Quotes about war
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“…When I recall the war, I recall it in images, not verbally or by text. That’s what really comes to me: fragmented images, much like photographs…”

Rawi Hage (1964) Canadian writer

On how memory plays into his works in “‘What I Fear Most is Homogeneity’: An Interview with Rawi Hage” https://hazlitt.net/feature/what-i-fear-most-homogeneity-interview-rawi-hage in Hazlitt (2018 Sep 12)

“The Government can lose the war without you; they cannot win it without you.”

David Lloyd George (1863–1945) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech to the Trades Union Congress in Bristol (9 September 1915), quoted in The Times (10 September 1915), p. 9
Minister of Munitions

“Kings have to deal with their neighbors, their wives, their children, their prelates or clergy, their nobles, their second-nobles or gentlemen, their merchants, their commons, and their men of war; and from all these arise dangers, if care and circumspection be not used.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626) English philosopher, statesman, scientist, jurist, and author

The Essays Or Counsels, Civil And Moral, Of Francis Ld. Verulam Viscount St. Albans (1857), Of Empire

Children, Men

“What does torture have in common with genocide, slavery and wars of aggression? They are all “jus cogens.” That’s Latin for “higher law” or “compelling law.””

Marjorie Cohn (1948) American law professor

This means that under international law, no country can ever pass a law that allows torture. There can be no immunity from criminal liability for violation of a “jus cogens” prohibition. The United States has always prohibited torture — in our Constitution, laws, executive orders, judicial decisions and treaties. When we ratify a treaty, it becomes part of US law under the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution. “No exceptional circumstances whatsoever, whether a state of war or a threat of war, internal political instability or any other public emergency, may be invoked as a justification for torture,” the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, which the US ratified, states unequivocally. Torture is considered a grave breach of the Geneva Conventions, also ratified by the United States. Geneva classifies grave breaches as war crimes. The US War Crimes Act and 18 USC, sections 818 and 3231, punish torture, willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, and inhuman, humiliating or degrading treatment. And the Torture Statute criminalizes the commission, attempt, or conspiracy to commit torture outside the United States. State-Sanctioned Torture in the Age of Trump https://truthout.org/articles/state-sanctioned-torture-in-the-age-of-trump/, by Marjorie Cohn, Truthout (23 January 2017)

Law

“The great challenge before us is to find a way to get people and nations working together in the positive and rewarding task of peace as they have repeatedly joined together in the senseless and destructive waging of war.”

Walter Reuther (1907–1970) Labor union leader

Address before the Indian Council of World Affairs, New Delhi, India, April 5, 1956, as quoted in Walter P Reuther: Selected Papers (1961), by Henry M. Christman, p. 141
1950s, Address before the Indian Council on World Affairs (1956)

Way, Peace, People

“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

Statement on Twitter https://twitter.com/JustinTrudeau/status/825438460265762816 affirming Canada's commitment to refugee resettlement in the wake of President Donald Trump's controversial executive order https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_13769 banning immigrants, refugees and travelers of primarily Muslim origin from entering the United States, January 28, 2017

Faith

“I thought it was great. The best one. Better than The Empire Strikes Back and Star Wars.”

Justin Trudeau (1971) 23rd Prime Minister of Canada; eldest son of Pierre Trudeau

Eleven-year-old Justin Trudeau, after attending a screening https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqjQ6gqgi0w of Return of the Jedi with his father, Pierre Trudeau, in 1983 Context: before leading Liberals

Star

“The United States of America fought a horrific civil war that ended slavery. Yes, slavery was the reason for the Civil War.”

Dennis Prager (1948) American writer, speaker, radio and TV commentator, theologian

Source: 2010s, Why the Left Hates America (2015)

“An artist is the magician put among men to gratify — capriciously — their urge for immortality. The temples are built and brought down around him, continuously and contiguously, from Troy to the fields of Flanders. If there is any meaning in any of it, it is in what survives as art, yes even in the celebration of tyrants, yes even in the celebration of nonentities. What now of the Trojan War if it had been passed over by the artist's touch? Dust. A forgotten expedition prompted by Greek merchants looking for new markets. A minor redistribution of broken pots. But it is we who stand enriched, by a tale of heroes, of a golden apple, a wooden horse, a face that launched a thousand ships — and above all, of Ulysses, the wanderer, the most human, the most complete of all heroes — husband, father, son, lover, farmer, soldier, pacifist, politician, inventor and adventurer.”

Tom Stoppard Travesties

Joyce, Act I
Stoppard called this "the most important" speech in the play
Source: Travesties (1974)

Art, Horse, Relation ships, Lovers

“I'm tired of America always doing everybody else's fighting. I'm tired of America always paying for everybody else's war.
What is the one thing that brings Republicans and Democrats together? War! They love it. The more the better.”

Rand Paul (1963) American politician, ophthalmologist, and United States Senator from Kentucky

4 February 2019 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-hCP5Tp4Nw, excerpt from 5 February 2019 article on Reason https://reason.com/blog/2019/02/05/rand-paul-criticizes-bipartisan-support, there is a full transcript https://votesmart.org/public-statement/1319881/strengthening-americas-security-in-the-middle-east-act-of#.XKGWiJhKjIU from VoteSmart's list of his public statements https://votesmart.org/candidate/public-statements/117285/rand-paul 2019

Fight, Love, Making love

“This is nothing but a political persecution. It`s not even an investigation. This is purely and straightforwardly an assault. I want to talk about what these lazy, indolent, passive son of a guns can do on a declaration of war against the radical dems against the president and the American republic.”

Lou Dobbs (1945) American Television Host

5 March 2019 http://www.msnbc.com/transcripts/all-in/2019-03-05

“Atomic war is inevitable. It will destroy half of humanity: it is going to destroy immense human riches. It is very possible. The atomic war is going to provoke a true inferno on Earth. But it will not impede Communism.”

J. Posadas (1912–1981) Argentine Trotskyist (1912-1981)

Attributed
War is Not the End of the World, 1972

Communication

“Peace with Germany and Japan on our terms will not bring much rest to you and me (if I am still responsible). As I observed last time, when the war of the giants is over, the war of the pygmies will begin.”

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

Telegram to FDR, March 18, 1945 http://www.churchillarchiveforschools.com/themes/the-themes/anglo-american-relations/just-how-special-was-the-special-relationship-in-the-Second-World-War-Part-2-1942-44/the-sources/source-7 Post-war years (1945–1955)

Peace, Time

“For me personally, I am deeply saddened that there has never managed to be an annihilation of the human species, in spite of of plague and war, the latter seeming the ultimately ironic kind of self-serving apocalypse showing the absolute idiocy of the human being the pinnacle of the pyramid of life. While the earth is in the grip of the apocalypse the anthropocene delivers, humans fear an apocalypse that our consumerism, our greed and our narcissism welcomes.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Future in the Age of the Apocalypse, pp. 176-177
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Life, Personality, Self-confidence, Fear

“The Church of Euthanasia has as its four stations of the cross sodomy, suicide, abortion and cannibalism. In their activism towards the end of human life on the planet, their posthumanism interestingly resonates with human minoritarian activism. Roughly, these correlate as sodomy with queer (where sodomy is defined as any non-reproductive sexual act, including masturbation, asexuality and heterosexual intercourse with no intention of procreation), abortion with female/feminist sexuate rights, cannibalism with animal rights, where human carcasses are used as a source of food instead of murdering animals, and suicide with agency over one's own life and thus death, including euthanasia with disability rights in reference to the right to die versus the enforcement of life on those who express a wish to die but cannot execute their own death. It shouldn't need to be pointed out that neither group advocates murder or eugenics (however ironically that may sit considering the murder advocated by sanctioned capital and war machines). These are two of the longest established of now many groups advocating human extinction.”

Patricia MacCormack Australian Scholar

Embracing Death, pp. 143-144
The Ahuman Manifesto: Activism for the End of the Anthropocene (2020)

Life, Food, Animals, Suicide

“Asia gave us dowry deaths and the caste system. Africa elevated famine to an art form. North America cultivated chattel slavery for far longer than I would have dared hope; South America has done things with political oppression that I am obliged to call brilliant; Australia showed the world that the only good aborigine is a dead aborigine; and Antarctica has fabulous weather. Of all the continents that constitute Earth’s terrain, however, Europe remains dearest to my heart and closest to my soul.
I allude here not to the sweatshops, the world wars, or totalitarian socialism (though none of these innovations has escaped my notice) but to the fact that the European imagination endowed me with a degree of glamour—you might even say charm—that in pre-coma times enabled me to function with extraordinary effectiveness. The concept of an Evil One is intrinsic to Islam, of course; the ancient Hebrews had their “adversary,” their satan; the Egyptians feared a dark deity called Set; Zoroastrians believed in Ahriman, essence of destruction (forever warring with Ohrmazd, source of all things bright and beautiful). But only in Christian Europe did the Prince of Hell acquire a personality as vivid and endearing as any you will meet in a Dickens novel.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

Source: Blameless in Abaddon (1996), Chapter 11 (p. 253; spoken by the Devil)

Soul, Hell, Imagination, Time

“The bugle echoes shrill and sweet,
But not of war it sings to-day.
The road is rhythmic with the feet
⁠Of men-at-arms who come to pray. The roses blossom white and red
⁠On tombs where weary soldiers lie;
Flags wave above the honored dead
⁠And martial music cleaves the sky. Above their wreath-strewn graves we kneel,
⁠They kept the faith and fought the fight.
Through flying lead and crimson steel
⁠They plunged for Freedom and the Righteousness. May we, their grateful children, learn
⁠Their strength, who lie beneath this sod,
Who went through fire and death to earn
⁠At last the accolade of God.In shining rank on rank arrayed
They march, the legions of the Lord;
He is their Captain unafraid,
The Prince of Peace . . . Who brought a sword.”

Joyce Kilmer Trees and Other Poems

"Memorial Day"; this poem was later published in The Army and Navy Hymnal (1920)
Trees and Other Poems (1914)

Singing, Peace, Faith, Dead

“War is a bloody business, a killing business.”

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

Source: George S. Patton's speech to the Third Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton%27s_speech_to_the_Third_Army

Business

“My men don't dig foxholes. Foxholes only slow up an offensive. Keep moving. We'll win this war, but we'll win it only by fighting and showing the Germans that we've got more guts than they have or ever will have.”

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

Source: George S. Patton's speech to the Third Army https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton%27s_speech_to_the_Third_Army

Fight, Men

“As Miss Universe I can reach people who are usually not interested in politics and are not familiar with the problems of the Mideast. In that way I can make a modest contribution to peace. And another thing: as Miss Universe I can show the world that life in Israel is not all war.”

Rina Mor (1956) Israeli lawyer and former Miss Universe

"Miss Universe Captivates New York" (1976)

Peace, People, Universe, Problem

“I'm no politician. I think my being Miss Universe will show people that Israel has another side, not only war.”

Rina Mor (1956) Israeli lawyer and former Miss Universe

"Miss Universe Captivates New York" (1976)

Universe, Thinking, People

“Many of the qualities your son develops to kill in war—or be a hero at work—undermine the qualities it takes to love at home.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 68

Love, Home, Making love

“To win wars, we had to train our sons to be disposable. We honored boys if they died so we could live. We called them heroes.”

Warren Farrell (1943) author, spokesperson, expert witness, political candidate

Source: The Boy Crisis (2018), pp. 36

Training, Boy

“He [the British taxpayer] must be taught that war is not precise or economical. It is almost inconceivably wasteful and extravagant. It burns the house to roast the pig, and even then seldom roasts him effectively..... waste is the law of modern war; and nothing is cheap on the battlefield except the lives of men...... Therefore, my taxpayer, resign yourself to this: that we may fight bravely, fight hard, fight long, fight cunningly, fight recklessly, fight in a hundred and fifty ways, but we cannot fight cheaply.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

The Daily Chronicle on the 7 March 1917 https://www.rte.ie/centuryireland/index.php/articles/george-bernard-shaw-joyriding-on-the-front. 1910s, The Technique of War (1917)

Housing, Law, Way, Fight

“All those countless battles—those endless, and... for the greater part, useless wars, of which... fills up for so many thousand years... are but little atoms compared with the great whole of human destiny.”

Karl Wilhelm Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) German poet, critic and scholar

The Philosophy of History (1852), Lecture I.

Parting

“The aims and ideals of the Soviet revolution inspired the patriotic enthusiasm of millions of people in the 1930s, during World War II, and in the postwar reconstruction period. This explains the Soviet Union's great leap forward, the achievement of a high level of industrial capacity in a very short time, the transformation of the Soviet Union into a major power in terms of science and culture. The historic victory in the Great Patriotic War against Nazism, which was a surprise not only for Hitler but also for the Western democracies is also explained by what we have said above. All this is true. But the historical truth is also that the regime and the system abused the faith of the people in these high ideals, turning them to its own advantage. Rule by the people, equality, justice, and the promise of a happy future — all these ideas were utilized for the sake of maintaining and strengthening totalitarianism.”

Mikhail Gorbachev (1931) General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

1990s, On My Country and the World (1999)

Democracy, Faith, Justice, Time

“...my extreme anxiety about the Object of our common sollicitude and my clear and decided conviction, that there is one part of the War, which instead of being postponed and considered in a secondary light, ought to have priority over every other, and requires our most early and our most careful attention; I mean La Vendée. ... This is a War directly against Jacobinism and its principles. It strikes at the Enemy in his weakest and most vulnerable part. At La Vendée with infinitely less Charge, we may make an impression likely to be decisive. This goes to the heart of the Business.”

Edmund Burke (1729–1797) Anglo-Irish statesman

Letter to the Home Secretary Henry Dundas (8 October 1793), quoted in P. J. Marshall and John A. Woods (eds.), The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, Volume VII: January 1792–August 1794 (1968), p. 445
1790s

Business, Light, Heart, Decision

“No citizen should be permitted to become a member of or contribute to any organization whose members are pledged, or have ever been pledged, to tender prior loyalty to any state other than the United States, or to defend any state other than the United States in case of war, except as in such a war the United States might formally be allied with another power.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "Let the Record Speak" 1939, “The Truth about Communism” https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015051180423&view=1up&seq=5 (1948), p. 16

Loyalty

“I see the nations of the world arming in ways that have never before been known in the modern world. I am not speaking of new forms of poison gas, heavier or swifter bombing planes, or parachutes to land brigades of soldiers… What is revolutionary is that the minds of men, women and children are being deliberately trained, directed, distorted, by every conceivable instrument of education and propaganda, to make them tolerant of war, receptive of war, prepared for war, lovers of war. The greatest menace in the world today is not poison gas. There are gas masks against that. The menace is poisoned words, poisoned ideas.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Dorothy Thompson’s Political Guide: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
Source: A Study of American Liberalism and its Relationship to Modern Totalitarian States (1938)
pp. 33-34

Children, World, Way, Lovers

“All my life I have been a pacifist. All my life I have hated war and loved peace. I have contributed to peace societies, written for peace, spoken for peace, paraded for peace. But today I seriously question whether our ways of seeking peace are not playing directly into the hands of those who love war and intend to pursue it.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Peace, Hate, Question, Way

“The communist theory is that a world war is inevitable; that in that war, if they play their cards well, the democracies will be lined up against the fascist dictatorships, and that the result of the war will be the triumph of Communism all over the world. Their chief program now is to get the democracies so lined up.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

World, Democracy, Communication

“God pity us indeed, for we are human,
And do not always see
The vision when it comes, the shining change,
Or, if we see it, do not follow it,
Because it is too hard, too strange, too new,
Too unbelievable, too difficult,
Warring too much with common, easy ways,
And now I know this, standing in this light,
Who have been half alive these many years,
Brooding on my own sorrow, my own pain,
Saying "I am a barren bough. Expect
Nor fruit nor blossom from a barren bough."”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Innkeeper's wife
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

God, Pain, Light, Way

“Outcasts of war, misfits, rebellious souls,
Seekers of some vague kingdom in the stars —
They hide out in the hills and stir up trouble,
Call themselves prophets, too, and prophesy
That something new is coming to the world,
The Lord knows what! Well, it's a long time coming,
And, meanwhile, we're the wheat between the stones.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Innkeeper
Source: A Child is Born (1942)

Soul, Time, Star, World

“For the man crucified on the crossed machine guns
Without name, without resurrection, without stars,
His dark head heavy with death and his flesh long sour
With the smell of his many prisons — John Smith, John Doe,
John Nobody — oh, crack your mind for his name!
Faceless as water, naked as the dust,
Dishonored as the earth the gas-shells poison
And barbarous with portent.
This is he.
This is the man they ate at the green table
Putting their gloves on ere they touched the meat.
This is the fruit of war, the fruit of peace,
The ripeness of invention, the new lamb,
The answer to the wisdom of the wise.
And still he hangs, and still he will not die
And still, on the steel city of our years
The light falls and the terrible blood streams down.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Litany for Dictatorships (1935)

Peace, Light, Star, Water

“I stumbled, slipped... and all was gone
That I had gained. Once more I lay
Before the long bright Hell of ice.
And still the light was far away.
There was red mist before my eyes
Or I could tell you how I went
Across the swaying firmament,
A glittering torture of cold stars,
And how I fought in Titan wars...
And died... and lived again upon
The rack... and how the horses strain
When their red task is nearly done. . .
I only know that there was Pain,
Infinite and eternal Pain.
And that I fell — and rose again.”

Stephen Vincent Benét (1898–1943) poet, short story writer, novelist

Source: Young Adventure (1918), The Quality of Courage

Pain, Hell, Light, Star

“One of the most dangerous words is 'extremist'. A person who commits acts of violence is not an 'extremist'; he is a criminal. If he commits those acts of violence with the object of detaching part of the territory of the United Kingdom and attaching it to a foreign country, he is an enemy under arms. There is the world of difference between a citizen who commits a crime, in the belief, however mistaken, that he is thereby helping to preserve the integrity of his country and his right to remain a subject of his sovereign, and a person, be he citizen or alien, who commits a crime with the intention of destroying that integrity and rendering impossible that allegiance. The former breaches the peace; the latter is executing an act of war. The use of the word 'extremist' of either or both conveys a dangerous untruth: it implies that both hold acceptable opinions and seek permissible ends, only that they carry them to 'extremes'. Not so: the one is a lawbreaker; the other is an enemy.The same purpose, that of rendering friend and foe indistinguishable, is achieved by references to the 'impartiality' of the British troops and to their function as 'keeping the peace.'”

Enoch Powell (1912–1998) British politician

The British forces are in Northern Ireland because an avowed enemy is using force of arms to break down lawful authority in the province and thereby seize control. The army cannot be 'impartial' towards an enemy, nor between the aggressor and the aggressed: they are not glorified policemen, restraining two sets of citizens who might otherwise do one another harm, and duty bound to show no 'partiality' towards one lawbreaker rather than another. They are engaged in defeating an armed attack upon the state. Once again, the terminology is designed to obliterate the vital difference between friend and enemy, loyal and disloyal.Then there are the 'no-go' areas which have existed for the past eighteen months. It would be incredible, if it had not actually happened, that for a year and a half there should be areas in the United Kingdom where the Queen's writ does not run and where the citizen is protected, if protected at all, by persons and powers unknown to the law. If these areas were described as what they are—namely, pockets of territory occupied by the enemy, as surely as if they had been captured and held by parachute troops—then perhaps it would be realised how preposterous is the situation. In fact the policy of refraining from the re-establishment of civil government in these areas is as wise as it would be to leave enemy posts undisturbed behind one's lines.
Source: Speech to the South Buckinghamshire Conservative Women's Annual Luncheon in Beaconsfield (19 March 1971), from Reflections of a Statesman. The Writings and Speeches of Enoch Powell (1991), pp. 487-488

Peace, Country, Personality, Help

“I am talking about the accumulated evidence of the last 5 years that our present tax system, developed as it was, in good part, during World War II to restrain growth, exerts too heavy a drag on growth in peace time; that it siphons out of the private economy too large a share of personal and business purchasing power; that it reduces the financial incentives for personal effort, investment, and risk-taking. In short, to increase demand and lift the economy, the Federal Government's most useful role is not to rush into a program of excessive increases in public expenditures, but to expand the incentives and opportunities for private expenditures. [...] While rising demand will expand imports, new investment in more efficient productive facilities will aid exports and a new economic climate could both draw capital from abroad and keep capital here at home.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Address and Question and Answer Period at the Economic Club of New York

Home, Peace, Drawing, Time

“In conclusion, let me emphasize one point: that we are determined, as a nation in 1961 that freedom shall survive and succeed--and whatever the peril and set-backs, we have some very large advantages. The first is the simple fact that we are on the side of liberty--and since the beginning of history, and particularly since the end of the Second World War, liberty has been winning out all over the globe. A second great asset is that we are not alone. We have friends and allies all over the world who share our devotion to freedom. [...] A third asset is our desire for peace. It is sincere, and I believe the world knows it. [...] Yet it is important to know that our patience at the bargaining table is nearly inexhaustible, though our credulity is limited-that our hopes for peace are unfailing, while our determination to protect our security is resolute.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Peace, History, Freedom, Hope

“I cannot end this discussion of defense and armaments without emphasizing our strongest hope: the creation of an orderly world where disarmament will be possible. Our aims do not prepare for war--they are efforts to discourage and resist the adventures of others that could end in war.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

World, Hope, Effort

“A prince ought to have no other aim or thought, nor select anything else for his study, than war and its rules and discipline; for this is the sole art that belongs to him who rules, and it is of such force that it not only upholds those who are born princes, but it often enables men to rise from a private station to that rank. And, on the contrary, it is seen that when princes have thought more of ease than of arms they have lost their states. And the first cause of your losing it is to neglect this art; and what enables you to acquire a state is to be master of the art.”

Niccolo Machiavelli book The Prince

Source: The Prince (1513), Ch. 14; translated by W. K. Marriot

Art, Study, Men

“I'm interested in truth, I like science. But truth's a menace, science is a public danger. As dangerous as it's been beneficent. … It's curious … to read what people in the time of Our Ford used to write about scientific progress. They seemed to imagine that it could go on indefinitely, regardless of everything else. Knowledge was the highest good, truth the supreme value; all the rest was secondary and subordinate. True, ideas were beginning to change even then. Our Ford himself did a great deal to shift the emphasise from truth and beauty to comfort and happiness. Mass production demanded the shift. Universal happiness keeps the wheels steadily turning; truth and beauty can't. And, of course, whenever the masses seized political power, then it was happiness rather than truth and beauty that mattered. Still, in spite of everything, unrestricted scientific resarch was still permitted. People still went on talking about truth and beauty as though they were sovereign goods. Right up to the time of the Nine Years' War. That made them change their tune all right. What's the point of truth or beauty or knowledge when the anthrax bombs are popping all around you? That was when science first began to be controlled — after the Nine Years' War. People were ready to have even their appetites controlled then. Anything for a quiet life. We've gone on controlling ever since. It hasn't been very good for truth, of course. But it's been very good for happiness. One can't have something for nothing. Happiness has got to be paid for.”

Aldous Huxley book Brave New World

Source: Brave New World (1932), Mustapha Mond, in Ch. 16

Imagination, Reading, Time, Beauty

“If you intrust independent executive and legislative power to the Government of Ireland, can you say it will never be hostile? On the contrary...you know that a very considerable proportion of the population of Ireland is unfortunately at this time, and has been for generations past, animated with the most bitter sentiments against England. Well, is there any impediment to prevent them in case of some European war, where you might be fighting for your existence, is there anything to prevent the Government of an independent Ireland...from placing those splendid harbours which lie opposite you at the disposal of a foreign fleet?”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Speech in Bristol (22 April 1889), quoted in The Times (24 April 1889), p. 6

Time, Hostility, Past, Animals

“The hurricane that has swept us away is so strange & new a phenomenon that we shall not for some time understand its real meaning. ... It seems to me to be inspired by some definite desire for change: & means business. It may disappear as rapidly as it came: or it may be the beginning of a serious war of classes. Gladstone is doing all he can to give it the latter meaning.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: Letter to Arthur Balfour after the Conservative defeat in the general election (10 April 1880), quoted in Salisbury–Balfour Correspondence, ed. Robin Harcourt Williams (1988), p. 40

Time, Understanding, Business, Change

“The really remarkable fact which is to be inferred from the conduct of the Southern States is, the genuine alarm with which they regarded the workings of Democracy. ... They had acted in partnership with one for seventy years. They had watched it ripening year by year to the full development of mob supremacy. ... They deliberately decided that civil war, with all its horrors, and with all its peculiar risks to themselves as slaveowners, was a lighter evil than to be surrendered to the justice or the clemency of a victorious Democracy. It is not for Europe to dispute the accuracy of their judgment.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Source: 'Democracy on its Trial', Quarterly Review, 110, 1861, p. 274

Democracy, Partnership, Justice, Victory

“This Administration has been looking hard at exactly what civil defense can and cannot do. It cannot be obtained cheaply. It cannot give an assurance of blast protection that will be proof against surprise attack or guaranteed against obsolescence or destruction. And it cannot deter a nuclear attack. We will deter an enemy from making a nuclear attack only if our retaliatory power is so strong and so invulnerable that he knows he would be destroyed by our response. If we have that strength, civil defense is not needed to deter an attack. If we should ever lack it, civil defense would not be an adequate substitute. But this deterrent concept assumes rational calculations by rational men. And the history of this planet, and particularly the history of the 20th century, is sufficient to remind us of the possibilities of an irrational attack, a miscalculation, an accidental war, for a war of escalation in which the stakes by each side gradually increase to the point of maximum danger which cannot be either foreseen or deterred. It is on this basis that civil defense can be readily justifiable--as insurance for the civilian population in case of an enemy miscalculation. It is insurance we trust will never be needed--but insurance which we could never forgive ourselves for foregoing in the event of catastrophe. Once the validity of this concept is recognized, there is no point in delaying the initiation of a nation-wide long-range program of identifying present fallout shelter capacity and providing shelter in new and existing structures. Such a program would protect millions of people against the hazards of radioactive fallout in the event of large-scale nuclear attack. Effective performance of the entire program not only requires new legislative authority and more funds, but also sound organizational arrangements.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1961, Speech to Special Joint Session of Congress

Forgiveness, History, Strong, People

“Even the victor in a just cause is susceptible to the passions which war arouses. Every inhuman feeling is at once exacerbated. Truth, decency, morality, justice are the first casualties in any war. The accumulated effect makes a just settlement impossible. ... The pacifist treasures justice, liberty; but he believes that they can only be lastingly secured by peaceable means and that the use of force will only contaminate them. ... Armaments themselves provide an independent cause of war owing to the suspicion and fear which they breed. ... Unilateral disarmament offers the only way to escape once the policy of collateral disarmament has failed.”

Michael Foot (1913–2010) British politician

Source: Article in Young Oxford and War (1934), quoted in Mervyn Jones, Michael Foot (1994), p. 30

Justice, Truth, Passion, Way

“No one knows better than I with forty years' political experience that policy--particularly a revolutionary policy--has its tactical requirements. I recognised the Soviets in 1924. In 1934, I signed with them a treaty of commerce and friendship. I, therefore, understood that, especially as Ribbentrop's forecast about the non-intervention of Britain and France has not come off, you are obliged to avoid the second front [with Russia]. You have had to pay for this in that Russia has, without striking a blow, been the great profiteer of the war in Poland and the Baltic. But I, who was born a revolutionary and have not modified my revolutionary mentality, tell you that you cannot permanently sacrifice the principles of your revolution to the tactical requirements of a given moment... I have also the definite duty to add that a further step in the relations with Moscow would have catastrophic repercussions in Italy, where the unanimity of anti-Bolshevik feeling is absolute, granite-hard, and unbreakable. Permit me to think that this will not happen. The solution of your Lebensraum is in Russia, and nowhere else... The day when we shall have demolished Bolshevism we shall have kept faith with both our revolutions. Then it will be the turn of the great democracies, who will not be able to survive the cancer which gnaws them...”

Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) Duce and President of the Council of Ministers of Italy. Leader of the National Fascist Party and subsequen…

1930s
Source: Letter to Hitler, quoted in Winston Churchill's The Gathering Storm

Democracy, Faith, Friendship, Thinking

“It is very sad, but I'm afraid America is bound to forge ahead and nothing can restore the equality between us. If we had interfered in the Confederate War it was then possible for us to reduce the power of the United States to manageable proportions. But two such chances are not given to a nation in the course of its career.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Letter to Lord Selborne after J.P. Morgan acquired a predominating influence in Cunard, White Star and other shipping lines (13 March 1902)
Source: Quoted in Andrew Roberts, Lord Salisbury: Victorian Titan (1999), p. 50 and David Steele, 'The Place of Germany in Salisbury's Foreign Policy, 1878-1902', in Adolf M. Birke, Magnus Brechtken and Alaric Searle (eds.), An Anglo-German Dialogue: The Munich Lectures on the History of International Relations (2000), p. 67

Sadness, Chance

“...the major objective of Brazilian society is the strengthening of peace. We believe that the ideological conflict between West and East cannot and should not be solved militarily, because if in a nuclear war we saved our lives, we would not be able to save, whether we won or were won, our reason for living.”

João Goulart (1918–1976) 24th President of Brazil

Source: João Goulart: Uma Biografia. Jorge Ferreira. 2011. Page 276. ISBN 978-85-200-1056-3

Peace

“Look—I understand that many of my fellow Americans view the future with fear and trepidation. I understand they worry about their jobs. I understand like my dad, they lay in bed wondering, can I keep my health care, can I pay my mortgage. Thinking about their families, about what comes next. I promise you, I get it.But the answer is not to turn inward, to retreat into competing factions, distrusting those who don′t look like you or worship the way you do or don′t get their news from the same source as you do. We must end this uncivil war that pits red against blue, rural versus urban, conservative versus liberal. We can do this if we open our souls instead of hardening our hearts.If we show a little tolerance and humility, and if we are willing to stand in the other person′s shoes—as my mom would say—just for a moment, stand in their shoes. Because here′s the thing about life: there′s no accounting for what fate will deal you.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Family, Soul, Life, Understanding

“Soldiers of the Reich! This day, you are to take part in an offensive of such importance that the whole future of the war may depend on its outcome. More than anything else, your victory will show the whole world that resistance to the power of the German Army is hopeless.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

In a message to German soldiers at the start of the Battle of Kursk, 5 July 1943, as quoted in Kursk by Rupert Matthews
1940s

Dependency, Future, Victory, World

“Churchill is the very type of a corrupt journalist. There's not a worse prostitute in politics. He himself has written that it's unimaginable what can be done in war with the help of lies. He's an utterly amoral, repulsive creature. I'm convinced that he has his place of refuge ready beyond the Atlantic. He obviously won't seek sanctuary in Canada. In Canada he'd be beaten up. He'll go to his friends the Yankees. As soon as this damnable winter is over, we'll remedy all that.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

18 February 1942, quoted in Hitler's Table Talk, 1941–1944
1940s

Winter, Help

“If I had known that the figures for Russian tank strength which you gave in your book were in fact the true ones, I would not—I believe—ever have started this war.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

1940s
Source: Said to General Heinz Guderian, 4 August 1941, as quoted Panzer Leader (1952) by Heinz Guderian

Books

“England, unlike in 1914, will not allow herself to blunder into a war lasting for years… Such is the fate of rich countries… Not even England has the money nowadays to fight a world war. What should England fight for? You don't get yourself killed for an ally.”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

14 August 1939, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L. Shirer
1930s

Money, Fate, Country, World

“War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight. Armies are not called out to dig trenches, to throw up breastworks, to live in camps, but to find the enemy and strike him; to invade his country, and do him all possible damage in the shortest possible time. This will involve great destruction of life and property while it lasts; but such a war will of necessity be of brief continuance, and so would be an economy of life and property in the end. To move swiftly, strike vigorously, and secure all the fruits of victory is the secret of successful war.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

As quoted in Stonewall Jackson and the American Civil War (1904) by George Francis Robert Henderson http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/12233, Ch. 25 : The Soldier and the Man, p. 481 Q him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow…]]

Time, Success, Business, Country

“If the general government should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war. It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils.”

Thomas Jackson (1824–1863) Confederate general

Comments to his pastor (April 1861) as quoted in Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by His Widow Mary Anna Jackson (1895) http://books.google.com/books?id=bG2vg5cH004C, Ch. IX : War Clouds — 1860 - 1861, p. 141; This has sometimes been paraphrased as "War is the sum of all evils." Before Jackson's application of the term "The sum of all evils" to war, it had also been applied to slavery by abolitionist Cassius Marcellus Clay in The Writings of Cassius Marcellus Clay : Including Speeches and Addresses (1848), p. 445; to death by Georg Christian Knapp in Lectures on Christian Theology (1845), p. 404; and it had also been used, apparently in relation to arroganceus hours I received only one wound, the breaking of the longest finger of my left hand; but the doctor says the finger may be saved. It was broken about midway between the hand and knuckle, the ball passing on the side next to the forefinger. Had it struck the centre, I should have lost the finger. My horse was wounded, but not killed. Your coat got an ugly wound near the hip, but my servant, who is very handy, has so far repaired it that it doesn't show very much. My preservation was entirely due, as was the glorious victory, to our God, to whom be all the honor, praise, and glory. The battle was the hardest that I have ever been in, but not near so hot in its fire. Letter to his wife after the First Battle of Bull Run (22 July 1861); as quoted in Memoirs of Stonewall Jackson by His Widow Mary Anna Jackson (1895) http://books.google.com/books?id=bG2vg5cH004C, Ch. XI : The First Battle of Manassas, p. 178 Q him, never let up in the pursuit so long as your men have strength to follow…]]

Pain, Making love, Evil

“I know speaking of unity can sound to some like a foolish fantasy these days. I know that the forces that divide us are deep and they are real. But I also know they are not new. Our history has been a constant struggle between the American ideal that we all are created equal, and the harsh ugly reality that racism, nativism, fear, demonization have long torn us apart.The battle is perennial, and victory is never assured. Through civil war, the great depression, World War, 9/11, through struggle, sacrifices, and setbacks, our better angels have always prevailed. In each of these moments, enough of us have come together to carry all of us forward, and we can do that now.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

History, Victory, Angels, Reality

“[T]he American story depends not on any one of us, not on some of us, but on all of us, on we the people, who seek a more perfect union. This is a great nation. We are good people. And over the centuries, through storm and strife, in peace and in war, we′ve come so far, but we still have far to go.We′ll press forward with speed and urgency, for we have much to do in this winter of peril and significant possibilities. Much to repair, much to restore, much to heal, much to build, and much to gain. Few people in our nation′s history have been more challenged or found a time more challenging or difficult than the time we′re in now.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

2021, January, Presidential Inaugural Address (2021)

Peace, Time, Dependency, History

“Addicted to war? Not us. Still, all in all, it’s quite a record and let’s not forget that looming on the horizon is another possible war, this time with Iran, a country that the men overseeing the invasion of Iraq in 2003 (including present National Security Advisor John Bolton) were eager to go after even then. “Everyone wants to go to Baghdad,” so the saying reputedly went in Washington at the time. “Real men want to go to Tehran.””

Tom Engelhardt (1944) American writer

And it’s just possible that, in 2019, Bolton and crew will be able to act on that much delayed urge. Considering the history of American wars in these years, what could possibly go wrong? We’re Not the Good Guys, CounterPunch https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/07/04/were-not-the-good-guys/ (4 July 2019)

Time, Country, Forgetting, Men

“Being an optimist, I am still hopeful that it may end in the division of Spain geographically into two states. But, above all, I want the war to come to an end and not to extend.”

John Maynard Keynes (1883–1946) British economist

Letter to Kingsley Martin on the Spanish Civil War (9 August 1937), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931–45 (1968), p. 257
1930s

Hope

“true wars are never won”

E.E. Cummings book 1 × 1

Source: 1 x 1 (1944), XXX

“The peace we seek and need means much more than mere absence of war. It means the acceptance of law, and the fostering of justice, in all the world.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Radio and Television Report to the American People on the Developments in Eastern Europe and the Middle East (October 31, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20210125121539/https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes from the original https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes on January 25, 2021. 1950s

Peace, Justice, Law, World

“The only way to win the next world war is to prevent it.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American general and politician, 34th president of the United States (in office from 1953 to 1961)

Address at a Rally in the Civic Auditorium, Seattle, Washington (October 17, 1956). Source: Eisenhower Presidential Library. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20210125121539/https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes from the original https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes on January 25, 2021. 1950s

World, Way

“Millions of Germans follow Hitler because he has proclaimed war upon the banks, upon the trusts, upon ‘loan-capital.’ He has asserted time and time again that he will abolish the rule of one class by another.”

Dorothy Thompson (1893–1961) American journalist and radio broadcaster

Source: "I Saw Hitler" 1932, p. 17

Time

“Endless wars persist (and in some cases have even intensified); the nation’s various alliances and its empire of overseas bases remain intact; US troops are still present in something like 140 countries; Pentagon and national security state spending continues to increase astronomically.”

Andrew Bacevich (1947) United States Army officer

Quoted in Patriotic Dissent: How a Working-Class Soldier Turned Against “Forever Wars”, by Steve Early and Suzanne Gordon, https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/07/24/patriotic-dissent-how-a-working-class-soldier-turned-against-forever-wars/ CounterPunch, (24 July 2020)

Country

“You don't have to war with a woman, you just get lost. Better to make love.”

Prevale (1983) Italian DJ and producer

Original: (it) Non ti conviene fare la guerra con una donna, ci perdi e basta. Meglio farci l'amore.
Source: prevale.net

Love, Making love

“We cannot call up an army of peace but we can call up a spiritual army to implore peace, so that the fact that one day of peace is better than years of war will penetrate peoples’ consciences.”

Eduardo Martínez Somalo (1927–2021) cardinal of the Catholic Church

Cardinal Martinez reiterates Pope’s call for peace https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/cardinal_martinez_reiterates_popes_call_for_peace (August 9, 2006)

Peace, People

“But I don’t believe in a civil war. No matter how agitated the atmosphere gets and no matter how hard the president and his advisers try to aggravate the situation, I am absolutely confident of the people’s common sense.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

1990s, There won't be a civil war (1991)

Confidence, People, Self-confidence, Sense

“I told NATO, the Americans, the Germans, don't push us towards military action. Otherwise there will be a European war for sure and possibly world war.”

Boris Yeltsin (1931–2007) 1st President of Russia and Chairman of the Supreme Soviet of the RSFSR

Speaking on television about the NATO intervention in Kosovo https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/apr/09/balkans12, as quoted by The Guardian (April 1999) 1990s

World

“We have avoided the post-colonial nightmares of many a former British subject. Though that may arguably be because we were a nation, and not a randomly drawn jurisdiction without regard to ethnic loyalties or geographical sense, as were so many of the “countries” that emerged from Empire. We pride ourselves, not without cause, with only one Civil War since the foundation of the State and none within the 26 county area since the enactment of said Constitution. All’s well that ends well? Except that history is a process not a destination, and “well” or not it certainly hasn’t ended. And the foundational legal document of the State grows more convoluted with each amendment and increasingly difficult to define, even in the ordinary sense of a degree of certainty.”

Justin Barrett (1971) Irish activist

A New Constitution for a Real Republic https://nationalparty.ie/new-year-message-2020/ (July 27, 2018)

History, Country, Sense, Loyalty

“Pornography, it seems to me, is no different from war films or propaganda films in that it tries to make the visceral, horrific, or transgressive elements of life consumable. Propaganda is far more pornographic than a home video of two people fucking.”

Michael Haneke (1942) Austrian film director and screenwriter

[Christopher Sharrett, http://www.kinoeye.org/04/01/interview01.php, Austrian film: Michael Haneke interviewed, Kinoeye, 20 September 2011]

Home, People, Life, Making love

“A carnivorous animal is not an ideal animal, and never can be. The life of a carnivorous animal is a perpetual onslaught. Every meal is a murder. Eating is not the harmless activity it is to one who sits down to fruit and grains. The carnivore must kill somebody, or have somebody else do it for him, in order to eat. It cannot be otherwise. And an animal whose life is one unbroken succession of such necessities, whose stomach is the grave of hundreds and thousands, and even of tens of thousands, of his fellow-beings, may be meritorious in other respects — may preach the Golden Rule, decry war, give money to the missionary, and rail at the rich — but so long as he continues to fill himself every few hours with the blood and vitals of others, he is not only not an ideal animal, but has in reality no just claims on life. Flesh is a painful form of nutrition for any organism, but it is especially so for man, because it is unnecessary, and because man makes so many pretensions and occupies a position in the world of such exceptional responsibility.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

Source: The New Ethics (1907), The Food of the Future, pp. 131–132

Money, Pain, Success, Animals

“War is righteous or unrighteous according as it is opportune or inopportune.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/lords/1878/jan/17/address-in-answer-to-her-majestys-most#column_54 in the House of Lords (17 January 1878) 1870s

“Anyone who is of a thoughtful, philisophical cast of mind will occasionaly be struck by the appearance of certain organizing principles of history. The forms these principles seem to take inevitably depends upon one's specific obsession. For a mornachist, history is a struggle of classes of economic civil war. An agriculturalist sees the dynamic of populations, land, and availability of food; a philosopher might speak of the will to power or the will to sythesis; a theologian of the will of God.”

Matthew Stover book Blade of Tyshalle

(II.2) Del Rey, p. 100
Blade of Tyshalle (2001)

God, History, Food, Dependency

“England is, I believe, the only country in which during a great war eminent men write and speak publicly as if they belonged to the enemy.”

Robert Gascoyne-Cecil, 3rd Marquess of Salisbury (1830–1903) British politician

Letter to Miss Milner (11 November 1901), quoted in The Times (19 November 1901), p. 10
1900s

Country, Men

“Pacifists lose the war; aggressors lose the peace.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy (2016)

Peace

“In war there are none but particular cases; everything has there an individual nature; nothing ever repeats itself.
In the first place, the data of a military problem are but seldom certain; they are never final.”

Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929) French soldier and military theorist

Everything is in a constant state of change and reshaping.
Source: Precepts and Judgments (1919), p. 152

Problem, Nature

“Stop this war! Shame on you Hobbits! Shame on you! This is a fictitious war! This Lord was not elected by the popular”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

a computer-generated Oliphaunt steps on Moore, crushing him
In a humorous sendup of Moore's previous acceptance speech for Best Documentary Feature at the 2003 Oscars. Moore himself delivered the lines in the opening act of the 2004 Oscars, while standing in front of a greenscreen which had the Battle of the Pelennor Fields scene from The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King playing on it; a battle which was, itself, literally fictitious. (23 March 2004)
2004

“War taken at the best is a frightful scourge to the human race; but because it is so the wisdom of ages has surrounded it with strict laws and usages, and has required formalities to be observed which shall act as a curb upon the wild passions of man, to prevent that scourge from being let loose unless under circumstances of full deliberation and from absolute necessity. You have dispensed with all these precautions.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1857/mar/03/resolution-moved-resumed-debate-fourth#column_1802 in the House of Commons against the Second Opium War (3 March 1857) 1850s

Law, Age, Passion, Wisdom

“Now the English nation is able to make war, but it will only do so where its own interests are concerned. We are a simple and practical nation, a commercial nation; we do not go in for chivalrous enterprises or fight for others as the French do.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Remarks to Adam Jerzy Czartoryski (10 March 1839), quoted in Memoirs of Prince Adam Czartoryski and His Correspondence with Alexander I, Vol. II, ed. Adam Gielgud (1888), p. 340
1830s

Fight, Making love

“We believe that we in the UAE and in Dubai have a mission. This region needs a puller from its misery. There is tremendous conflict. There is a lot of hatred, sectarian war, religious war, ethnic cleanses, refugees. We see the story. Then you come to Dubai.”

Mohammad Al Gergawi (1963) Minister of Cabinet Affairs of the United Arab Emirates and the Chairman of the Executive Office in Dubai.

As quoted in Oil won’t last forever, so Dubai is betting big on science and tech http://Oil%20won’t%20last%20forever,%20so%20Dubai%20is%20betting%20big%20on%20science%20and%20tech in Popular Science ( 16 MAY, 2017) 2017 Source: https://www.popsci.com/dubai-science-tech-innovation/

“The time has come when we must proceed with the business of carrying the war to the enemy, not permitting the greater portion of our armed forces and our valuable material to be immobilized within the continental United States.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

As quoted by the Times-Herald [Washington, D.C.] (3 March 1942) p. 1

Business, Time

“[I]f they were negotiating with a foreign country on a matter which might threaten war, it was so far from embarrassing the negotiation, that it would strengthen it, to place ourselves in a position to repel any sudden and unforeseen attack.”

Henry Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston (1784–1865) British politician

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1845/jun/13/maritime-defences#column_524 in the House of Commons in favour of rearmament (13 June 1845) 1840s

Country

“War is an unvarnished evil.”

Andrew Bacevich (1947) United States Army officer

Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country (2013, p. 17).

Evil

“Basically, I exploited the phenomenon of the technician’s often blind devotion to his task. Because of what seems to be the moral neutrality of technology, these people were without any scruples about their activities. The more technical the world imposed on us by the war, the more dangerous was this indifference of the technician to the direct consequences of his anonymous activities.”

Albert Speer book Inside the Third Reich

Source: Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs (1970), p. 310

World, Indifference, People

“Wars don’t determine who’s right, only who’s left.”

Gregory Benford (1941) Science fiction author and astrophysicist

Source: Short fiction, Vortex, p. 110

“We don't deliberately desire to scare anybody - we design our creatures to fit in harmony with the story and, of course, our forte is the grotesque. That's why our films were classified so many times as horror films, which they weren't. I would call a war film a horror film because in those you see guts split and people being slaughtered, but our films deal with fantasy and are more theatrical than realistic.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

Harryhausen on Horror

Time, People

“Before embarking on war or agreement, it is wise to consider all possibilities. Consider them thoroughly. Consider the consequences of your actions. Thus, you are prepared for the worst case.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/

“Huns should only enter wars in which they can win.”

Attila (406–453) King of the Hunnic Empire

Turkish Wikipedia
https://quotestats.com/topic/attila-hun-quotes/

“In the American civil war partisanship with the sides there was the veil of a kind of civil war here. An unspoken instinct revealed to mutually hostile classes in England that their battle also was being fought in the contest between the free North and the slave-holding South. The triumph of the North, as has been often remarked, was the force that made English liberalism powerful enough to enfranchise the workmen, depose official Christianity in Ireland, and deal a first blow at the landlords.”

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn (1838–1923) British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor

‘England and the War’, The Fortnightly Review, No. XLVI (1 October 1870), quoted in John Morley (ed.), The Fortnightly Review, Vol. VIII. New Series (1 July to 1 December 1870), p. 479
1870s

Hostility

“My nightmares are almost always about war - wandering the streets, searching for something that's lost forever. But it's possible for me to will myself to have pleasant dreams. For me, the most wonder fragrance in the world is new film. You open the canister for the first time and breathe deeply. That night, the same wonderful fragrance fills your dreams. It's grand.”

Ishirō Honda (1911–1993) Japanese film director

Honda, interviewed by James Bailey, Tokyo Journal, April 1991

Time, Night, Search, World

“Lord yes, in a certain sense it was a preventive war, [motivated by] the constant threat of attack, the greater likelihood of its inevitability in the future, and by the military's claim: today war is still possible without defeat, but not in two years! Yes, the generals. It could only have been avoided by a rapprochement with England, that is still my conviction. But after we had decided for a [common] policy with Austria, we could not desert her in such danger.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Remarks to Conrad Haussmann (24 February 1918), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 48

Motivation, Future, Sense

“This war torments me. Again and again I ask if it could have been avoided and what I should have done differently. ... [A]ll nations are guilty; Germany, too, bears a large part of the blame.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Parting

“What I am able to say concerning the direction and aim of our terms, I have already said repeatedly. To put an end to the war with a durable peace that will compensate us for all the wrongs we have suffered and will safeguard the existence and future of a strong Germany—that is our aim.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Speech to the Reichstag (27 February 1917), quoted in W. M. Knight-Patterson, Germany from Defeat to Conquest, 1913–1933 (1945), p. 91

Peace, Future, Strong, Suffering

“When assessing the responsibility for this war—we have to confess honestly that we bear a share of the guilt. If I said this thought oppresses me, I would say too little—this thought never leaves me. I live in it.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Remarks to Theodor Wolff (5 February 1915), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 76

“Germany and England have undertaken all steps to avoid a European war. ... [W]e have lost control and the landslide has begun, As a political leader I am not abandoning my hope and my attempts to keep the peace as long as my démarche in Vienna has not been rejected.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Speech to the Prussian Ministry of State (30 July 1914), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), p. 69

Peace, Hope

“We can assure the English cabinet—presupposing its neutrality—that even in case of a victorious war, we will seek no territorial aggrandizement in Europe at the cost of France.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Note (29 July 1914), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), pp. 68–69

Victory

“If war is forced upon us, we shall fight and, with God's help, not perish. But to conjure up a war ourselves without having our honor or vital interests imperiled, this I would consider a sin against Germany's destiny, even if human foresight would predict a total victory.”

Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg (1856–1921) German chancellor during World War I

Letter to the Kaiser (6 March 1912), quoted in Konrad H. Jarauschl, ‘The Illusion of Limited War: Chancellor Bethmann Hollweg's Calculated Risk, July 1914’, Central European History, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Mar., 1969), pp. 59–60

God, Fight, Victory, Help

“Dust to dust by the broken dreams of the humanity,
you ain't got a lot to say, the words are sad,
now, our companion, the pains of the heart
The indifference kills with no shame or concern, killing me,
killing you, watch the end of the blessing, for the blind in the heart war has taken its tax. He has wrapped us in black wings
and one day, the sun stopped, the rain stopped falling,
the flowers didn't look high,
the sky emptied of stars
then a tear dripped from the heart and became our breath
we need a sacred tear,
before the fall.”

Alexis Karpouzos (1967)

Source: https://allpoetry.com/alexis_karpouzos

Star, Flowers, Indifference, Tear

“I don’t want revolutions. Categorically, because innocent heads will fly into the revolution and into all these wars. I think this is wrong. No revolutions. Do everything that is possible, but to prevent this from happening. At both sides. I would choose North Korea. I don't want sacrifices. It means that some tactics, some experience, some wisdom are lacking for people who are against this regime. That's all.”

Chulpan Khamatova (1975) Russian actress

On why she supports Vladimir Putin in Чулпан Хаматова: «Я очень много чего боюсь» (7 June 2012) https://tvrain.ru/teleshow/sobchak_zhivem/chulpan_khamatova_ya_by_vybrala_severnuyu_koreyu_a_ne_revolyutsiyu-286479/

People, Flying, Thinking, Wisdom

Quotes about war page 68

Quotes about war
page 68