quotations about war
War is the great scavenger of thought. It is the sovereign disinfectant, and its red stream of blood is the Condy's Fluid that cleans out the stagnant pools and clotted channels of the intellect.... We have awakened from an opium-dream of comfort, of ease, of that miserable poltroonery of "the sheltered life." Our wish for indulgence of every sort, our laxity of manners, our wretched sensitiveness to personal inconvenience, these are suddenly lifted before us in their true guise as the spectres of national decay; and we have risen from the lethargy of our dilettantism to lay them, before it is too late, by the flashing of the unsheathed sword.
EDMUND GOSSE
"War and Literature", Inter Arma
I've fought for and against pretty much every cause there is. There will always be war of some kind. At first it was over fertile soil and good water, then precious metal and then the most popular version of human disagreement, "My God is better than your God." Whether you draw your faith from Jeremiah and Jesus, Allah and Muhammad or Brahma and Buddha, it doesn't matter. Someone will tell you you're wrong, and he'll fight you over it. Me, I believe in aliens, and to hell with all earthly gods. In the grand scheme of a trillion planets in the universe we're just not that damn important anyway. And humans are rotten to the core.
DAVID BALDACCI
The Camel Club
One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try to make ours light before her!
ROMAIN ROLLAND
preface, Above the Battle
Wars are not favourable to delicate pleasures.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
"A Secret Vice", The Monsters and the Critics and Other Essays
War is a most uneconomical, foolish, poor arrangement, a bloody enrichment of that soil which bears the sweet flower of peace.
M. E. W. SHERWOOD
An Epistle to Posterity
Earth will grow worse till men redeem it,
And wars more evil, ere all wars cease.
G. K. CHESTERTON
A Song of Defeat
No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
letter to Harry Truman, March 22, 1948
We could make no more tragic mistake than merely to concentrate on military strength. For if we did only this, the future would hold nothing for the world but an Age of Terror.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
State of the Union Address, January 9, 1958
For wide, ah! wide is the woe when the foeman has mounted the wall;
There is havoc and terror and flame, and the dark smoke broods over all,
And wild is the war-god's breath, as in frenzy of conquest he springs,
And pollutes with the blast of his lips the glory of holiest things!
AESCHYLUS
The Seven Against Thebes
This is also a war followed in real time by anyone with a smart device, a technology that delivers instant updates, and oftentimes partial truths, to smart screens across the globe.
ROBERT MAKROS
"'Clean war' is the unicorn of armed conflict", The Hill, March 31, 2017
Armies are not bad things in themselves; it's war that's evil.
JUAN GOMEZ-JURADO
God's Spy
I have never believed that war settled anything satisfactorily, but I am not entirely sure that some times there are certain situations in the world such as we have in actuality when a country is worse off when it does not go to war for its principles than if it went to war.
ELEANOR ROOSEVELT
attributed, Eleanor and Franklin
To me, the feeling of war is falling in love with something and having it killed in front of you, over and over again.
CHRIS ROESSNER
"Iraq vet talks about his Netflix movie, pulling CQ in Saddam's palace, debunking 'dysfunctional veteran' stereotype", Army Times, April 21, 2017
I believe that, tragically, war is inescapable. I know that's not a very politically correct thing to say. But when you read the scenes of rampage and battle in The Iliad, which Achilles casually evokes when he says, "I've stormed these cities from my ship," and then look at what is happening with, say, ISIS, and the carnage and brutality there, you can see a lot of similarities. But the fact The Iliad still speaks true doesn't just mean that it has prophetic powers. It means that those truths have always been there. They are enduring truths.
CAROLINE ALEXANDER
"War is Unavoidable--and Other Hard Lessons from Homer's Iliad", National Geographic, January 10, 2016
As horrible as the death toll was in World War I, the millions who died were, by and large, killed on the battlefield--soldiers killed by soldiers, not civilians killed by lawless or random or planned savagery. The rough proportion of military to civilian casualties was ninety to ten. In World War II, the proportions were roughly even. Today, for every ten military casualties there are on the order of ninety civilian deaths. The reality of our era, as demonstrated in Angola, Somalia, Bosnia, Rwanda, and Chechnya, is that torture is rampant, murdering civilians commonplace, and driving the survivors from their homes often the main goal of a particular military offensive.
RON GUTMAN & DAVID RIEFF
preface, Crimes of War: What the Public Should Know
Waging war and fighting it are practical activities much like playing an instrument or, at the higher levels, conducting an orchestra. Hence one of the best, perhaps the best if not the only, ways to familiarize oneself with it is to practice it. As the saying goes, the best teacher of war is war. Other things being equal, the larger and more complex the "orchestra," the greater the role of the conductor, i.e. the commander. It is he who is ultimately responsible for coordinating the efforts of everybody else and directing them towards the objective. All the while taking care that the enemy will not interfere with his plans and demolish them.
MARTIN VAN CREVELD
"Why the best teacher of war is war", OUP blog, April 9, 2017
War is the sure result of the existence of armed men. That country which maintains a large standing army will sooner or later have a war. The man who prides himself on fisticuffs is going, some day, to meet a man who considers himself the better man, and they will test the issue.
ELBERT HUBBARD
The American Bible
No matter how young, weak or vulnerable their victims, the killers wanted no survivors. By the time they had finished their work, at least 27 people including six children and a heavily-pregnant woman, lay clubbed or stabbed to death. This was no spontaneous massacre. At least four of the dead, including the mother-to-be, were positioned as if their hands or feet had been bound while their heads, knees and limbs were smashed. There were no burials -- the bodies of some were thrown into an adjoining lagoon while others were seemingly left to die where they fell. It may sound like an act of medieval barbarity or even an atrocity from the current killing fields of Syria. But this act of indiscriminate slaughter dates back some 10,000 years and as such may represent the earliest evidence of humans at war.
CAHAL MILMO
"War is as old as time: Cambridge University researchers unveil massacred bodies dating back 10,000 years", The Independent, January 20, 2016
Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation that does not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it! And woe thrice over to the nation in which the average man loses the fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier if the day of need should arise!
THEODORE ROOSEVELT
speech at the University of Berlin, May 12, 1910
I know but little of the customs of war, and wish to know less.
JAMES FENIMORE COOPER
The Spy