WAR QUOTES XV

quotations about war


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A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war.

DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
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news conference, August 11, 1954


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Tags: Dwight D. Eisenhower


Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war? People will not face this alternative because it is so difficult to abolish war. The abolition of war will demand distasteful limitations of national sovereignty. But what perhaps impedes understanding of the situation more than anything else is that the term "mankind" feels vague and abstract. People scarcely realize in imagination that the danger is to themselves and their children and their grandchildren, and not only to a dimly apprehended humanity. They can scarcely bring themselves to grasp that they, individually, and those whom they love are in imminent danger of perishing agonizingly.

BERTRAND RUSSELL

The Russell-Einstein Manifesto

Tags: Bertrand Russell


One of the many, many things I hate about war is how it trivializes the personal. The big themes, the broad sweep, the emergency measures, the national identity, all the things that a particular kind of man with a particular kind of power urge adores, these are the things that become important. War gives the lie to the personal, drowns it in meetings, alarms, sacrifices. The personal is only allowed to return as death.

JEANETTE WINTERSON

The Stone Gods

Tags: Jeanette Winterson


War hath no fury like a non-combatant.

C. E. MONTAGUE

Disenchantment

Tags: C. E. Montague


As a U.S. taxpayer and a retired banker, I look for a good return on investment. I want my tax dollars used wisely, thank you very much -- and I've identified some smarter investments than war.

LORI DRAPER

"Conflict resolution is a much better investment than war", Alaska Dispatch News, January 6, 2016


If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.

GEORGE WASHINGTON

fifth annual address to Congress, December 13, 1793


War is such an indefeasible and unescapable Real that the good realist must accept it rather comprehensively. To keep out of it is pure quietism, an acute moral failure to adjust. At the same time, there is an inexorability about war. It is a little unbridled for the realist's rather nice sense of purposive social control. And nothing is so disagreeable to the pragmatic mind as any kind of an absolute. The realist pragmatist could not recognize war as inexorable--though to the common mind it would seem as near an absolute, coercive social situation as it is possible to fall into. For the inexorable abolishes choices, and it is the essence of the realist's creed to have, in every situation, alternatives before him.

RANDOLPH SILLIMAN BOURNE

War and the Intellectuals


Wars start like this. Cultures gamble decadence and death will win them rebirth, watch themselves sliding into it, knowing it's an all-or-nothing bet.

GLEN DUNCAN

By Blood We Live

Tags: Glen Duncan


War is the ultimate realization of modern technology.

DON DELILLO

End Zone

Tags: Don DeLillo


Ironically enough, the only people who can hold up indefinitely under the stress of modern war are psychotics. Individual insanity is immune to the consequences of collective insanity.

ALDOUS HUXLEY

Brave New World Revisited

Tags: Aldous Huxley


The decision to use military hard power is a serious one and never taken lightly. The military establishment does everything in its power to mitigate risk in a battlespace that can only be described as "murky" because, no matter the amount of intelligence or planning, the only certainty is uncertainty.

ROBERT MAKROS

"'Clean war' is the unicorn of armed conflict", The Hill, March 31, 2017


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

CARL VON CLAUSEWITZ

On War


Such is the nature of war that, at the top, there is hardly any aspect of human behavior, individual and collective, which does not impinge on its conduct. And which, as a result, those in charge do not have to take into account and act upon.

MARTIN VAN CREVELD

"Why the best teacher of war is war", OUP blog, April 9, 2017


War ... it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.

JOSEPH HELLER

Catch-22

Tags: Joseph Heller


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

Evil for Evil


War is a monster with snaky locks, and fiery bloodshot eyes, and harpy claws, passing over fair fields and leaving its footprints in burning villages, dying men, weeping wives and children, and needs to be seen by those who so eagerly clamour for it at every opportunity. The sight of that fearful phantom, girt round with skulls, chains reeking with blood and desolation and ruin in its track, would stop their eagerness for it, unless under real compulsion.

M. D. CONWAY

attributed, Platt's Essays


However just the cause, we should mourn for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.

JOHN MCCAIN

speech, August 30, 2004

Tags: John McCain


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

"Universal Peace"

Tags: James Madison


For the conduct of the war: at the first, men rested extremely upon number: they did put the wars likewise upon main force and valor; pointing days for pitched fields, and so trying it out upon an even match and they were more ignorant in ranging and arraying their battles. After, they grew to rest upon number rather competent, than vast; they grew to advantages of place, cunning diversions, and the like: and they grew more skilful in the ordering of their battles.

FRANCIS BACON

"Of Vicissitude Of Things", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral

Tags: Francis Bacon


When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man by victory or death.

THOMAS HOBBES

Leviathan

Tags: Thomas Hobbes