“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”

—  William T. Sherman

Retort to a lady of Confederate sympathies, who berated him for the wasting of Mississippi by the Army of the Tennessee during the Meridian Campaign ; cited in The Civil War Generation, Norman K. Risjord, Rowman & Littlefield (2002), p. 143 : ISBN 0742521699</small> , and in Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Allen C. Guelzo, Oxford University Press (2012), p. 439 : <small>ISBN 0199843295
1860s, 1864

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it; the crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." by William T. Sherman?
William T. Sherman photo
William T. Sherman 44
American General, businessman, educator, and author. 1820–1891

Related quotes

Semyon Timoshenko photo

“Peoples of all the warring countries are trying to put an end to the war, to establish peace. And we believe that they will get peace. And the sooner they get peace the better.”

Semyon Timoshenko (1895–1970) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The American review on the Soviet Union" - Page 10 - by American Russian Institute - 1938

John Ralston Saul photo

“Realism isn't pessimism. And though the anti-reform interests have won an unconscionable number of battles over the last decade, the war is by no means over.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

Reflections of a Siamese Twin (1997)

Michel Foucault photo

“The criticism of the reformers was directed not so much at the weakness or cruelty of those in authority, as at a bad economy of power.”

Michel Foucault book Discipline and Punish

Source: Discipline and Punish (1977), Chapter Two, pp.. 79

Statius photo

“The cruelty of war makes for peace.”

Statius (45–96) Roman poet of the 1st century AD (Silver Age of Latin literature)

As quoted in Our Day of Empire (1954) by Louis Obed Renne, p. 180.
Attributed

F. Scott Fitzgerald photo

“People try so hard to believe in leaders now, pitifully hard. But we no sooner get a popular reformer or politician or soldier or writer or philosopher — a Roosevelt, a Tolstoy, a Wood, a Shaw, a Nietzsche, than the cross-currents of criticism wash him away. My Lord, no man can stand prominence these days. It's the surest path to obscurity. People get sick of hearing the same name over and over.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Quoted, This Side of Paradise (1920)

Winston S. Churchill photo

“The truth is that Gandhi-ism and all it stands for will, sooner or later, have to be grappled with, and finally crushed. It is no use trying to satisfy a tiger by feeding him with cat's-meat. The sooner this is realised, the less trouble and misfortune will there be for all concerned.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Cannon Street Hotel, London (12 December 1930) at the first public meeting of the Indian Empire Society, quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 377
The 1930s

Ernesto Che Guevara photo

“The people did not talk about reciprocal concessions but demanded liberties and guarantees, which brought inevitably in many sectors a crueler war than the French would have waged otherwise.”

Ernesto Che Guevara (1928–1967) Argentine Marxist revolutionary

People's War, People's Army (1964)

Rick Riordan photo

“Nobody welcomes a war - not if they're smart. But war finds everyone sooner or later. It's inevitable.”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Paul von Hindenburg photo

“You cannot wage war with sentimentality. The more ruthlessly war is conducted, the more merciful is it in fact, for it finishes the war the sooner.”

Paul von Hindenburg (1847–1934) Prussian-German field marshal, statesman, and president of Germany

Remark (November 1914), Paul Dehn, Hindenburg, als Erzieher (1918), p. 12, quoted in W. W. Coole (ed.), Thus Spake Germany (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1941), p. 74
Supreme Commander of All German Forces in the East

“Well," said Dr Jochum, "you are like all reformers. You like to reform the world because it is easier than trying to reform yourself.”

Malcolm Bradbury (1932–2000) English author and academic

Page 111.
Stepping Westward (1965)

Related topics