Motivational Quotes

War

War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view realistically; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent -- war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.

- Sontag, Susan

Best Quotes about War

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

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

Towbridge, J. T.

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

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

Kipling, Rudyard

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.

King Jr. Martin Luther

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

Neither enemy faces, nor the mothers that love them, come to mind when one is thinking of nothing but endeavouring to survive. Philosophising about war is useless under fire.

Linda Berdoll

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.

10.

War is a contagion.

Roosevelt, Franklin D.

11.

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

Meehan, Francis

12.

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

13.

War is not nice.

Barbara Bush

14.

Those who dare to interpret God's will must never claim Him as an asset for one nation or group rather than another. War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.

Runcie, Robert

15.

God's delays are not God's denials.

Schuller, Robert H.

16.

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

17.

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

Einstein, Albert

18.

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

Hazlitt, William

19.

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

Dahlberg, Edward

20.

All men would be cowards if they could.

Rochester, Earl

21.

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

22.

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

Omar Bradley

23.

Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage. That is all true. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul a people.

Davis, Rebecca Harding

24.

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

Pound, Ezra

25.

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

26.

Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.

Carl Sandburg

27.

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

28.

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.

Solomon Short

29.

Either war is obsolete or men are.

R. Buckminster Fuller

30.

America is addicted to wars of distraction.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

31.

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

32.

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

33.

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

Ibarruri, Dolores

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Twain, Mark

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

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.

That man is not truly brave who is afraid either to seem or to be, when it suits him, a coward.

Poe, Edgar Allan

42.

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

43.

War is the trade of Kings.

Dryden, John

44.

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.

Confucius

45.

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

46.

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

Koestler, Arthur

47.

A wage hike is very hard to take away, but bonuses and profit-sharing can disappear very quickly in hard times...More people are realizing that bonuses look like raises, but really aren't.

Bauman, Al

48.

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

49.

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

Thoreau, Henry David

50.

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

Rockefeller, John D.