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War quotes

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“All oppression creates a state of war.” Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex

“There are two things which a democratic people will always find very difficult—to begin a war, and to end it.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: (1) He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. (2) He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces. (3) He will win whose army is animated by...” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“But when he has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.” Plato, The Republic

“Civil war—what does that mean? Is there a foreign war? Is not all war between men, war between brothers?” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.” George Orwell, Animal Farm

“No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.” Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America

“The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might...” George Orwell, 1984

“Listen up—there's no war that will end all wars . . . War breeds war.” Haruki Murakami, Kafka on the Shore

“Every man should lose a battle in his youth, so he does not lose a war when he is old.” George R. R. Martin, A Feast for Crows

“Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man should have the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have none with him?” Blaise Pascal, Pensées

“It can therefore be said that politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.” Mao Zedong, Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung

“For what, for whom, must I kill and be killed?” Leo Tolstoy, War and Peace

“There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.” George R. R. Martin, A Storm of Swords

“There’s never been a true war that wasn’t fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right.” Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“Force, and Fraud, are in warre the two Cardinall vertues.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“Coin is the sinews of war.” François Rabelais, Gargantua and Pantagruel

“There is no such thing as foreign or civil war; there is only just and unjust war.” Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“The enemy had been much demoralized by his defeats at Champion's Hill and the Big Black, and I believed he would not make much effort to hold Vicksburg.” Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

“the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Success in warfare is gained by carefully accommodating ourselves to the enemy's purpose.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Do not swallow bait offered by the enemy. Do not interfere with an army that is returning home.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“The art of war is of vital importance to the State.” Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“I had always felt that if there were a serious war I wished to be in a position to explain to my children why I did take part in it, and not why I did not take part in it.” Theodore Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt; an Autobiography

“Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.” Winston Churchill, The Second World War

“They were adored by the Germans, who thought they were exactly what the Englishmen ought to be. They made war look stylish and reasonable, and fun.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace, and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told.” Bram Stoker, Dracula

“Its picture rises before us vivid and bright: the finely carved, dragon-shaped prow; the high, curving stem; the long row of shields, black and yellow alternately, ranged along the sides; the gleam of steel; the scent of murder.” Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

“The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front.” Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

“Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.” Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

“In wartime . . . truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.” Winston Churchill, The Second World War

“So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.” Orson Scott Card, Ender's Game

“It is of the greatest important in this world that a man should know himself, and the measure of his own strength and means; and he who knows that he has not a genius for fighting must learn how to govern by the arts of peace.” Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

“And when all the world is overchargd with Inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is Warre; which provideth for every man, by Victory, or Death.” Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

“The war has made us a nation of great power and intelligence. We have but little to do to preserve peace, happiness and prosperity at home, and the respect of other nations. Our experience ought to teach us the necessity of the first; our power...” Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

“Thus ended the great American Civil War, which must upon the whole be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass-conflicts of which till then there was record.” Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

“The problem for us was to move forward to a decisive victory, or our cause was lost.” Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant

“We don't have a great war in our generation, or a great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit.” Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“In God's name cheerly on, courageous friends, to reap the harvest of perpetual peace by this one bloody trial of sharp war.” William Shakespeare, Richard III

“You’ll get more from being a peacemaker than a warrior.” Arnold Schwarzenegger, Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

“The ancestral voices were prophesying war because ancestral voices never shut up, and they hate to be wrong, and war is a sure thing, sooner or later.” Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin

“He in peace is wounded, not in war.” William Shakespeare, The Rape of Lucrece

“One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters.” Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I am young, I am twenty years old; yet I know nothing of life but despair, death, fear, and fatuous superficiality cast over an abyss of sorrow. I see how peoples are set against one another, and in silence, unknowingly, foolishly, obediently,...” Erich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“A group of pagan ruffians and pirates had gained possession of an effective military and naval machine, but they faced a mass of formidable veterans whom they had to feed and manage, and for whom they must provide killings. Such men make plans,...” Winston Churchill, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples

“As we gather tonight, our nation is at war, our economy is in recession, and the civilized world faces unprecedented dangers. Yet the state of our Union has never been stronger.” George W. Bush, State of the Union Address

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Related topics

battle peace victory strength politics justice freedom death defeat democracy killing people blood weapons enemy courage life truth experience youth

Related authors

Sun Tzu (9)
Winston Churchill (9)
Niccolò Machiavelli (2)
Ulysses S. Grant (6)
George R. R. Martin (5)
Mao Zedong (4)
Alexis de Tocqueville (3)
William Shakespeare (3)
Kurt Vonnegut (3)
Thomas Hobbes (3)
Erich Maria Remarque (3)
Simone de Beauvoir (2)
George Orwell (2)
Victor Hugo (2)
C. S. Lewis (2)
Franklin D. Roosevelt (2)
Woodrow Wilson (2)
Theodore Roosevelt (2)
Margaret Atwood (2)
Eleanor Roosevelt (2)

Related sources

A History of the English-Speaking Peoples (6)
Leviathan (3)
The Prince (2)
We Must Accept War (2)
The Art of War (9)
Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant (6)
State of the Union Address (4)
Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung (4)
Democracy in America (3)
Slaughterhouse-Five (3)
A Storm of Swords (3)
The Second World War (3)
All Quiet on the Western Front (3)
The Second Sex (2)
Les Misérables (2)
Mere Christianity (2)
The Autobiography of Eleanor Roosevelt (2)
Gargantua and Pantagruel (2)
The Blind Assassin (2)
Quarantine Speech (2)