Motivational Quotes

War

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.

Best Quotes about War

All men would be cowards if they could.

Rochester, Earl

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

Georges Clemenceau

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

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

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.

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

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

Faint heart never won fair lady.

Cervantes, Miguel De

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

10.

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

Benn, Tony

11.

The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money.

Cicero, Marcus T.

12.

War is not nice.

Barbara Bush

13.

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

Westcott, Bishop

14.

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

15.

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

16.

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

Einstein, Albert

17.

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

Clemenceau, Georges

18.

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

Reagan, Ronald

19.

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

20.

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

Ibarruri, Dolores

21.

It is better to be a coward for a minute than dead for the rest of your life.

Proverb, Irish

22.

When the adulation of life is gone, the coward sneaks to his death, but the brave live on.

Sewell, George

23.

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

Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi

24.

The greatest braggarts are usually the biggest cowards.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

25.

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

Carl Sandburg

26.

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

Junius

27.

God's delays are not God's denials.

Schuller, Robert H.

28.

The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters -- not to talk in armies and nations and numbers -- but to track it home.

Lawrence, D. H.

29.

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

Hemingway, Ernest

30.

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

Twain, Mark

31.

Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person, but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen.

Epictetus

32.

If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied.

Kipling, Rudyard

33.

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

34.

The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.

Omar Bradley

35.

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

Massie, Allan

36.

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

Benjamin, Walter

37.

The cowards never started -- and the weak died along the way.

38.

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 specters 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.

Gosse, Sir Edmund

39.

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

40.

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.

41.

Lapham, Lewis H.

42.

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Sun Tzu

43.

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

Agatha Christie

44.

It is better to be killed than frightened to death.

Surtees, Robert S.

45.

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

Einstein, Albert

46.

Cowards die a thousand deaths. The valiant taste of death but once.

Shakespeare, William

47.

It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.

Gandhi, Mahatma

48.

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

49.

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

50.

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