Motivational Quotes

War

I feel sure that coups d'?tat would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.

- Goncourt, Edmond and Jules De

Best Quotes about War

There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.

Orwell, George

War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.

Bagehot, Walter

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

King Jr. Martin Luther

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

Twain, Mark

Neither enemy faces, nor the mothers that love them, come to mind when one is thinking of nothing but endeavouring to survive. Philosophising about war is useless under fire.

Linda Berdoll

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

Dahlberg, Edward

My valor is certainly going, it is sneaking off! I feel it oozing out as it were, at the palms of my hands!

Sheridan, Richard Brinsley

I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.

Russell, Bertrand

War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.

Nietzsche, Friedrich

10.

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.

11.

People in general are scared to death of the war and all the exhibition have been a failure, because the rich - don't want to buy anything.

Frida Kahlo

12.

Cowards can never be moral.

Gandhi, Mahatma

13.

From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war.

Asquith, Margot

14.

Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.

Rorty, Richard

15.

The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war.

Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi

16.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein

17.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Poe, Edgar Allan

18.

War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it.

Mussolini, Benito

19.

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.

Twain, Mark

20.

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

Heller, Joseph

21.

Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.

Sun Tzu

22.

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.

Shaw, George Bernard

23.

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

24.

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

25.

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

26.

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

Kennedy, John F.

27.

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

Voltaire

28.

The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.

Graves, Robert

29.

The idea of all-out nuclear war is unsettling.

Walter Goodman

30.

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

Reagan, Ronald

31.

All men would be cowards if they could.

Rochester, Earl

32.

A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

Bierce, Ambrose

33.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Churchill, Winston

34.

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

35.

Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.

Shakespeare, William

36.

The cannon thunders... limbs fly in all directions... one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice... it's Humanity in search of happiness.

Baudelaire, Charles

37.

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice -- is often the means of their regeneration.

Mill, John Stuart

38.

Wars are carried out by large organizations; Peace is brought one by one.

Manor, Rachel

39.

War is a contagion.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

40.

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

41.

The Oscars demonstrate the will of the people to control and judge those they have elected to stand above them (much, perhaps, as in bygone days, an election celebrated the same).

Mamet, David

42.

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.

43.

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

Kraus, Karl

44.

How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.

Collier, Jeremy

45.

That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together.

Coward, Noel

46.

He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.

Confucius

47.

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

Weil, Simone

48.

I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.

Einstein, Albert

49.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

Lois McMaster Bujold

50.

A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites.

Rufus, Quintus Curtius