Motivational Quotes

War

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.

- Hoover, Herbert Clark

Best Quotes about War

I see that old flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.

Macarthur, Douglas

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

Graves, Robert

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.

A light supper, a good night's sleep, and a fine morning have sometimes made a hero of the same man who, by an indigestion, a restless night, and a rainy morning would have proved a coward.

Stanhope, Philip Dormer

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

Will Rogers

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

America is addicted to wars of distraction.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

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

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

Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi

10.

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

11.

War -- what a waist of time. It's all about great achievements for the very few but hideous losses for the very many.

12.

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

13.

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

Robert E. Lee

14.

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

15.

Not in rewards, but in the strength to strive, the blessing lies.

Towbridge, J. T.

16.

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

17.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

18.

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

19.

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

Hazlitt, William

20.

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

Twain, Mark

21.

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

22.

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

23.

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

24.

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

Collier, Jeremy

25.

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

Sewell, George

26.

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

Twain, Mark

27.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

28.

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

Rockefeller, John D.

29.

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

34.

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

Einstein, Albert

35.

What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

36.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

Mumford, Lewis

37.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

38.

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

Weil, Simone

39.

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

40.

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

41.

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Brecht, Bertolt

42.

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

Pound, Ezra

43.

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

44.

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

45.

If it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the ground.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

46.

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

Manor, Rachel

47.

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief... for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

Twain, Mark

48.

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

Ibarruri, Dolores

49.

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

50.

Faint heart never won fair lady.

Cervantes, Miguel De