War - see also quotes on Battles - Quotes

A holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it. - Elie Wiesel

A mind at peace does not engender wars. - Sophocles

Accursed be he that first invented war. - Christopher Marlowe

After a long, hopeless war, people will settle for peace, at almost any price. - Salman Rushdi

All the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors (who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues. - John Locke

All war is  symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal. - John Steinbeck

All war represents a failure of diplomacy. - Tony Benn

All wars of interference, arising from an officious intrusion into the concerns of other states; all wars of ambition, carried on for the purposes of aggrandizement; and all wars of aggression, undertaken for the purpose of forcing an assent to this or that set of religious opinions; all such wars are criminal in their very outset, and have hypocrisy for their common base. - Charles Caleb Colton

Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance. - Winston Churchill

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Armies are not bad things in themselves; it's war that's evil. - Juan Gomez-Jurado

As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable. - Albert Einstein

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. - Oscar Wilde

Colourful demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that are strung across the globe. - Arundhati Roy

Duelling was abolished because man's conscience told him that to be opposed to a man with less knowledge of how to use his weapon, was so certain of killing him, the odds being so unequal, that in reality it was "murder." What difference is there when a strong nation goes to war with a weak one? And is not this generally the case with wars? The chances are not even; it is only a matter of time; if so, is not war generally wholesale murder? We must in time consider wars as acts of barbarism, the acts of savages. Men will see that war for honour is as foolish between nations as if done between individuals. - James Platt

Even a successful war is a loss to most families. - Edward Counsel

Even when just, war is the worst necessity. The method is savage, and it recoils terribly, as much on the victor as the vanquished. - James Platt

Eventually, you hope. Obviously, we're not in a position at the moment for the eradication of war to seem like anything but a far-off dream. But at one time, the eradication of slave markets in the United States seemed very far off. I mean, people have to begin somewhere. We can change. We can evolve as a species. It's not simple, and it's a very long and drawn-out process, but you can hope. - Suzanne Collins

Every gun that is made, 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. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. - Dwight Eisenhower

Every war involves a greater or less relapse into barbarism. War, indeed, in its details, is the essence of inhumanity. It dehumanizes. It may save the state, but it destroys the citizen. - Christian Nesell Bovee

For most of history, war has been a more or less functional institution, providing benefits for those societies that were good at it, although the cost in money, in lives, and in suffering was always significant. Only in the past century have large numbers of people begun to question the basic assumption of civilized societies that war is inevitable and often useful. - Gwynne Dyer

For both victor and vanquished, war leaves only a sense of endless futility. - Unknown

If a general has to explain everything to every soldier before they will fight, the war will be lost for sure. - Unknown

He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. - Albert Einstein

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell. - William Tecumseh Sherman

I cannot get accustomed to war; my brain refuses to understand and explain a thing that is senseless in its basis. Millions of people gather at one place and, giving their actions order and regularity, kill each other, and it hurts everybody equally, and all are unhappy – what is it if not madness? - Leonid Andreyev

I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but I do know that World War IV will be fought with rocks. - Albert Einstein

I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so. - Romain Rolland

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen two hundred limping exhausted men come out of line – the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward forty-eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. - Franklin D. Roosevelt

If you think of humanity as one large body, then war is like suicide, or at best, self-mutilation. - Jerome P. Cabb

In order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all religions. Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope of God's mercy and grace, their lives lose all value. We deny personal responsibility when we plant landmines and, days or years later, a stranger to us – often a child – is crippled or killed. From a great distance, we launch bombs or missiles with almost total impunity, and never want to know the number or identity of the victims. - Jimmy Carter

In the days of peace every precaution should be taken to insure that there are no forces making for war. Just as we now forbid the trafficking in certain drugs, in the sale of poisons, just as we forbid the making of any imprint that suggests a coin or currency, just as experience has demonstrated that men may not make profit out of certain things because of the danger of abuse, so in the gravest of all dangers laws should be passed taking from those who might gain from war or preparations for war every hope that advantage could come to them by such a calamity. - Frederic Clemson

In time of war, when truth is so precious, it must be attended by a bodyguard of lies. - Winston Churchill

In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. - Unknown

It is a much easier thing to unloose the demon war than to chain him up again. - M. D. Conway

It is far easier to make war than to make peace. - Georges Clemenceau

It is only through an abandonment of the idea that those entrusted with power have an exclusive right to decide upon war, and the substitution of a public opinion equipped with all the facts and taken into the confidence of the ruling classes, that peace can be assured to the world. - Frederic Clemson Howe

It’s funny how those who are most pro-war are almost always the guys who never had to fight in one. Jerp,e P. Crabb

Let's face it – if mothers ruled the world, there wouldn't be any goddamn wars in the first place. - Sally Field

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind. - John F. Kennedy

Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil. - Ambrose Bierce

Men who fight wars in winter don’t live till spring. - Ursula K. Le Guin

Military glory – that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood. - Abraham Lincoln

Naturally, the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country. - Hermann Goering

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. - Ernest Hemingway

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 realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events. - Winston Churchill

No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. - George S. Patton

No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it's not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough. - Ernest Hemingway

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. - James Madison

No one won the last war, and no one will win the next war. - Eleanor Roosevelt

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth that must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow, and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war. - Herbert Clark Hoover

One day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us try to make ours light before her! - Romain Rolland

Only the dead have seen an end to war. - Plato

People do not want war. War springs from causes wholly outside the lives, interests, and feelings of the people. Frederic-Clemson Howe

Preventing war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the war is too late. - Thich Nhat Hanh

Religious wars are basically people killing each other over who has the better imaginary friend. - Napoleon Bonaparte

Short of changing human nature ... the only way to achieve a practical, liveable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war. - Richard Nixon

Since war begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed. - Unknown

So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps, life has a peace-time quality, into which war-like events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains. - Doris Lessing

So long as there are men there will be wars. - Albert Einstein

The abolition of war is no longer to be set down as a creation of fancy, a dream of enthusiastic philanthropy. War rests on opinion; and opinion is more and more withdrawing its support. War rests on contempt of human nature; on the long mournful habit of regarding the mass of human beings as machines, or as animals; having no higher use than to be shot at and murdered for the glory of a chief, for the seating of this or that family on a throne, for the petty interests and selfish rivalries which have inflamed states to conflict. Let the worth of a human being be felt, and a main pillar of war will fall. - William E. Channing

The act of war is the last option of a democracy. - Joseph C. Wilson

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. - Robert Wilson Lynd

The chain reaction of evil – hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars – must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation. - Martin Luther King, Jr.

The finest battle plans in the world last only as long as it takes to make contact with the enemy. - Unknow

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

The term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of people. - Howard Zinn

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders. - Ralph Bunche

There has been no war without atrocity. War is atrocity, pure and simple: only greed, nationalism and faith help us pretend otherwise. - Michael Marshall

There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. - Henry Havelock Ellis

There would be an end of war and preparations for war if the cost were borne by those responsible for war. There would be an end of armaments and preparedness if incomes and inheritances and the landed estates of the feudal classes paid for the protection which their privileges enjoy. War and preparations for war are possible only because the ruling classes are able to shift a great part of the cost onto the poor by indirect taxation and loans. War expenditures are tolerated only because the burdens are concealed in the increased cost of the things people consume. "The art of plucking the goose without making it cry out" has been developed to a high state of perfection at the hands of the war makers. - Frederic Clemson Howe

There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe that they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous. - Neil Gaiman

They sent forth men to battle, but no such men return; and home, to claim their welcome, come ashes in an urn. - Aeschylus

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. - Ernest Hemingway

This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games. - William S. Burroughs

Those who ignore history's lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them ... they may be forced to die by them. - Dan Simmons

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman. - Alfred Adler

Truth, it has been said, is the first casualty of war. - Philip Snowden

Unjust war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation that does not make ready to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it! And woe thrice over to the nation in which the average man loses the fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier if the day of need should arise! - Theodore Roosevelt

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. - Sun Tzu

Want is both parent and child of war. - Edward Counsel

War ... should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits. - James Madison

War being the greatest of evils, all its accessories necessarily partake of the same character. - Herman Melville

War can only be abolished through war ... in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun. - Mao ZeDong

War ends nothing. - Zairean Proverb

War had become nothing more than slaughtering soldiers from a safe distance. When this failed to produce victory, civilians too became targeted for annihilation. It took more than a century, two world wars and the invention of the ultimate weapon, the atomic bomb, before the impact of this change started to become fully realized: war had become 'total war'. Warfare in the twentieth century is now an industry. It is bureaucratized, to the extent that its main decisions are being taken anonymously and committed to paper by people far removed from the actual killing zones. - Hylke Tromp

War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered. - Henri-Frederic Amiel

War is a game with a good deal of chance in it. From the little I have seen of it, I should say that nothing in war ever goes right except by accident. - Winston Churchill

War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow. - Martin Luther King Jr.

War is a severe doctor; but it sometimes heals grievances. - Edward Counsel

War is an admission of failure. - K. J. Parker

War is like love, it always finds a way. - Bertolt Brecht

War is mainly a catalogue of blunders. - Winston Churchill

War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man. - Alfred Adler

War is nothing but the continuation of politics by other means. - Karl von Clausewitz

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. - Thomas Mann

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means. - Carl von Clausewitz

War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes. - Mao ZeDong

War is the most readily available form of chaos. - Frank Herbert

War is the science of destruction. - John Abbott

War is what happens when language fails. - Margaret Atwood

War itself is, of course, a form of madness. It’s hardly a civilized pursuit. It’s amazing how we spend so much time inventing devices to kill each other and so little time working on how to achieve peace. - Walter Cronkite

War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values. - Cesare Pavese

War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. - Thomas Hardy

War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children. - Jimmy Carter

War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend. - J. R. R. Tolkien

War must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long night of pain and that peace is health. - Dan Simmons

War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always. - Sophocles

War seldom enters but where wealth allures. - John Dryen

War settles nothing. - Dwight D. Eisenhower

War will cease when men refuse to fight. - F. Hansen

War will make corpses of us all. - Faramir

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. - Karl Kraus

Wars against nations are fought to change maps; wars against poverty are fought to map change. - Muhammad Ali

Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it. - Paul Fussell

Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard. - Henry Ford

Wars grew and mutated, finding ways to stay alive; they hung on with the grim tenacity of a weed growing in a crack in a wall, feeding on whatever nutrients their roots and tendrils could find. - K. J. Parker

Wars of pen and ink often lead to wars of cannon and bayonets. - Edward Counsel

We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times. - Howard Zinn

What a cruel thing war is… to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbours. - Robert E. Lee

What happened in World War II was what happened in war generally, and that was whatever the initiating cause, and however clear the moral reason is for the war in which one side looks better than the other, by the time the war ends both sides have been engaged in evil. - Howard Zinn

When a great war has cut off the young men of a nation it never can be told thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and great designers the country and the world have suffered. - James Vila Blake

When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. - Dwight. D. Eisenhower

When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die. - Jean-Paul Sartre

Wisdom born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the spread and growth of an evil force… If we assume that life is worth living, if we assume that mankind has the right to survive, then we must find an alternative to war. - Martin Luther King Jr.

With the indiscriminate nature of modern military technology (no such thing as a "smart bomb," it turns out) all wars are wars against civilians, and are therefore inherently immoral. This is true even when a war is considered "just," because it is fought against a tyrant, against an aggressor, to correct a stolen boundary. - Howard Zinn

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. - Jeannette Rankin