Motivational Quotes

War

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

Best Quotes about War

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

Cooke, E. V.

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.

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

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

Thoreau, Henry David

God's delays are not God's denials.

Schuller, Robert H.

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

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

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

Buddha

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

10.

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

Sun Tzu

11.

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.

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.

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

14.

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

15.

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

16.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

17.

The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.

Koestler, Arthur

18.

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

Heller, Joseph

19.

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

20.

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

21.

Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.

W. L. George

22.

The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money.

Cicero, Marcus T.

23.

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

Kipling, Rudyard

24.

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

25.

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

Pound, Ezra

26.

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

Renard, Jules

27.

I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.

Frank, Anne

28.

It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

Baudouin I

29.

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

30.

The coward threatens when he is safe.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

31.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein

32.

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

33.

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

Twain, Mark

34.

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

Sayers, Dorothy L.

35.

Companies that give excellent service reward employees for providing it.

36.

America is addicted to wars of distraction.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

37.

Morality is contraband in war.

Gandhi, Mahatma

38.

War is a contagion.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

39.

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

40.

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

41.

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.

42.

If the frontline people do count, you couldn't prove it by examining the reward systems in most organizations.

Albrecht, Karl

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.

All men would be cowards if they could.

Rochester, Earl

45.

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

Will Rogers

46.

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.

Sir Winston Churchill

47.

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

Einstein, Albert

48.

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

49.

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

Omar Bradley

50.

Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.

Rorty, Richard