Motivational Quotes

War

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.

- Hazlitt, William

Best Quotes about War

War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.

Maistre, Joseph De

If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.

Benedict, Ruth

I hate a fellow whom pride, or cowardice, or laziness drives into a corner, and who does nothing when he is there but sit and growl; let him come out as I do, and bark.

Johnson, Samuel

Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage. That is all true. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul a people.

Davis, Rebecca Harding

What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.

Nightingale, Florence

I think the mark of a great ruler, is not his ability to make war but to achieve peace.

Monica Fairview

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it's fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Wilde, Oscar

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

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

Meehan, Francis

10.

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

11.

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

12.

Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.

Crisp, Quentin

13.

You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

Will Rogers

14.

Morality is contraband in war.

Gandhi, Mahatma

15.

Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow -- perhaps it all will.

Einstein, Albert

16.

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

17.

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.

18.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize there stands myself. And what I do not recognize I shall continue not to recognize.

Breton, Andre

19.

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

20.

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

Clemenceau, Georges

21.

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

22.

Are wars... anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated -- there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

Saint-Exupery, Antoine De

23.

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.

Massie, Allan

24.

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

Poe, Edgar Allan

25.

A new kind of award has been added -- the deathbed award. It is not an award of any kind. Either the recipient has not acted at all, or was not nominated, or did not win the award the last few times around. It is intended to relieve the guilty conscience of the Academy members and save face in front of the public. The Academy has the horrible taste to have a star, choking with emotion, present this deathbed award so that there can be no doubt in anybody's mind why the award is so hurriedly given. Lucky is the actor who is too sick to watch the proceedings on television.

Dietrich, Marlene

26.

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

Kraus, Karl

27.

The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead.

Renard, Jules

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 coward threatens when he is safe.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

30.

Perhaps the reward of the spirit who tries is not the goal but the exercise.

Cooke, E. V.

31.

A reward cannot be valued if it is not understood

Grant, Phillip C.

32.

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

33.

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

34.

War is a contagion.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

35.

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

36.

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.

Georges Clemenceau

37.

A coward gets scared and quits. A hero gets scared, but still goes on.

38.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

Woolf, Virginia

39.

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

Pound, Ezra

40.

What we believe is more important than our material existence, therefore warfare is a legitimate extension of values.

Johnson, Edward

41.

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.

Hazlitt, William

42.

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once'The Unnecessary War'.

Sir Winston Churchill

43.

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

44.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

45.

It is well that war is so terrible - otherwise we would grow too fond of it.

Robert E. Lee

46.

Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.

Housman, A. E.

47.

Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

Heller, Joseph

48.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

King Jr. Martin Luther

49.

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

50.

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.