Motivational Quotes

War

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

Best Quotes about War

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

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

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

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

He that does good for good's sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.

Penn, William

Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.

Early, Gerald

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

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

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

10.

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

11.

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

Omar Bradley

12.

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.

13.

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

Twain, Mark

14.

The cannon thunders... limbs fly in all directions... one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice... it's Humanity in search of happiness.

Baudelaire, Charles

15.

The coward threatens when he is safe.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

16.

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

Reagan, Ronald

17.

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

Weil, Simone

18.

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

Sun Tzu

19.

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

20.

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

Massie, Allan

21.

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

Bierce, Ambrose

22.

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

Homer

23.

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

24.

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

King Jr. Martin Luther

25.

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

Sewell, George

26.

A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites.

Rufus, Quintus Curtius

27.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

28.

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

Proverb, Irish

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

33.

All men would be cowards if they could.

Rochester, Earl

34.

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

Collier, Jeremy

35.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein

36.

Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!

Blok, Alexander

37.

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.

38.

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

39.

The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money.

Cicero, Marcus T.

40.

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

41.

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

Junius

42.

People in general are scared to death of the war and all the exhibition have been a failure, because the rich - don't want to buy anything.

Frida Kahlo

43.

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

Hazlitt, William

44.

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

Buddha

45.

From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war.

Asquith, Margot

46.

Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.

Crisp, Quentin

47.

The idea of all-out nuclear war is unsettling.

Walter Goodman

48.

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

49.

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

50.

War is the trade of Kings.

Dryden, John