Quotes about war
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Source: Revolution for the Hell of It (1968), p. 187.
“War is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.”
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.
Source: Revolution at the Gates: Selected Writings of Lenin from 1917
Source: The Salmon of Doubt
“Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
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.
“Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.”
“When you smoke (ganja) you don't want to war.”
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
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
"The Problem of Ego Identity" (1956), published in Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 4:56-121
Leonard Bernstein: The Gift Of Music
“Go capture the fort which you could not win by war, but now we've left it at our own will.”
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
Lecture on Srimad Bhagavatam, Canto 6, Chapter 1, verse 6; Sydney; February 17, 1973
Quotes from other Sources, Quotes from other Sources: False Prophecies
Source: A Heap o' Livin' (1916), Our Duty to Our Flag, stanzas 1-2, p. 59.
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
Essays on Catholicism, Liberalism, and Socialism (1879)
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.
“Everyone always did miss everyone else in this war, whenever it was humanly possible to do so.”
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
2011, UN speech to General Assembly (September 2011)
letter to the German rulers (1524), as quoted in The History of Compulsory Education in New England, John William Perrin, 1896
Canto V, lines 28–30 (tr. Charles S. Singleton).
The Divine Comedy (c. 1308–1321), Inferno
"Resolution on the Antiwar Congress of the London Bureau" (July 1936)
Source: Radical Middle (2004), Chapter 3, "Journey to the Radical Middle," p. 22.
1860s, First State of the Union address (1861)
Interview track from Charles Manson Sings (2006)
Dead Man Talking http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/apr/22/mcveigh.usa, The Observer (April 22, 2001)
2000s
"As I Please," Tribune (12 May 1944)<sup> http://alexpeak.com/twr/orwell/quotes/</sup>
"As I Please" (1943–1947)
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
Source: On the Bondage of the Will (1525), p. 241, 253
"How the Poor Die" http://orwell.ru/library/articles/Poor_Die/english/e_pdie, Now (November 1946)
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
“When I hear the term Right wing I think of Hitler and Satan and Civil war.”
Source: Journals (2002), p. 259
1990s, Moab is My Washpot (autobiography, 1997)
From interview with Vreme, May 24, 1993
Interviews (1993 – 1995)
"Revenge is Sour", Tribune (9 November 1945)
“This is the war on terrorism; it's worth fighting for.”
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
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
As I Please column in The Tribune (18 August 1944), http://alexpeak.com/twr/dwall/
"As I Please" (1943–1947)
The Bonehunters (2006)
“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.
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.")
To Leon Goldensohn (28 May 1946)
The Nuremberg Interviews (2004)
Review of The Men I Killed by Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier, CB, CMG, DSO, in New Statesman and Nation (28 August 1937)
1777; quoted by Bert L. Vallée, Alcohol in the Western World, Scientific American, Vol. 278, No. 6 (June), 1998, pp. 80-85
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)
In response to journalist for his views on the future of mankind at his 70th birthday (16 April 1959)
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
Address by His Highness the Aga Khan to the 2006 Convocation of the Aga Khan University, Karachi, Pakistan (2 December 2006)]
Source: Parable of the Talents (1998), Chapter 20 (p. 392)
Letter to Willis Everett, July 4, 1946. Parker, Hitler's Warrior, chapter 14, citing Everett Papers in note 5.
“Changing from the defensive to the offensive, is one of the most delicate operations in war.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
From a review of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf, New English Weekly (21 March 1940)
Source: The Best That Money Can't Buy: Beyond Politics, Poverty, & War (2002), p. 31.
“Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.”
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
Deep Thoughts: Inspiration for the Uninspired (1992), Berkley Books, ISBN 0-425-13365-6
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.”
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".
As quoted in Nkrumah, Gamal (1–7 November 2001)
Al-Ahram Weekly interview (2001)
Speech to Red Army personnel, 13 May 1940
Source: http://www.warmech.ru/1941war/sher_4.html
As quoted in Soviet Strategy and the New Military Thinking (1992) by Derek Leebaert and Timothy Dickinson, p. 68
In Praise of Infantry, The London Times, Thursday, 19 April 1945.
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
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
“In war, groping tactics, half-way measures, lose everything.”
Napoleon : In His Own Words (1916)
“The war [World War 1. ] is founded on a glaring mistake, men have been confused with machines.”
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
1. America's Search for a Public Philosophy
Public Philosophy (2005)
Interview in TIME (10 October 2004)
"Being James Brown," Rolling Stone Magazine, 2006-06-12.
Homage to Catalonia (1938)
"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.
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)
Source: The Art of War, Chapter XI · The Nine Battlegrounds
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.
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
§ 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.
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.
Original preface to Animal Farm; as published in George Orwell: Some Materials for a Bibliography (1953) by Ian R. Willison
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.