Motivational Quotes

War

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

Best Quotes about War

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice -- is often the means of their regeneration.

Mill, John Stuart

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

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

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

Clausewitz, Karl Von

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

Meehan, Francis

Dishonesty, cowardice and duplicity are never impulsive.

Knight, George A.

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

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

Cooke, E. V.

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.

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize there stands myself. And what I do not recognize I shall continue not to recognize.

Breton, Andre

11.

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

Weil, Simone

12.

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

13.

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

Sayers, Dorothy L.

14.

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

Towbridge, J. T.

15.

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

Robert E. Lee

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.

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

Albrecht, Karl

18.

A cowardly cur barks more fiercely than it bites.

Rufus, Quintus Curtius

19.

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

20.

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

Collier, Jeremy

21.

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

22.

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.

Solomon Short

23.

Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person, but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen.

Epictetus

24.

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

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

Bovee, Christian Nevell

28.

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

29.

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

Reagan, Ronald

30.

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

31.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein

32.

Either war is obsolete or men are.

R. Buckminster Fuller

33.

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

34.

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

Poe, Edgar Allan

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.

The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.

Graves, Robert

37.

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

Sun Tzu

38.

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

39.

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

Junius

40.

War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military.

Georges Clemenceau

41.

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

Will Rogers

42.

Faint heart never won fair lady.

Cervantes, Miguel De

43.

Cowards can never be moral.

Gandhi, Mahatma

44.

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

45.

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

46.

The idea of thanking staff should mean giving them something that they would never buy for themselves.

Crook, Jayne

47.

The coward threatens when he is safe.

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang Von

48.

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

49.

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

50.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Thoreau, Henry David