Quotes about war
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“It is obvious that the war which Hitler and his accomplices waged was a war not only against Jewish men, women, and children, but also against Jewish religion, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, therefore Jewish memory.”

Elie Wiesel book Night

Source: Night

Women, Men, Children, Religion

“I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.”

Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989) American political and social activist

Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 187.

People

“War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

Variant: War Is Merely the Continuation of Policy by Other Means
Source: On War (1832), Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 24, in the Princeton University Press translation (1976)
Variant translation: War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.
Context: War Is Merely the Continuation of Policy by Other Means
We see, therefore, that war is not merely an act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse carried on with other means. What remains peculiar to war is simply the peculiar nature of its means.

“The Guchkov government is held in a vice: bound by the interests of capital, it is compelled to strive to continue the predatory, robber war, to protect the monstrous profits of capital and the landlords, to restore the monarchy. Bound by its revolutionary origin and by the need for an abrupt change from tsarism to democracy, pressed by the bread-hungry and peace-hungry masses, the government is compelled to lie, to wriggle, to play for time, to “proclaim” and promise (promises are the only things that are very cheap even at a time of madly rocketing prices) as much as possible and do as little as possible, to make concessions with one hand and to withdraw them with the other. Under”

Vladimir Lenin (1870–1924) Russian politician, led the October Revolution

Source: Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917

Lie, Peace, Democracy, Change

“… the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

“Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry… no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) English philosopher, born 1588

Life, Death, Men, Fear

“I have always been absurdly, ridiculously tall. To give you an idea- when we went on school trips to Interesting and Improving Places, the form-master wouldn't say "Meet under the clock tower," or "Meet under the War Memorial," but "Meet under Adams.”

Douglas Adams book The Salmon of Doubt

Source: The Salmon of Doubt

School, Idea, Memory

“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Introduction to Treasury of the Free World (1946)
Source: Ernest Hemingway: A Literary Reference
Context: An aggressive war is the great crime against everything good in the world. A defensive war, which must necessarily turn to aggressive at the earliest moment, is the necessary great counter-crime. But never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.

Thinking

“Every true artist is at war with the world.”

Anthony Kiedis book Scar Tissue

Source: Scar Tissue

World

“War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking into the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comforable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent.”

George Orwell book 1984

Source: 1984

Way, Intelligence, Sea

“All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Source: Homage to Catalonia

People, Fight

“Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.”

Muhammad Ali (1942–2016) African American boxer, philanthropist and activist

Change

“When you smoke (ganja) you don't want to war.”

Bob Marley (1945–1981) Jamaican singer, songwriter, musician

“Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defence against a homicidal maniac.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

“If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Love, Life, Learning

“We see the strongest guarantee of peace for Europe in a policy of expansion. When have we exploited the embarrassments of other peoples? When Russia was at war with Japan, the Tsar was able to take his last regiment away from our frontier. We did not regard Morocco as an object of war, we looked on while East Africa was divided, while France was creating a great colonial empire of Tunis, Algiers and Morocco, while Italy occupied Tripolis, while Persia was divided between Britain and Russia into two spheres of interest—the world could always rely on the German Kaisers and the German people's love of peace. And what thanks have we had? A world of enemies…When one awakens in this way from a beautiful dream one must not follow that dream again, must not in future believe that renunciation of a world policy will be a guarantee of permanent freedom. They grudged us the right to economic development. We thank the Chancellor for what he said yesterday concerning our security in the East and West.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Speech in the Reichstag (6 April 1916), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany. From Defeat to Conquest 1913-1933 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1945), p. 75
1910s

Love, People, World, Peace

“The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target. And not exempt of responsibility are those Western regimes whose presence in the region offers support to the American troops there. We know at least one reason behind the symbolic participation of the Western forces and that is to support the Jewish and Zionist plans for expansion of what is called the Great Israel. Surely, their presence is not out of concern over their interests in the region. … Their presence has no meaning save one and that is to offer support to the Jews in Palestine who are in need of their Christian brothers to achieve full control over the Arab Peninsula which they intend to make an important part of the so called Greater Israel.”

Osama bin Laden (1957–2011) founder of al-Qaeda

1990s, ABC interview (1998)

Support, Parting

“Military history, especially Russian, is being studied poorly. We have a lot of unfair ridiculing of the old army despite the fact that we had such notable tsarist army generals as Suvorov, Kutuzov and Bagration who will always remain in the minds of the people as great Russian military leaders and who are revered in the Red Army as a legacy of the finest military traditions of the Russian soldier. There exists a harmful cult of Civil War heroes, while previous Russian military achievements are ignored. All of this leads to the ignoring of concrete historical experience despite the fact that history is the best teacher.”

Lev Mekhlis (1889–1953) Soviet politician

Mekhlis in 1940. Quoted in The People Need a Tsar: The Emergence of National Bolshevism as Stalinist Ideology, 1931-1941, by D. L. Brandenberger & A. M. Dubrovsky, 1998

People, History, Study, Teachers

“When established identities become outworn or unfinished ones threaten to remain incomplete, special crises compel men to wage holy wars, by the cruelest means, against those who seem to question or threaten their unsafe ideological bases.”

Erik H. Erikson (1902–1994) American German-born psychoanalyst & essayist

"The Problem of Ego Identity" (1956), published in Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 4:56-121

Men, Question

“The 20th century has been a badly written drama, from the beginning. The opposite of a Greek drama. Act one: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act two: Greed and hypocrisy leading to a genocidal world war, a boom, a crash, totalitarianism. Act three: Greed and hypocrisy … I don't dare continue.”

Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) American composer, conductor, author, music lecturer, and pianist

Leonard Bernstein: The Gift Of Music

World

“It's always the same thing, one war after another”

Karel Čapek R.U.R.

R.U.R. (1920)

“Go capture the fort which you could not win by war, but now we've left it at our own will.”

Balbhadra Kunwar (1789–1823) National hero of Nepal

To the British forces in the context of water blockade during Anglo-Nepalese War as quoted in http://kathmandupost.ekantipur.com/printedition/news/2012-01-31/bulbudder-and-the-british.html http://www.insightverse.com/2015/08/10-famous-nepalese-personalities-with.html?m=1

“So we are engaged in these material activities, but we forget at the same time that there is ready, atom bomb. As soon as there will be declared war, these things will be finished, immediately. These people are not declaring war. America is not declaring war against Asia, Russia or China. They are thinking because they know they have got the deadly weapons, atom, and that is the now diplomacy. When there will be war, the first dropping of atom bomb will be victorious. Aah, victorious.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam, Canto 6, Chapter 1, verse 6; Sydney; February 17, 1973
Quotes from other Sources, Quotes from other Sources: False Prophecies

People, Thinking, Time, Victory

“Less hate and greed
Is what we need
And more of service true;
More men to love
The flag above
And keep it first in view.Less boast and brag
About the flag,
More faith in what it means;
More heads erect,
More self-respect,
Less talk of war machines.”

Edgar Guest (1881–1959) American writer

Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), Our Duty to Our Flag, stanzas 1-2, p. 59.

Love, Men, Hate, Faith

“The reason is not simply because of my opinion of him. It is because it is unimaginable that you can stop the civil war there when the overwhelming majority of people in Syria consider him to be a brutal, murderous dictator.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

Obama suggesting Bashar al-Assad must leave office to end the Syrian Civil War https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/11/19/remarks-president-obama-and-prime-minister-trudeau-canada-after (19 November 2015) 2015

People

“There is no man, let him be aware of it or not, who is not a combatant in this hot contest; no one who does not take an active part in the responsibility of the defeat or victory. The prisoner in his chains and the king on his throne, the poor and the rich, the healthy and the infirm, the wise and the ignorant, the captive and the free, the old man and the child, the civilized and the savage, share equally in the combat. Every word that is pronounced, is either inspired by God or by the world, and necessarily proclaims, implicitly or explicitly, but always clearly, the glory of the one or the triumph of the other. In this singular warfare we all fight through forced enlistment; here the system of substitutes or volunteers finds no place. In it is unknown the exception of sex or age; here no attention is paid to him who says, I am the son of a poor widow; nor to the mother of the paralytic, nor to the wife of the cripple. In this warfare all men born of woman are soldiers.
And don’t tell me you don’t wish to fight; for the moment you tell me that, you are already fighting; nor that you don’t know which side to join, for while you are saying that, you have already joined a side; nor that you wish to remain neutral; for while you are thinking to be so, you are so no longer; nor that you want to be indifferent; for I will laugh at you, because on pronouncing that word you have chosen your party. Don’t tire yourself in seeking a place of security against the chances of war, for you tire yourself in vain; that war is extended as far as space, and prolonged through all time. In eternity alone, the country of the just, can you find rest, because there alone there is no combat. But do not imagine, however, that the gates of eternity shall be opened for you, unless you first show the wounds you bear; those gates are only opened for those who gloriously fought here the battles of the Lord, and were, like the Lord, crucified.”

Juan Donoso Cortés (1809–1853) Spanish author, political theorist and diplomat

Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)

Men, God, Age, World

“Around 1945, daily life might have been hard, but the reputation of Disney was at its highest. The voices of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck had stabilized, Snow White and Bambi were huge hits and had received a number of international prizes. It really was like the brightness of a rising sun. And then Japanese children after the war had no choice but to face the flood of Disney comics that accompanied the brainwashing of “American democracy.””

Osamu Tezuka (1928–1989) Japanese cartoonist and animator

That was their merit as propaganda against the Japanese. Tezuka Osamu and American Comics http://www.tcj.com/tezuka-osamu-and-american-comics/, (1973), as quoted by Ryan Holmberg, The Comics Journal, Jul 16, 2012.

Life, Children, Democracy, Sun

“Everyone always did miss everyone else in this war, whenever it was humanly possible to do so.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

“It is the same in all wars; the soldiers do the fighting, the journalists do the shouting, and no true patriot ever gets near a front-line trench, except on the briefest of propaganda-tours.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

Fight

“Israel is surrounded by neighbors that have waged repeated wars against it. Israel’s citizens have been killed by rockets fired at their houses and suicide bombs on their buses. Israel’s children come of age knowing that throughout the region, other children are taught to hate them. Israel, a small country of less than eight million people, looks out at a world where leaders of much larger nations threaten to wipe it off of the map. The Jewish people carry the burden of centuries of exile, and persecution, and the fresh memory of knowing that six million people were killed simply because of who they are.”

Barack Obama (1961) 44th President of the United States of America

2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)

Hate, Children, People, Age

“Dear rulers … I maintain that the civil authorities are under obligation to compel the people to send their children to school. … If the government can compel such citizens as are fit for military service to bear spear and rifle, to mount ramparts, and perform other martial duties in time of war, how much more has it a right to compel the people to send their children to school, because in this case we are warring with the devil, whose object it is secretly to exhaust our cities and principalities of their strong men.”

Martin Luther (1483–1546) seminal figure in Protestant Reformation

letter to the German rulers (1524), as quoted in The History of Compulsory Education in New England, John William Perrin, 1896

Men, Children, People, School

“I came into a place void of all light,
which bellows like the sea in tempest,
when it is combated by warring winds.”

Dante Alighieri book Inferno

Canto V, lines 28–30 (tr. Charles S. Singleton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno

Light, Sea

“Regardless of whom you pray to, during war our experiences as a community and as mothers are the same.”

Leymah Gbowee (1972) Liberian peace activist

Gruber Foundation, Women's Rights Prize (2009)

Communication

“The struggle against war, properly understood and executed, presupposes the uncompromising hostility of the proletariat and its organizations, always and everywhere, toward its own and every other imperialist bourgeoisie…”

Leon Trotsky (1879–1940) Marxist revolutionary from Russia

"Resolution on the Antiwar Congress of the London Bureau" (July 1936)

Hostility

“If Thomas Jefferson is the liberals' (and libertarians') Founding Father, and George Washington is the conservatives', and Tom Paine is the radicals', then Benjamin Franklin is the radical middle's. He was extremely practical. … At the same time, he was extraordinarily creative. … He was a man of principle. … Yet synthesis and healing were an art with him. He became our most ardent champion of religious tolerance. And better than anyone at the Constitutional Convention, he was able to get the warring factions and wounded egos to transcend their differences and come up with a Constitution for the ages.”

Mark Satin (1946) American political theorist, author, and newsletter publisher

Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 3, "Journey to the Radical Middle," p. 22.

Pain, Age, Art, Time

“It continues to develop that the insurrection is largely, if not exclusively, a war upon the first principle of popular government — the rights of the people. Conclusive evidence of this is found in the most grave and maturely considered public documents, as well as in the general tone of the insurgents. In those documents we find the abridgment of the existing right of suffrage and the denial to the people of all right to participate in the selection of public officers except the legislative boldly advocated, with labored arguments to prove that large control of the people in government is the source of all political evil. Monarchy itself is sometimes hinted at as a possible refuge from the power of the people. In my present position I could scarcely be justified were I to omit raising a warning voice against this approach of returning despotism.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)

People, Evil

“Progress? There's no such thing as progress. There's only change. You dig a hole in the ground, you build up a city, and you fight a war, and you call it progress?”

Charles Manson (1934–2017) American criminal and musician

Interview track from Charles Manson Sings (2006)

Change, Fight

“If there is a hell, then I'll be in good company with a lot of fighter pilots who also had to bomb innocents to win the war.”

Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001) American army soldier, security guard, terrorist

Dead Man Talking http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/apr/22/mcveigh.usa, The Observer (April 22, 2001) 2000s

Hell

“In the nineteenth century some parts of the world were unexplored, but there was almost no restriction on travel. Up to 1914 you did not need a passport for any country except Russia. The European emigrant, if he could scrape together a few pounds for the passage, simply set sail for America or Australia, and when he got there no questions were asked. In the eighteenth century it had been quite normal and safe to travel in a country with which your own country was at war.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please," Tribune (12 May 1944) http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/ "As I Please" (1943–1947)

World, Travel, Question, Parting

“It's not a matter of whether the war is not real, or if it is, Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous. Hierarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance. This new version is the past and no different past can ever have existed. In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is waged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory over either Eurasia or East Asia but to keep the very structure of society intact.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Michael Moore declares these lines in his film Fahrenheit 9/11 as something "Orwell once wrote". They are nearly identical to a block of voiceover in the 1984 Richard Burton/John Hurt movie version of 1984 when Winston (Hurt) is silently reading Goldstein's book. All of the lines are excerpts from various parts of Goldstein's book in part 2, chapter 9 of the novel with some paraphrasing. Note that the fourth sentence begins with "This new version". In Moore's speech there is no antecedent for this phrase; consequently, the sentence makes no sense there. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SVrM2Ef81C7EUSTm4zsgjQk9mgMSeFUnlEvtleR2V1w/edit?usp=sharing http://metabunk.org/threads/debunked-war-is-not-meant-to-be-won-it-is-meant-to-be-continuous.1259/ Misattributed

Effort, Past, Victory

“I would rather die having spoken in my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet in law ought any man use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death, if a man is willing to say or do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs deeper than death.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

38e–39a
Plato, Apology

Death, Law, Way

“Now, since on God's own testimony, men are 'flesh', they can savour of nothing but the flesh; therefore 'free-will can avail only to sin. And if, while the Spirit of God is calling and teaching among them, they go from bad to worse, what could they do when left to themselves, without the Spirit of God? Your [Erasmus] observation that Moses is speaking of the men of that age is not to the point at all. The same is true of all men, for all are 'flesh'; as Christ says, 'That which is born of the flesh is flesh' (John 3:6) How grave a defect this is, He Himself there teaches, when he says: 'Except a man be born again, he cannot enter the kingdom of God (v. 5)…I call a man ungodly if he is without the Spirit of God; for Scripture says that the Spirit is given to justify the ungodly. As Christ distinguished the Spirit from the flesh, saying: "that which is born of the flesh is flesh', and adds that which is born of the flesh cannot enter the kingdom of God', it obviously follows that whatever is flesh is ungodly, under God's wrath, and a stranger to His kingdom. And if it is a stranger to God's kingdom and Spirit, it follows of necessity that it is under the kingdom and spirit of Satan. For there is no middle kingdom between the kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Satan, which are ever at war with each other.”

Martin Luther book On the Bondage of the Will

Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 241, 253

Men, God, Age, Christ

“There are wars in this world, not because wars are the will of God but because of greed and arrogance, the lust for power and domination. There is hunger not merely because there is lack of food, but because of political and economic policies that foster inequality of the distribution of resources, because of one-sided control of world markets by powerful nations who refuse to enter seriously in the search for a more just, equitable, and sustainable economic order.”

Allan Boesak (1946) South African anti-apartheid activist

Source: Comfort and Protest (1987), p. 67

Hunger, God, World, Food

“People talk about the horrors of war, but what weapon has man invented that even approaches in cruelty to some of the commoner diseases? "Natural" death, almost by definition, means something slow, smelly and painful.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"How the Poor Die" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/Poor_Die/english/e_pdie, Now (November 1946)

Death, Pain, People, Disease

“If a second imperialist war turns its cutting edge against the world's first socialist state, then it will be necessary for the Soviet Union to extend hostilities to the adversary's territory, fulfill its international responsibilities and increase the number of Soviet republics.”

Lev Mekhlis (1889–1953) Soviet politician

Speech at the XVIII Congress of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks), 14 March 1939 - quoted in Albert L. Weeks, Stalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939-1941

Hostility, World

“When I hear the term Right wing I think of Hitler and Satan and Civil war.”

Kurt Cobain book Journals

Source: Journals (2002), p. 259

Thinking

“If I had engaged in politics, I should have perished long ago and done no good to either you or to myself. …for the truth is that no man who goes to war with you or any other multitude, honestly struggling against the commission of unrighteouosness and wrong in the State, will save his life; he who will really fight for right, if he would live even for a little while, must have a private station and not a public one.”

Socrates (-470–-399 BC) classical Greek Athenian philosopher

31e
Plato, Apology

Life, Truth, Fight

“I have always disbelieved that Sicilian saying about revenge being a dish best served cold. I feel that--don't you?--when I see blinking, quivering octogenarian Nazi war criminals being led away in chains. Why not then? It's too late now. I want to see them taken back in time and punished then… Blame, certainly, is a dish only edible when served fresh and warm. Old blames, grudges and scores congeal and curdle and cause the most terrible indigestion.”

Stephen Fry (1957) English comedian, actor, writer, presenter, and activist

1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)

Feeling, Revenge, Time

“It would have been better if we had fought in Italy and Austria which are really at war against us, instead of allowing them to use our unfortunate Slovenians, Croats and Moslems as bait and cannon fodder.”

Ratko Mladić (1943) Commander of the Bosnian Serb military

From interview with Vreme, May 24, 1993
Interviews (1993 – 1995)

“Actually there is little acute hatred of Germany left in this country, and even less, I should expect to find, in the army of occupation. Only the minority of sadists, who must have their "atrocities" from one source or another, take a keen interest in the hunting-down of war criminals and quislings.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"Revenge is Sour", Tribune (9 November 1945)

Country

“This is the war on terrorism; it's worth fighting for.”

Bruce Willis (1955) American actor, producer, and musician

Bruce Willis during a visit to the 101st Airborne Division in northern Iraq, September 25, 2003. http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Sep2003/n09262003_200309266.html

Fight

“Those in authority should take appropriate precautions to protect our citizens. But we will not allow this enemy to win the war by changing our way of life or restricting our freedoms.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Remarks by the President In Photo Opportunity with the National Security Team http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2001/09/20010912-4.html, September 12, 2001 2000s, 2001

Life, Way, Freedom, Change

“I note that once again there is serious talk of trying to attract tourists to this country after the war… [b]ut it is quite safe to prophesy that the attempt will be a failure. Apart from the many other difficulties, our licensing laws and the artificial price of drink are quite enough to keep foreigners away…. But even these prices are less dismaying to foreigners than the lunatic laws which permit you to buy a glass of beer at half past ten while forbidding you to buy it at twenty-ﬁve past, and which have done their best to turn the pubs into mere boozing shops by excluding children from them.
How downtrodden we are in comparison with most other peoples is shown by the fact that even people who are far from being ""temperance"" don't seriously imagine that our licensing laws could be altered. Whenever I suggest that pubs might be allowed to open in the afternoon, or to stay open till midnight, I always get the same answer: ""The ﬁrst people to object would be the publicans. They don't want to have to stay open twelve hours a day."" People assume, you see, that opening hours, whether long or short, must be regulated by the law, even for one-man businesses. In France, and in various other countries, a café proprietor opens or shuts just as it suits him. He can keep open the whole twenty-four hours if he wants to; and, on the other hand, if he feels like shutting his cafe and going away for a week, he can do that too. In England we have had no such liberty for about a hundred years, and people are hardly able to imagine it.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

As I Please column in The Tribune (18 August 1944), http://alexpeak.com/twr/dwall/ "As I Please" (1943–1947)

Children, People, Law, Feeling

“A civilization at war chooses only the most obvious enemy, and often also the one perceived, at first, to be the most easily defeatable. But that enemy is not the true enemy, nor is it the gravest threat to that civilisation. Thus a civilization at war often chooses the wrong enemy.”

Steven Erikson book The Bonehunters

The Bonehunters (2006)

“While the abominable pope with his spiritual peace and evangelic peace, this despot, marched to make war on his own kindred with might and main - the man of peace, too, and disciple of the Man of Peace!”

Anna Comnena book Alexiad

Of Pope Gregory VII
The Alexiad, Book 1

Peace

“He, therefore, who desires peace, should prepare for war. He who aspires to victory, should spare no pains to form his soldiers. And he who hopes for success, should fight on principle, not chance. (Book 3, Foreword)”
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum; qui uictoriam cupit, milites inbuat diligenter; qui secundos optat euentus, dimicet arte, non casu.

Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus book De re militari

De Re Militari (also Epitoma Rei Militaris), Book III, "Dispositions for Action"
Variant: Si vis pacem para bellum. ("If you want peace, prepare for war.")

Pain, Books, Peace, Hope

“The Russians are primitive folk. Besides, Bolshevism is something that stifles individualism and which is against my inner nature. Bolshevism is worse than National Socialism — in fact, it can't be compared to it. Bolshevism is against private property, and I am all in favor of private property. Bolshevism is barbaric and crude, and I am fully convinced that that atrocities committed by the Nazis, which incidentally I knew nothing about, were not nearly as great or as cruel as those committed by the Communists. I hate the Communists bitterly because I hate the system. The delusion that all men are equal is ridiculous. I feel that I am superior to most Russians, not only because I am a German but because my cultural and family background are superior. How ironic it is that crude Russian peasants who wear the uniforms of generals now sit in judgment on me. No matter how educated a Russian might be, he is still a barbaric Asiatic. Secondly, the Russian generals and the Russian government planned a war against Germany because we represented a threat to them ideologically. In the German state, I was the chief opponent of Communism. I admit freely and proudly that it was I who created the first concentration camps in order to put Communists in them. Did I ever tell you that funny story about how I sent to Spain a ship containing mainly bricks and stones, under which I put a single layer of ammunition which had been ordered by the Red government in Spain? The purpose of that ship was to supply the waning Red government with munitions. That was a good practical joke and I am proud of it because I wanted with all my heart to see Russian Communism in Spain defeated finally.”

Hermann Göring (1893–1946) German politician and military leader

To Leon Goldensohn (28 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)

Men, Hate, Education, Family

“The essential job is to get people to recognise war propaganda when they see it, especially when it is disguised as peace propaganda.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Review of The Men I Killed by Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, CB, CMG, DSO, in New Statesman and Nation (28 August 1937)

People, Peace

“It is disgusting to notice the increase in the quantity of coffee used by my subjects, and the amount of money that goes out of the country as a consequence. Everybody is using coffee; this must be prevented. His Majesty was brought up on beer, and so were both his ancestors and officers. Many battles have been fought and won by soldiers nourished on beer, and the King does not believe that coffee-drinking soldiers can be relied upon to endure hardships in case of another war.”

Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786) king of Prussia

1777; quoted by Bert L. Vallée, Alcohol in the Western World, Scientific American, Vol. 278, No. 6 (June), 1998, pp. 80-85

Money, Coffee, Drink, Beer

“I’m a good person but a shitty writer. You’re a shitty person but a good writer. We’d make a good team. I don’t want to ask you any favors, but if you have time – and from what I saw, you have plenty – I was wondering if you could write a eulogy for Hazel. I’ve got notes and everything, but if you could just make it into a coherent whole or whatever? Or even just tell me what I should say differently. Here’s the thing about Hazel: Almost everyone is obsessed with leaving a mark upon the world. Bequeathing a legacy. Outlasting death. We all want to be remembered. I do, too. That’s what bothers me most, is being another unremembered casualty in the ancient and inglorious war against disease. I want to leave a mark. But Van Houten: The marks humans leave are too often scars. You build a hideous minimall or start a coup or try to become a rock star and you think, “They’ll remember me now,” but (a) they don’t remember you, and (b) all you leave behind are more scars. Your coup becomes a dictatorship. Your minimall becomes a lesion. (Okay, maybe I’m not such a shitty writer. But I can’t pull my ideas together, Van Houten. My thoughts are stars I can’t fathom into constellations.) We are like a bunch of dogs squirting on fire hydrants. We poison the groundwater with our toxic piss, marking everything MINE in a ridiculous attempt to survive our deaths. I can’t stop pissing on fire hydrants. I know it’s silly and useless – epically useless in my current state – but I am an animal like any other. Hazel is different. She walks lightly, old man. She walks lightly upon the earth. Hazel knows the truth: We’re as likely to hurt the universe as we are to help it, and we’re not likely to do either. People will say it’s sad that she leaves a lesser scar, that fewer remember her, that she was loved deeply but not widely. But it’s not sad, Van Houten. It’s triumphant. It’s heroic. Isn’t that the real heroism? Like the doctors say: First, do no harm. The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox. After my PET scan lit up, I snuck into the ICU and saw her while she was unconscious. I just walked in behind a nurse with a badge and I got to sit next to her for like ten minutes before I got caught. I really thought she was going to die, too. It was brutal: the incessant mechanized haranguing of intensive care. She had this dark cancer water dripping out of her chest. Eyes closed. Intubated. But her hand was still her hand, still warm and the nails painted this almost black dark almost blue color, and I just held her hand and tried to imagine the world without us and for about one second I was a good enough person to hope she died so she would never know that I was going, too. But then I wanted more time so we could fall in love. I got my wish, I suppose. I left my scar. A nurse guy came in and told me I had to leave, that visitors weren’t allowed, and I asked if she was doing okay, and the guy said, “She’s still taking on water.””

John Green book The Fault in Our Stars

A desert blessing, an ocean curse. What else? She is so beautiful. You don’t get tired of looking at her. You never worry if she is smarter than you: You know she is. She is funny without ever being mean. I love her. I am so lucky to love her, Van Houten. You don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, old man, but you do have some say in who hurts you. I like my choices. I hope she likes hers."
Augustus "Gus" Waters, p. 310-313
The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

Love, Death, People, Truth

“I feel I am privileged to express a hope. The hope is this: that we shall have peace throughout the world: that we shall abolish wars, and settle all international differences at the conference table: that we shall abolish all atom and hydrogen bombs, before they abolish us first.”

Charlie Chaplin (1889–1977) British comic actor and filmmaker

In response to journalist for his views on the future of mankind at his 70th birthday (16 April 1959)

World, Peace, Hope, Feeling

“We all remember how many religious wars were fought for a religion of love and gentleness; how many bodies were burned alive with the genuinely kind intention of saving souls from the eternal fire of hell. Only if we give up our authoritarian attitude in the realm of opinion, only if we establish the attitude of give and take, of readiness to learn from other people, can we hope to control acts of violence inspired by piety and duty.”

Karl Popper (1902–1994) Austrian-British philosopher of science

Utopia and Violence (1947)

Love, People, Religion, Hope

“Shoot down, behead and eliminate the Socialists first, if need be, by a blood-bath, then war abroad. But not before, and not à tempo.”

Wilhelm II, German Emperor (1859–1941) German Emperor and King of Prussia

Letter to German Chancellor Bernhard von Bülow (1 January 1906), quoted in Fritz Fischer, Germany's Aims in the First World War (New York: W. W. Norton & Co, 1967), p. 22
1900s

“If we judge from Islamic history, there is much to encourage us. For century after century, the Arabs, the Persians, the Turks and many other Islamic societies achieved powerful leadership roles in the world — not only politically and economically but also intellectually… The fundamental reason for the pre-eminence of Islamic civilizations lay neither in accidents of history nor in acts of war, but rather in their ability to discover new knowledge, to make it their own, and to build constructively upon it. They became the Knowledge Societies of their time.”

Aga Khan IV (1936) 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism

Address by His Highness the Aga Khan to the 2006 Convocation of the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan (2 December 2006)]

World, History, Knowledge, Time

“We keep falling into the same ditches, you know? I mean, we learn more and more about the physical universe, more about our own bodies, more technology, but somehow, down through history, we go on building empires of one kind or another, then destroying them in one way or another. We go on having stupid wars that we justify and get passionate about, but in the end, all they do is kill huge numbers of people, maim others, impoverish still more, spread disease and hunger, and set the stage for the next war. And when we look at all of that in history, we just shrug our shoulders and say, well, that’s the way things are. That’s the way things always have been.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Talents

Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 392)

Hunger, People, Stupidity, Disease

“My boys may charge me with all they want. The main thing is, it helps them. They are not evil and no criminals. They are the products of total war, grown up on the streets of scattered towns without any education! The only thing [they] knew was to handle weapons for the Dream of [the] Reich. They were young people with a hot heart and the desire to win or to die, according to the word: right or wrong—my country!”

Joachim Peiper (1915–1976) SS officer

Letter to Willis Everett, July 4, 1946. Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 14, citing Everett Papers in note 5.

People, Education, Dreams, Boy

“Changing from the defensive to the offensive, is one of the most delicate operations in war.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Change

“[Hitler] has grasped the falsity of the hedonistic attitude to life. Nearly all western thought since the last war, certainly all "progressive" thought, has assumed tacitly that human beings desire nothing beyond ease, security, and avoidance of pain. In such a view of life there is no room, for instance, for patriotism and the military virtues. The Socialist who finds his children playing with soldiers is usually upset, but he is never able to think of a substitute for the tin soldiers; tin pacifists somehow won’t do. Hitler, because in his own joyless mind he feels it with exceptional strength, knows that human beings don’t only want comfort, safety, short working-hours, hygiene, birth-control and, in general, common sense; they also, at least intermittently, want struggle and self-sacrifice, not to mention drums, flags and loyalty-parades. However they may be as economic theories, Fascism and Nazism are psychologically far sounder than any hedonistic conception of life. The same is probably true of Stalin’s militarised version of Socialism. All three of the great dictators have enhanced their power by imposing intolerable burdens on their peoples. Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a grudging way, have said to people "I offer you a good time," Hitler has said to them "I offer you struggle, danger and death," and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

From a review of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, New English Weekly (21 March 1940)

Life, Death, Pain, Children

“War represents the supreme failure of nations to resolve their differences. From a strictly pragmatic standpoint, it is the most inefficient waste of lives and resources ever conceived.”

Jacque Fresco (1916–2017) American futurist and self-described social engineer

Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 31.

Failure

“Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

This is almost always attributed to US Ambassador Francis Meehan http://www.nndb.com/people/060/000121694/, though without citations, and only very rarely to Patton. Misattributed

Men

“War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Money, Thinking, Country

“I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world because they'd never expect it.”

Jack Handey (1949) American comedian

Deep Thoughts: Inspiration for the Uninspired (1992), Berkley Books, ISBN 0-425-13365-6

Hate, World

“We believe that the coalition's intervention in the civil war in Libya has not, essentially, been sanctioned by the UN Security Council resolution, its only purpose is to ensure the protection of the civilian population.”

Sergey Lavrov (1950) Russian politician and Foreign Minister

Intervention in Libya at odds with UN resolution (March 2011) http://en.rian.ru/russia/20110328/163245789.html

“All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means.”

Zhou Enlai (1898–1976) 1st Premier of the People's Republic of China

As quoted in Saturday Evening Post (27 March 1954); this is a play upon the famous maxim of Clausewitz: "War is the continuation of politics by other means".

“Americans love a winner. Americans will not tolerate a loser. Americans despise cowards. Americans play to win all of the time. I wouldn't give a hoot in hell for a man who lost and laughed. That's why Americans have never lost nor will ever lose a war; for the very idea of losing is hateful to an American.”

George S. Patton (1885–1945) United States Army general

Speech to the Third Army (1944)

Love, Hate, Idea, Hell

“The tragedy of civil wars in countries like Angola and Mozambique is that they left many civilians maimed. Poverty is the reason HIV/AIDS spread so rapidly in the African townships and slums. Poverty is the real killer.”

Miriam Makeba (1932–2008) South African singer and civil rights activist

As quoted in Nkrumah, Gamal (1–7 November 2001)
Al-Ahram Weekly interview (2001)

Country

“Our war with the capitalist world will be a just and progressive war. The Red Army will act decisively, seeking complete defeat and destruction of the enemy, transferring combat operations to the territory of the enemy.”

Lev Mekhlis (1889–1953) Soviet politician

Speech to Red Army personnel, 13 May 1940
Source: http://www.warmech.ru/1941war/sher_4.html

World, Decision

“I shall add that only he who has decided to commit suicide can start a nuclear war in the hope of emerging a victor from it. No matter what the attacker might possess, no matter what method of unleashing nuclear war he chooses, he will not attain his aims. Retribution will inevitably ensue.”

Leonid Brezhnev (1906–1982) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

As quoted in Soviet Strategy and the New Military Thinking (1992) by Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson, p. 68

Hope, Suicide

“Let us be clear about three facts. First, all battles and all wars are won in the end by the infantryman. Secondly, the infantryman always bears the brunt. His casualties are heavier, he suffers greater extremes of discomfort and fatigue than the other arms. Thirdly, the art of the infantryman is less stereotyped and far harder to acquire in modern war than that of any other arm…. The infantryman has to use initiative and intelligence in almost every step he moves, every action he takes on the battle-field. We ought therefore to put our men of best intelligence and endurance into the Infantry.”

Archibald Wavell, 1st Earl Wavell (1883–1950) senior officer of the British Army

In Praise of Infantry, The London Times, Thursday, 19 April 1945.

Men, Art, Intelligence, Suffering

“I eagerly await tomorrow's mail to have news of Russia and Poland. For now, I have to content myself with a few vague rumors which float around. I have heard about new, bloody skirmishes in Poland between the people and troops; I was told that, even in Russia, there was a conspiracy against the czar and the whole royal family.
I am equally passionate about the struggle between the North and the Southern American states. Of course, my heart goes out to the North. But alas! It is the South who acted with the most force, wisdom, and solidarity, which makes them worthy of the triumph they have received in every encounter so far. It is true that the South has been preparing for war for three years now, while the North has been forced to improvise. The surprising success of the ventures of the American people, for the most part happy; the banality of the material well being, where the heart is absent; and the national vanity, altogether infantile and sustained with very little cost; all seem to have helped deprave these people, and perhaps this stubborn struggle will be beneficial to them in so much as it helps the nation regain its lost soul. This is my first impression; but it could very well be that I will change my mind upon seeing things up close. The only thing is, I will not have enough time to examine really closely.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Letter http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_archives/bakunin/letters/toherzenandogareff.html to Aleksandr Ivanovich Herzen and Ogareff from San Francisco (3 October 1861); published in Correspondance de Michel Bakounine (1896) edited by Michel Dragmanov

Wisdom, People, Family, Soul

“I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all – or am I? Perhaps I was an inquisitive person. I had to see all that for myself. I’m such a realist, you know, that I have to see everything with my own eyes in order to confirm that it's like that. I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths of life for myself; it's for that reason that I went to war, and for that reason I volunteered.”

Otto Dix (1891–1969) German painter and printmaker

in the German army during world War 1. (1914-1918) Quote from Otto Dix, 1891-1969, exhibition catalogue, London: Tate Gallery, 1992, pp. 17–18; cf. pp. 27–28; as cited by Roy Forward, in 'Education resource material: beauty, truth and goodness in Dix's War' https://nga.gov.au/dix/edu.pdf, p. 9

Life, World, Personality, Dead

“Knowledge is a collection of facts. Wisdom is the use of knowledge. Without facts there is no knowledge. Without knowledge there is no wisdom. Facts prevent what nothing can cure. Facts are Man's best defense mechanism. Without them men fumble, falter and fail. Without them nations decline and fall. Wisdom wins wars before they start. Knowledge aborts national hostilities. Wisdom obviates racial antipathies. Knowledge effaces religious animosities. Emancipation from bigotry prefaces peace. Intolerance takes all and gives nothing. Peace rewards reciprocal respect and regard. To all Men of Good Will, "Pax Vobiscum!"”

Benjamin H. Freedman (1890–1984) American businessman

Facts are Facts (1954)

Wisdom, Men, Hostility, Peace

“In war, groping tactics, half-way measures, lose everything.”

Napoleon I of France (1769–1821) French general, First Consul and later Emperor of the French

Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)

Way

“The war [World War 1. ] is founded on a glaring mistake, men have been confused with machines.”

Hugo Ball (1886–1927) German author, poet and one of the leading Dada artists

Quote from 'Life and Work', in Hugo Ball on Wikipedia
his remark after witnessing the invasion of Belgium by the German armies, in the start of World War 1. in 1914
before 1916

Men, World

“During the Spanish civil war I found myself feeling very strongly that a true history of this war never would or could be written. Accurate figures, objective accounts of what was happening, simply did not exist. And if I felt that even in 1937, when the Spanish Government was still in being, and the lies which the various Republican factions were telling about each other and about the enemy were relatively small ones, how does the case stand now? Even if Franco is overthrown, what kind of records will the future historian have to go upon? And if Franco or anyone at all resembling him remains in power, the history of the war will consist quite largely of "facts" which millions of people now living know to be lies.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

"As I Please" (1943–1947)

People, Feeling, History, Future

“The Second World War supplied the occasion for the spending, and Keynesian economics supplied the rationale. But Keynesian fiscal policy had political appeal even before the war demonstrated its economic success. For unlike the various proposals for structural reform, such as vigorous antitrust action or national economic planning, Keynesian economics offered a way for the government to control the economy without having to choose among controversial views of the good society. Where earlier reformers had sought economic arrangements that would cultivate, citizens of a certain kind, Keynesians undertook no formative mission; they proposed simply to accept existing consumer preferences and to regulate the economy by manipulating aggregate demand.”

Michael J. Sandel (1953) American political philosopher

1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)

World, Way, Success

“I think what the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war. Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace.”

Wangari Maathai (1940–2011) Kenyan environmental and political activist

Interview in TIME (10 October 2004)

Peace, Nature, Thinking

“I'm the most sampled and stolen. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, too … I got a song about that … But I'm never gonna release it. Don't want a war with the rappers. If it wasn't good, they wouldn't steal it.”

James Brown (1933–2006) American singer, songwriter, musician, and recording artist

"Being James Brown," Rolling Stone Magazine, 2006-06-12.

“However, the most cruel mistake occurred with the failure to understand the Vietnam war. Some people sincerely wanted all wars to stop just as soon as possible; others believed that there should be room for national, or communist, self-determination in Vietnam, or in Cambodia, as we see today with particular clarity. But members of the U. S. anti-war movement wound up being involved in the betrayal of Far Eastern nations, in a genocide and in the suffering today imposed on 30 million people there. Do those convinced pacifists hear the moans coming from there? Do they understand their responsibility today? Or do they prefer not to hear?”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (1918–2008) Russian writer

Harvard University address (1978)

People, Failure, Understanding, Suffering

“It is sometimes a comfort to me to think that the aeroplane is changing the conditions of warfare. In the next great war, we may see that sight unprecedented in all history, a jingo with a bullet-hole in him.”

George Orwell book Homage to Catalonia

Homage to Catalonia (1938)

History, Thinking, Change

“In riding to the hounds, in falconry,
In love or war," as anyone will tell you,
"For one brief joy a hundred woes.”

Francois Villon book Le Testament

"De chiens, d'oyseaulx, d'armes, d'amous,"
Chascun le dit a la vollee,
"Pour une joye cent doulours."
Source: Le Grand Testament (The Great Testament) (1461), Line 622.

Love, Joy

“We have become too civilized to grasp the obvious. For the truth is very simple. To survive you often have to fight, and to fight you have to dirty yourself. War is evil, and it is often the lesser evil. Those who take the sword perish by the sword, and those who don't take the sword perish by smelly diseases.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

§ 1
Looking Back on the Spanish War (1943)

Truth, Disease, Evil, Fight

“The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity.”

Emmanuel Levinas book Totality and Infinity

Context: The moral consciousness can sustain the mocking gaze of the political man only if the certitude of peace dominates the evidence of war. Such a certitude is not obtained by a simple play of antitheses. The peace of empires issued from war rests on war. It does not restore to the alienated beings their lost identity. For that a primordial and original relation with being is needed.

Totality and Infinity (1961)

Peace

“Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions.”

Sun Tzu (-543–-495 BC) ancient Chinese military general, strategist and philosopher from the Zhou Dynasty

Source: The Art of War, Chapter XI · The Nine Battlegrounds

Travel, Speed

“It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

Speech to the Michigan legislature, in Lansing, Michigan (15 May 1952), published in General MacArthur Speeches and Reports 1908-1964 (2000) by Edward T. Imparato, p. 206, much of this was used in speeches of 1951, as quoted in The Twenty-year Revolution from Roosevelt to Eisenhower (1954) by Chesly Manly, p. 3, and Total Insecurity : The Myth Of American Omnipotence (2004) by Carol Brightman, p. 182<!--
Context: It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.

Fear, Parting, Country

“War is an equation with many unknowns; and this already refutes the thesis of invincibility. History does not know invincible armies.”

Lev Mekhlis (1889–1953) Soviet politician

The wars of the past show us that even armies that had won brilliant victories for decades, in some cases were not only defeated but even disintegrated and ceased to exist. Such a fate, for example, befell the army of Napoleon, who for almost two decades kept the whole Europe under its boots. The army needs to instill a spirit of confidence in its power, but not in terms of boasting. Bragging about invincibility brings harm to the army.
Speech to Red Army personnel, 13 May 1940
Source: http://porto-fr.odessa.ua/index.php?art_num=art021&year=2008&nnumb=40

History

“At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

§ 6
"Looking Back on the Spanish War" (1943)
Context: The outcome of the Spanish war was settled in London, Paris, Rome, Berlin — at any rate not in Spain. After the summer of 1937 those with eyes in their heads realized that the Government could not win the war unless there were some profound change in the international set-up, and in deciding to fight on Negrin and the others may have been partly influenced by the expectation that the world war which actually broke out in 1939 was coming in 1938. The much-publicized disunity on the Government side was not a main cause of defeat. The Government militias were hurriedly raised, ill-armed and unimaginative in their military outlook, but they would have been the same if complete political agreement had existed from the start. At the outbreak of war the average Spanish factory-worker did not even know how to fire a rifle (there had never been universal conscription in Spain), and the traditional pacifism of the Left was a great handicap. The thousands of foreigners who served in Spain made good infantry, but there were very few experts of any kind among them. The Trotskyist thesis that the war could have been won if the revolution had not been sabotaged was probably false. To nationalize factories, demolish churches, and issue revolutionary manifestoes would not have made the armies more efficient. The Fascists won because they were the stronger; they had modern arms and the others hadn't. No political strategy could offset that.
The most baffling thing in the Spanish war was the behaviour of the great powers. The war was actually won for Franco by the Germans and Italians, whose motives were obvious enough. The motives of France and Britain are less easy to understand. In 1936 it was clear to everyone that if Britain would only help the Spanish Government, even to the extent of a few million pounds’ worth of arms, Franco would collapse and German strategy would be severely dislocated. By that time one did not need to be a clairvoyant to foresee that war between Britain and Germany was coming; one could even foretell within a year or two when it would come. Yet in the most mean, cowardly, hypocritical way the British ruling class did all they could to hand Spain over to Franco and the Nazis. Why? Because they were pro-Fascist, was the obvious answer. Undoubtedly they were, and yet when it came to the final showdown they chose to stand up to Germany. It is still very uncertain what plan they acted on in backing Franco, and they may have had no clear plan at all. Whether the British ruling class are wicked or merely stupid is one of the most difficult questions of our time, and at certain moments a very important question.

Universe

“Until the United States prosecutes its own leaders, it is guilty of grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, that means war crimes.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

Talk titled "On West Asia" at UC Berkeley, March 21, 2002 http://www.chomsky.info/talks/20020321.htm. Quotes 2000s, 2002 Context: [Israel's military occupation is] in gross violation of international law and has been from the outset. And that much, at least, is fully recognized, even by the United States, which has overwhelming and, as I said, unilateral responsibility for these crimes. So George Bush No. 1, when he was the U. N. ambassador, back in 1971, he officially reiterated Washington's condemnation of Israel's actions in the occupied territories. He happened to be referring specifically to occupied Jerusalem. In his words, actions in violation of the provisions of international law governing the obligations of an occupying power, namely Israel. He criticized Israel's failure "to acknowledge its obligations under the Fourth Geneva Convention as well as its actions which are contrary to the letter and spirit of this Convention." [... ] However, by that time, late 1971, a divergence was developing, between official policy and practice. The fact of the matter is that by then, by late 1971, the United States was already providing the means to implement the violations that Ambassador Bush deplored. [... ] on December 5th [2001], there had been an important international conference, called in Switzerland, on the 4th Geneva Convention. Switzerland is the state that's responsible for monitoring and controlling the implementation of them. The European Union all attended, even Britain, which is virtually a U. S. attack dog these days. They attended. A hundred and fourteen countries all together, the parties to the Geneva Convention. They had an official declaration, which condemned the settlements in the occupied territories as illegal, urged Israel to end its breaches of the Geneva Convention, some "grave breaches," including willful killing, torture, unlawful deportation, unlawful depriving of the rights of fair and regular trial, extensive destruction and appropriation of property not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly. Grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, that's a serious term, that means serious war crimes. The United States is one of the high contracting parties to the Geneva Convention, therefore it is obligated, by its domestic law and highest commitments, to prosecute the perpetrators of grave breaches of the conventions. That includes its own leaders. Until the United States prosecutes its own leaders, it is guilty of grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, that means war crimes. And it's worth remembering the context. It is not any old convention. These are the conventions established to criminalize the practices of the Nazis, right after the Second World War. What was the U. S. reaction to the meeting in Geneva? The U. S. boycotted the meeting... and that has the usual consequence, it means the meeting is null and void, silence in the media.

“I am well acquainted with all the arguments against freedom of thought and speech — the arguments which claim that it cannot exist, and the arguments which claim that it ought not to. I answer simply that they don't convince me and that our civilization over a period of four hundred years has been founded on the opposite notice. For quite a decade past I have believed that the existing Russian régime is a mainly evil thing, and I claim the right to say so, in spite of the fact that we are allies with the USSR in a war which I want to see won. If I had to choose a text to justify myself, I should choose the line from Milton:
: By the known rules of ancient liberty.
The word ancient emphasizes the fact that intellectual freedom is a deep-rooted tradition without which our characteristic western culture could only doubtfully exist. From that tradition many of our intellectuals are visibly turning away. They have accepted the principle that a book should be published or suppressed, praised or damned, not on its merits but according to political expediency. And others who do not actually hold this view assent to it from sheer cowardice.”

George Orwell (1903–1950) English author and journalist

Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison

Books, Freedom, Evil, Past

“There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.”

Anne Frank (1929–1945) victim of the Holocaust and author of a diary

3 May 1944
The Diary of a Young Girl (1942 - 1944)
Context: I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.

People, Rage, Change

Quotes about war page 2

Quotes about war
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