War Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

By jove, no wonder women don't love war nor understand it, nor can operate in it as a rule; it takes a man to suffer what other men have invented...

Do you know what a soldier is, young man? He's the chap who makes it possible for civilized folk to despise war.

History is littered with the wars which everybody knew would never happen.

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

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike at him as hard as you can and as often as you can, and keep moving on.

Ulysses S. Grant

War poisons the land Like diseased minds downloaded/ into bowls of tears.

Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share the guilt for the dead.

There is a peculiar burning odor in the room, like explosives. the kitchen fills with smoke and the hot, sweet, ashy smell of scorched cookies. The war has begun.

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.

Douglas MacArthur

My own early experiences in war led me to suspect the value of discipline, even in that sphere where it is so often regarded as the first essential for success.

Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas,
Ease after war, death after life does greatly please.

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.

William Beveridge

I believe that the war, upon which I entered as a war of defense and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest.... I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

Siegfried Sassoon

India wants to avoid a war at all costs but it is not a one-sided affair, you cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

If few can stand a long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace.

Oswald Spengler

We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.

Condoleezza Rice

As to war, I am and always was a great enemy, at the same time a warrior the greater part of my life, and were I young again, should still be a warrior while ever this country should be invaded and I lived — a Defensive war I think a righteous war to Defend my life & property & that of my family, in my own opinion, is right & justifiable in the sight of God.
An offensive war, I believe to be wrong and would therefore have nothing to do with it, having no right to meddle with another man's property, his ox or his ass, his man servant or his maid servant or anything that is his. Neither does he have a right to meddle with anything that is mine, if he does I have a right to defend it by force.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.

Carl von Clausewitz

War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

Carl von Clausewitz

The question is: How bad do things have to get before you will do something about it? Where is your line in the sand? If you don't enforce the constitutional limitations on your government very soon, you are likely to find out what World War III will be like. I'm quite sure that I will never experience that war - because dissidents are always the first to be eliminated.

Michael Badnarik

So long as war is the main business of nations, temporary despotism — despotism during the campaign — is indispensable.

I just want you to know that, when we talk about war, we're really talking about peace.

The great American game should be an unrelenting war of nerves.

For a great many years, as a soldier, I had a suspicion that war was a racket; not until I retired to civil life did I fully realize it.