Motivational Quotes

War

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

Best Quotes about War

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

Sewell, George

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

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.

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

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

Massie, Allan

Where do all the women who have watched so carefully over the lives of their beloved ones get the heroism to send them to face the cannon?

Kollwitz, KaThe

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.

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

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

Reagan, Ronald

10.

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

Homer

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.

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

Hemingway, Ernest

13.

All men would be cowards if they could.

Rochester, Earl

14.

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

15.

The idea of all-out nuclear war is unsettling.

Walter Goodman

16.

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

Robert E. Lee

17.

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

Rockefeller, John D.

18.

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

Pound, Ezra

19.

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

Buddha

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Meehan, Francis

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Hazlitt, William

28.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

29.

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

30.

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

31.

A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites.

Rufus, Quintus Curtius

32.

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.

33.

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

34.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

35.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

36.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

Hoffer, Eric

37.

War is a contagion.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

38.

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

39.

Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

Gellhorn, Martha

40.

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

41.

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

Weil, Simone

42.

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

Westcott, Bishop

43.

Wars are made to make debt.

Pound, Ezra

44.

War is not nice.

Barbara Bush

45.

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

Shakespeare, William

46.

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

Clausewitz, Karl Von

47.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession, but carrying a banner.

Twain, Mark

48.

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

49.

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Thomas Mann

50.

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

Johnson, Edward