiscriminate slaughter dates back some 10,000 years and as such may represent the earliest evidence of humans at war.
CAHAL MILMO
"War is as old as time: Cambridge University researchers unveil massacred bodies dating back 10,000 years", The Independent, January 20, 2016
War is the sure result of the existence of armed men. That country which maintains a large standing army will sooner or later have a war. The man who prides himself on fisticuffs is going, some day, to meet a man who considers himself the better man, and they will test the issue.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
Waging war and fighting it are practical activities much like playing an instrument or, at the higher levels, conducting an orchestra. Hence one of the best, perhaps the best if not the only, ways to familiarize oneself with it is to practice it. As the saying goes, the best teacher of war is war. Other things being equal, the larger and more complex the "orchestra," the greater the role of the conductor, i.e. the commander. It is he who is ultimately responsible for coordinating the efforts of everybody else and directing them towards the objective. All the while taking care that the enemy will not interfere with his plans and demolish them.
MARTIN VAN CREVELD
"Why the best teacher of war is war", OUP blog, April 9, 2017
As horrible as the death toll was in World War I, the millions who died were, by and large, killed on the battlefield--soldiers killed by soldiers, not civilians killed by lawless or random or planned savagery. The rough proportion of military to civilian casualties was ninety to ten. In World War II, the proportions were roughly even. Today, for every ten military casualties there are on the order of ninety civilian deaths. The reality of our era, as demonstrated in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya, is that torture is rampant, murdering civilians commonplace, and driving the survivors from their homes often the main goal of a particular military offensive.
RON GUTMAN & DAVID RIEFF
preface, Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know
The wars of latter ages seem to be made in the dark, in respect of the glory, and honor, which reflected upon men from the wars, in ancient time. There be now, for martial encouragement, some degrees and orders of chivalry; which nevertheless are conferred promiscuously, upon soldiers and no soldiers; and some remembrance perhaps, upon the scutcheon; and some hospitals for maimed soldiers; and such like things. But in ancient times, the trophies erected upon the place of the victory; the funeral laudatives and monuments for those that died in the wars; the crowns and garlands personal; the style of emperor, which the great kings of the world after borrowed; the triumphs of the generals, upon their return; the great donatives and largesses, upon the disbanding of the armies; were things able to inflame all men's courages. But above all, that of the triumph, amongst the Romans, was not pageants or gaudery, but one of the wisest and noblest institutions, that ever was. For it contained three things: honor to the general; riches to the treasury out of the spoils; and donatives to the army. But that honor, perhaps were not fit for monarchies; except it be in the person of the monarch himself, or his sons; as it came to pass in the times of the Roman emperors, who did impropriate the actual triumphs to themselves, and their sons, for such wars as they did achieve in person; and left only, for wars achieved by subjects, some triumphal garments and ensigns to the general.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of the True Greatness Of Kingdoms And Estates", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.
HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL
Journal Intime