War Quotes

500+ Sourced quotes

Society has arisen out of the works of peace; the essence of society is peacemaking. Peace and not war is the father of all things.

Ludwig von Mises

The important part of Marxism was its demand for active, constant, practical, class-war

Francis Parker Yockey

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

Guy de Maupassant

All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.

Carl von Clausewitz

War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood.

Alexander Berkman

As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.

John Stuart Mill

I wrote in the War of Art that I could divide my life neatly into two parts: before turning pro and after. After is better.

Steven Pressfield

In these 19 months that changed the world, our actions have been focused and deliberate and proportionate to the offense. We have not forgotten the victims of September the 11th, the last phone calls, the cold murder of children, the searches in the rubble. With those attacks, the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States, and war is what they got.

Wars begin in the minds of men, and in those minds, love and compassion would have built the defenses of peace.

War should never be entered upon until every agency of peace has failed.

William McKinley

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

As a matter of general principle, I believe there can be no doubt that criticism in time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government … too many people desire to suppress criticism simply because they think that it will give some comfort to the enemy to know that there is such criticism. If that comfort makes the enemy feel better for a few moments, they are welcome to it as far as I am concerned, because the maintenance of the right of criticism in the long run will do the country maintaining it a great deal more good than it will do the enemy, and will prevent mistakes which might otherwise occur.

The United States has made a massive effort since the end of the Second World War to secure the dominance of its films in foreign markets - an achievement generally pushed home politically, by writing clauses into various treaties and aid packages.

Fredric Jameson

On the last morning of Virginia's bloodiest year since the Civil War, I built a fire and sat facing a window of darkness where at sunrise I knew I would find the sea.

Patricia Cornwell

Mr Churchill is proud of Britain's stand alone, after France had fallen, and before America had entered the war. Could he not find in his heart the generosity to acknowledge that there is a small nation that stood alone, not for one year or two, but for several hundred years, against aggression...a small nation that could never be got to accept defeat and has never surrendered her soul?

Éamon de Valera

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.

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

The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them?

Since the end of the nineteenth century, if not earlier, presidents have misled the public about their motives and their intentions in going to war.

I hope that this execution is the last act of the tragedy of the Second World War, and that the lesson taken from this world war will be that peace and understanding should exist between peoples. I believe in Germany.

Arthur Seyss-Inquart

We owe a responsibility not only to those who are in Israel but also to those generations that are no more, to those millions who have died within our lifetime, to Jews all over the world, and to generations of Jews to come. We hate war. We do not rejoice in victories. We rejoice when a new kind of cotton is grown, and when strawberries bloom in Israel.

We cannot have peace if we are only concerned with peace. War is not an accident. It is the logical outcome of a certain way of life. If we want to attack war, we have to attack that way of life.
Disarmament cannot be achieved nor can the problem of war be resolved without being accompanied by profound changes in the economic order and the structure of society.

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war.

Barbara W. Tuchman

The basis of tragedy is man's helplessness against disease, war and death; the basis of comedy is man's helplessness against vanity (the vanity of love, greed, lust, power).