Motivational Quotes

War

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

- Renard, Jules

Best Quotes about War

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

Penn, William

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

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

Benn, Tony

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

Hoover, Herbert Clark

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

Omar Bradley

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

Ibarruri, Dolores

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

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

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

10.

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.

11.

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

Westcott, Bishop

12.

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

Einstein, Albert

13.

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

14.

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

Albrecht, Karl

15.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

16.

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

Benjamin, Walter

17.

A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites.

Rufus, Quintus Curtius

18.

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

19.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein

20.

The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters -- not to talk in armies and nations and numbers -- but to track it home.

Lawrence, D. H.

21.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

Mumford, Lewis

22.

Cowards can never be moral.

Gandhi, Mahatma

23.

O can't you see, brother -- Death's a congested road for fighters now, and hero a cheap label.

Andrews, C. D.

24.

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

Massie, Allan

25.

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

Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi

26.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

George Orwell

27.

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

Rockefeller, John D.

28.

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

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

32.

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

W. L. George

33.

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

34.

For cowards the road of desertion should be left open; they will carry over to the enemy nothing, but their fears.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

35.

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

Twain, Mark

36.

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

Johnson, Edward

37.

War is the trade of Kings.

Dryden, John

38.

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

39.

The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money.

Cicero, Marcus T.

40.

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

41.

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Thomas Mann

42.

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

Junius

43.

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

Hemingway, Ernest

44.

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

Proverb, Irish

45.

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

46.

So you think you can tell heaven from hell blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail, a smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell? Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts hot ashes for trees, hot air for a cool breeze, cold comfort for change? Did you exchange a walk on part in a war for a lead role in a cage?

Waters, R.

47.

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

48.

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

49.

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?

Mahatma Gandhi

50.

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

Baudouin I