Motivational Quotes

War

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

- Proverb, Irish

Best Quotes about War

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

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

I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!

Montagu, Lady Mary Wortley

Faint heart never won fair lady.

Cervantes, Miguel De

Do you know the only thing that gives me pleasure? It's to see my dividends coming in.

Rockefeller, John D.

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

Gandhi, Mahatma

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

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

Bismarck, Otto Von

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

Shakespeare, William

10.

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

11.

Dishonesty, cowardice and duplicity are never impulsive.

Knight, George A.

12.

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

13.

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

Twain, Mark

14.

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

Thoreau, Henry David

15.

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

16.

I'm a hero with coward's legs.

Milligan, Spike

17.

The greatest braggarts are usually the biggest cowards.

Rousseau, Jean Jacques

18.

Morality is contraband in war.

Gandhi, Mahatma

19.

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

20.

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

Manor, Rachel

21.

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

Huxley, Aldous

22.

The outcome of the war is in our hands; the outcome of words is in the council.

Homer

23.

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

24.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

29.

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

30.

The effects of our actions may be postponed but they are never lost. There is an inevitable reward for good deeds and an inescapable punishment for bad. Meditate upon this truth, and seek always to earn good wages from Destiny.

Fu Wu Ming

31.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of politics by other means.

Clausewitz, Karl Von

32.

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Brecht, Bertolt

33.

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

Sewell, George

34.

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

35.

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

36.

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

37.

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.

Solomon Short

38.

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

Westcott, Bishop

39.

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

Reagan, Ronald

40.

Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

41.

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.

42.

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

Renard, Jules

43.

America is addicted to wars of distraction.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

44.

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

45.

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

Pound, Ezra

46.

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

47.

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

Heller, Joseph

48.

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

Einstein, Albert

49.

War is the trade of Kings.

Dryden, John

50.

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