Motivational Quotes

War

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

- Carl Sandburg

Best Quotes about War

Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

Heller, Joseph

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men.

Westcott, Bishop

If the frontline people do count, you couldn't prove it by examining the reward systems in most organizations.

Albrecht, Karl

What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.

Franklin, Benjamin

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.

Arendt, Hannah

Faint heart never won fair lady.

Cervantes, Miguel De

A just war is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.

Cockburn, Alexander

Those who dare to interpret God's will must never claim Him as an asset for one nation or group rather than another. War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.

Runcie, Robert

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

George Orwell

10.

It is the coward who fawns upon those above him. It is the coward who is insolent whenever he dares be so.

Junius

11.

There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

12.

War has been the most convenient pseudo-solution for the problems of twentieth-century capitalism. It provides the incentives to modernization and technological revolution which the market and the pursuit of profit do only fitfully and by accident, it makes the unthinkable (such as votes for women and the abolition of unemployment) not merely thinkable but practicable. What is equally important, it can re-create communities of men and give a temporary sense to their lives by uniting them against foreigners and outsiders. This is an achievement beyond the power of the private enterprise economy when left to itself.

Hobsbawm, E. J.

13.

The idea of all-out nuclear war is unsettling.

Walter Goodman

14.

The more prosperous and settled a nation, the more readily it tends to think of war as a regrettable accident; to nations less fortunate the chance of war presents itself as a possible bountiful friend.

Lapham, Lewis H.

15.

America is addicted to wars of distraction.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

16.

It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward.

Ibarruri, Dolores

17.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

Mencken, H. L.

18.

No man, who continues to add something to the material, intellectual and moral well-being of the place in which he lives, is left long without proper reward.

Washington, Booker T.

19.

I have known war as few men now living know it. It's very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.

Macarthur, Douglas

20.

War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene.

Humboldt, Karl Wilhelm Von

21.

The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.

Pound, Ezra

22.

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.

Confucius

23.

A wage hike is very hard to take away, but bonuses and profit-sharing can disappear very quickly in hard times...More people are realizing that bonuses look like raises, but really aren't.

Bauman, Al

24.

Greater even than the pious man is he who eats that which is the fruit of his own toil; for scripture declares him twice-blessed.

Talmud, The

25.

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

26.

The pioneers of a warless world are the young men and women who refuse military service.

Einstein, Albert

27.

It is one of the most beautiful compensations in life that no man can sincerely try to help another without helping himself.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

28.

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Brecht, Bertolt

29.

Those who actually set out to see the fall of a city or those who choose to go to a front line, are obviously asking themselves to what extent they are cowards. But the tests they set themselves -- there is a dead body, can you bear to look at it? -- are nothing in comparison with the tests that are sprung on them. It is not the obvious tests that matter (do you go to pieces in a mortar attack?) but the unexpected ones (here is a man on the run, seeking your help -- can you face him honestly?).

Fenton, James

30.

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

Carl Sandburg

31.

Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.

Vauvenargues, Marquis De

32.

Of course in war all madnesses come out in a man, that is the fault of war not of a man or a nation.

Lawrence, Frieda

33.

War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view realistically; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent -- war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.

Sontag, Susan

34.

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving on.

Ulysses S. Grant

35.

A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have sometimes made a hero of the same man who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning would have proved a coward.

Stanhope, Philip Dormer

36.

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

Meehan, Francis

37.

He that does good for good's sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.

Penn, William

38.

I'm a hero with coward's legs.

Milligan, Spike

39.

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

Weil, Simone

40.

It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

Baudouin I

41.

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Thomas Mann

42.

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

Reagan, Ronald

43.

Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war --for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more.

Lennon, John

44.

It is far easier to make war than to make peace.

Clemenceau, Georges

45.

Companies that give excellent service reward employees for providing it.

46.

One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.

Voltaire

47.

No country has suffered so much from the ruins of war while being at peace as the American.

Dahlberg, Edward

48.

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

Benjamin, Walter

49.

So you think you can tell heaven from hell blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail, a smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts hot ashes for trees, hot air for a cool breeze, cold comfort for change? Did you exchange a walk on part in a war for a lead role in a cage?

Waters, R.

50.

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.