Motivational Quotes

War

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

- Albert Einstein

Best Quotes about War

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

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

Penn, William

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

Koestler, Arthur

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

Kennedy, John F.

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

Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

Heller, Joseph

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

Of course in war all madnesses come out in a man, that is the fault of war not of a man or a nation.

Lawrence, Frieda

I see that old flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.

Macarthur, Douglas

10.

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

Reagan, Ronald

11.

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

12.

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

Clausewitz, Karl Von

13.

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

Sayers, Dorothy L.

14.

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.

15.

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

Eliot, T. S.

16.

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

Voltaire

17.

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

18.

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

19.

Cowards can never be moral.

Gandhi, Mahatma

20.

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

21.

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

22.

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

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

23.

A coward is a hero with a wife, kids, and a mortgage.

Kitman, Marvin

24.

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

Georges Clemenceau

25.

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

26.

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

27.

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

28.

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

Crook, Jayne

29.

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

30.

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

31.

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

Confucius

32.

Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

Heller, Joseph

33.

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

34.

Faint heart never won fair lady.

Cervantes, Miguel De

35.

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

Gandhi, Mahatma

36.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Thoreau, Henry David

37.

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

38.

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

39.

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

40.

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

Renard, Jules

41.

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.

42.

War is the trade of Kings.

Dryden, John

43.

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

44.

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.

45.

I think the mark of a great ruler, is not his ability to make war but to achieve peace.

Monica Fairview

46.

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

47.

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

48.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

Mumford, Lewis

49.

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

50.

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