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Quotations about War

Pithy commentary on the "most successful of our cultural institutions" by writers, thinkers, and aphorists of the last couple thousand years.

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Science & Nature > Quotations

List added by Enkidu on 3/26/2005

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67 List Items

1

"The supreme excellence is not victory in battle; it consists in defeating your enemies without even fighting them." Sun Tzu, The Art of War

4.67 Stars | 12 ratings

2

"No plan of battle ever survives contact with the enemy." Heinz Guderian (attrib)

4.78 Stars | 9 ratings

3

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." Albert Einstein

4.25 Stars | 8 ratings

4

"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here...This is the War Room!" Peter Sellers, Dr. Strangelove (1964)

4.50 Stars | 6 ratings

5

"In the Soviet army it takes more courage to retreat than advance." Joseph Stalin

3.86 Stars | 7 ratings

6

"A leader who doesn't hesitate before he sends his nation into battle is not fit to be a leader." Golda Meir

3.78 Stars | 9 ratings

7

"Since barbarism has its pleasures, it naturally has its apologists." George Santayana, 1905

5.00 Stars | 5 ratings

8

"We have met the enemy, and not only is he ours, he is us." Walt Kelly, creator of Pogo

5.00 Stars | 5 ratings

9

"War is hell." William Tecumseh Sherman

3.86 Stars | 7 ratings

10

"Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum." (Whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war.) Vegetius, 4th century AD

3.83 Stars | 6 ratings

11

"Man's greatest happiness is to crush and kill his enemy, steal his possessions, rape his women and use their weeping bodies as his bedclothes, all the while kissing their rosy breasts and lips." Genghis Khan, attrib

3.00 Stars | 13 ratings

12

"The first casualty when war comes is truth." Phillip Knightley, 1975

4.50 Stars | 4 ratings

13

"In war there is no prize for the runner-up." General Omar Bradley

4.40 Stars | 5 ratings

14

"It is well that war is so terrible, lest we grow too fond of it." Robert E. Lee

4.20 Stars | 5 ratings

15

"Next to a lost battle, nothing is so sad as a battle that has been won." Duke of Wellington

4.20 Stars | 5 ratings

16

"Peace, n. In international affairs, a period of cheating between two periods of fighting." Ambrose Bierce

4.20 Stars | 5 ratings

17

"The Pope? How many divisions has he got?" Joseph Stalin

4.00 Stars | 4 ratings

18

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction was wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty?" Gandhi, 1948

4.00 Stars | 5 ratings

19

"History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap." Ronald Reagan

3.86 Stars | 7 ratings

20

"My center is giving way, my right is in retreat; situation excellent. I shall attack." Marshal Ferdinand Foch

3.57 Stars | 7 ratings

21

"Neither a man nor a crowd nor a nation can be trusted to act humanely or to think sanely under the influence of a great fear." Bertrand Russell, Unpopular Essays, 1950

4.50 Stars | 4 ratings

22

"Cogito ergo boom." Susan Sontag

4.33 Stars | 3 ratings

23

"Either war is obsolete, or men are." R. Buckminster Fuller, 1966

4.25 Stars | 4 ratings

24

General to the other officers: "On the other hand, gentlemen, what if we gave a war and EVERYBODY came?" Gary Larson, the Far Side

4.25 Stars | 4 ratings

25

"But in modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason." Ernest Hemingway

4.20 Stars | 5 ratings

26

"Death in battle is the most glorious for men. He who lives under the rule of his foe: it is he that is dead." Panchatranta, Sanskrit, c. 5th century BC

4.00 Stars | 4 ratings

27

"War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men." Georges Clemenceau

3.50 Stars | 4 ratings

28

"The victor will never be asked if he told the truth." Adolf Hitler

3.40 Stars | 5 ratings

29

"Everything that steel achieves in war can be won in politics by eloquence." Demetrius, c. 300 BC

3.33 Stars | 6 ratings

30

"I love war and responsibility and excitement. Peace is going to be hell on me." General George S. Patton

3.33 Stars | 6 ratings

31

"War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil." - George Orwell

4.33 Stars | 3 ratings

32

"After the great destruction / Everyone will prove that he was innocent." Günter Eich, 1955

4.00 Stars | 2 ratings

33

"Battle, n. A method of untying with the teeth a political knot that would not yield to the tongue." Ambrose Bierce

4.00 Stars | 3 ratings

34

"God is on the side of the biggest battalions." Napoleon

4.00 Stars | 4 ratings

35

"The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that is the way to bet." Damon Runyon

4.00 Stars | 3 ratings

36

"When women are depressed they either eat or go shopping. Men invade another country." Elayne Boosler

4.00 Stars | 3 ratings

37

"One of the essential experiences of war is never being able to escape from disgusting smells of human origin." George Orwell, "Looking Back on the Spanish War," 1943

3.67 Stars | 3 ratings

38

"Quantity has a quality all its own." Joseph Stalin

3.67 Stars | 3 ratings

39

"It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it." General Douglas MacArthur

3.60 Stars | 5 ratings

40

"Alliance, n. In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted in each other's pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third." Ambrose Bierce

3.50 Stars | 4 ratings

41

"To the ashes of the dead glory comes too late." Martial, Epigrams, 86 AD

3.50 Stars | 4 ratings

42

"Peace is a continuation of war using other means." General Vo Nguyen Giap, NVA

3.33 Stars | 3 ratings

43

"War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands." H.L. Mencken

3.33 Stars | 3 ratings

44

"Ah, God, how pretty war is, with its songs, its long rests!" Guillaume Apollinaire

3.00 Stars | 5 ratings

45

"War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth." Ernie Pyle

3.00 Stars | 4 ratings

46

"The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic." Joseph Stalin

2.80 Stars | 5 ratings

47

"War is a continuation of diplomacy using other means." Carl von Clausewitz, Über den Krieg

2.75 Stars | 4 ratings

48

"The common man is the greatest protection against war." Ernest Bevin, 1945

2.13 Stars | 8 ratings

49

"Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons." Bertrand Russell

5.00 Stars | 1 ratings

50

"Sometime they will give a war and nobody will come." Carl Sandburg, 1936

3.00 Stars | 3 ratings

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