Motivational Quotes

War

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

Best Quotes about War

I have known war as few men now living know it. It's very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.

Macarthur, Douglas

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

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

Penn, William

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

One of the chief misfortunes of honest people is that they are cowardly.

Voltaire

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

Mencken, H. L.

What are we hoping to get out of it, what's it all in aid of -- is it really just for the sake of a gloved hand waving at you from a golden coach?

Osborne, John

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

Collier, Jeremy

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

10.

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

Confucius

11.

War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.

Eliot, T. S.

12.

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

Einstein, Albert

13.

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.

14.

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

Robert E. Lee

15.

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

Omar Bradley

16.

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

Reagan, Ronald

17.

The pioneers of a warless world are the young men and women who refuse military service.

Einstein, Albert

18.

A coward is much more exposed to quarrels than a man of spirit.

Jefferson, Thomas

19.

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

20.

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

21.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Thoreau, Henry David

22.

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

Twain, Mark

23.

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

24.

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

Ibarruri, Dolores

25.

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.

26.

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.

27.

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

28.

I'm a hero with coward's legs.

Milligan, Spike

29.

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

Lois McMaster Bujold

30.

Companies that give excellent service reward employees for providing it.

31.

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

Blok, Alexander

32.

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

33.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of politics by other means.

Clausewitz, Karl Von

34.

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

35.

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

36.

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

Manor, Rachel

37.

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

Sewell, George

38.

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Thomas Mann

39.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

40.

Morality is contraband in war.

Gandhi, Mahatma

41.

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

Massie, Allan

42.

The effects of our actions may be postponed but they are never lost. There is an inevitable reward for good deeds and an inescapable punishment for bad. Meditate upon this truth, and seek always to earn good wages from Destiny.

Fu Wu Ming

43.

War is the great scavenger of thought. It is the sovereign disinfectant, and its red stream of blood is the Condy's Fluid that cleans out the stagnant pools and clotted channels of the intellect. We have awakened from an opium-dream of comfort, of ease, of that miserable poltroonery of the sheltered life. Our wish for indulgence of every sort, our laxity of manners, our wretched sensitiveness to personal inconvenience, these are suddenly lifted before us in their true guise as the specters of national decay; and we have risen from the lethargy of our dilettantism to lay them, before it is too late, by the flashing of the unsheathed sword.

Gosse, Sir Edmund

44.

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

Johnson, Edward

45.

War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.

Maistre, Joseph De

46.

He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.

Confucius

47.

The human race is a race of cowards; and I am not only marching in that procession, but carrying a banner.

Twain, Mark

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.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Churchill, Winston

50.

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