War

"All quiet along the Potomac they say Except now and then a stray picket Is shot as he walks on his beat, to and fro, By a rifleman hid in the thicket."

"I’ve been thinking about the war a lot recently, and I think I’ve decided it’s wrong. We are defeating ourselves in waging it, will destroy ourselves by winning it."

"Germany could not win this war because it was in league with the devil. This war would not have ended without revolution."

"Comrade, I did not want to kill you. If you jumped in here again, I would not do it, if you would be sensible too. But you were only an idea to me before, an abstraction that lived in my mind and called forth its appropriate response. It was that abstraction I stabbed. But now, for the first time, I see you are a man like me. I thought of your hand-grenades, of your bayonet, of your rifle; now I see your wife and your face and our fellowship. Forgive me, comrade. We always see it too late. Why do they never tell us that you are poor devils like us, that your mothers are just as anxious as ours, and that we have the same fear of death, and the same dying and the same agony — forgive me, comrade; how could you be my enemy? If we threw away these rifles and this uniform you could be my brother, just like Kat and Albert. Take twenty years of my life, comrade, and stand up — take more, for I do not know what I can even attempt to do with it now."

"Of all the differences between the Old World and the New this is perhaps the most salient: Half the wars of Europe, half the troubles that have vexed European States, ... have arisen from theological differences or from the rival claims of church and state. This whole vast chapter of debate and strife has remained virtually unopened in the United States."

"The distribution of the world's resources and the settled unity of the peoples of the world are ... one and the same thing, for behind all modern wars lies a fundamental economic problem. Solve that and wars will very largely cease."

"War can be and is mass murder, where the motive is wrong. It can be sacrifice and right action, where the motive is right. The slaying of a man in the act of killing the defenseless is not regarded as murder. The principle remains the same, whether it is killing an individual who is murdering, or fighting a nation which is warring on the defenseless."

"I refused to continue in a war that was no longer in the service of the vital national interest of our people. ... We’ve been a nation too long at war. If you're 20 years old today, you have never known an America at peace."

"If wars can be started with lies, they can be stopped by truth."

"This is war. Have you heard about "good war"? I don't think anyone have heard about good war. It's a war, you always have casualties, you always have innocent people, people being killed by any means, no one can tell how..."

"Instead of breaking that bridge, we should, if possible, provide another, that he may retire the sooner out of Europe."

"Let who will boast their courage in the field, I find but little safety from my shield. Nature's, not honour's, law we must obey:This made me cast my useless shield away, And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life, which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain; But who can get another life again?"

"A great historian, Henry Steele Commager, said that in their lust for victory, neither traditional party is looking beyond November. And he went on to cite three issues that their platforms totally ignore: atomic warfare, Presidential Directive 59 notwithstanding. If we don't resolve that issue, all others become irrelevant. The issue of our natural resources; the right of posterity to inherit the earth, and what kind of earth will it be? The issue of nationalism — the recognition, he says, that every major problem confronting us is global, and cannot be solved by nationalism here or elsewhere — that is chauvinistic, that is parochial, that is as anachronistic as states' rights was in the days of Jefferson Davis."

"There are two rules of war that have not yet been invalidated by the new world order. The first rule is that the belligerent nation must be fairly sure that its actions will make things better; the second rule is that the belligerent nation must be more or less certain that its actions won't make things worse. America could perhaps claim to be satisfying the first rule (while admitting that the improvement may be only local and short term). It cannot begin to satisfy the second."

"The arms race is a race between nuclear weapons and ourselves."

"What is the only provocation that could bring about the use of nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the priority target for nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. What is the only established defense against nuclear weapons? Nuclear weapons. How do we prevent the use of nuclear weapons? By threatening the use of nuclear weapons. And we can't get rid of nuclear weapons, because of nuclear weapons. The intransigence, it seems, is a function of the weapons themselves."

"They sent forth men to battle, But no such men return; And home, to claim their welcome, Come ashes in an urn."

"My voice is still for war."

"It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war."

"Flet victus, victor interiit."

"Bis vincit qui se vincit in victoria."

"I sing the hymn of the conquered, who fell in the battle of life, The hymn of the wounded, the beaten who died overwhelmed in the strife; Not the jubilant song of the victors for whom the resounding acclaim Of nations was lifted in chorus whose brows wore the chaplet of fame, But the hymn of the low and the humble, the weary, the broken in heart, Who strove and who failed, acting bravely a silent and desperate part."

"Kill one man, and you are a murderer. Kill millions of men, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god.""

"He who surpasses or subdues mankind, Must look down on the hate of those below."

"Victor victorum cluet."

"Victi vincimus."

"Male vincetis, sed vincite."

"Cede repugnanti; cedendo victor abibis."

"Sai, che piegar si vede Il docile arboscello, Che vince allor che cede Dei turbini al furor."

"Like Douglas conquer, or like Douglas die."

"A vaincre sans péril on triomphe sans gloire."

"In hoc signo vinces."

"Jus belli, ut qui vicissent, iis quos vicissent, quemadmodum vellent, imperarent."

"Berlin of 1884 was effected through the sword and the bullet. But the night of the bullet was followed by the morning of the chalk and the blackboard. The physical violence of the battlefield was followed by the psychological violence of the classroom."

"To conquer by sheer force is becoming harder and harder every day. Defensive is getting continuously the advantage of offensive, as we progress in the satanic science of destruction. The new art of controlling electrically the movements and operations of individualized automata at a distance without wires, will soon enable any country to render its coasts impregnable against all naval attacks."

"Life throws challenges and every challenge comes with rainbows and lights to conquer it."

"Brave conquerors! for so you are That war against your own affections, And the huge army of the world's desires."

"Shall they hoist me up, And show me to the shouting varletry Of censuring Rome? Rather a ditch in Egypt Be gentle grave unto me, rather on Nilus' mud Lay me stark naked, and let the water-flies Blow me into abhorring!"

"Narrator: The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices...to be found only in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill...and suspicion can destroy...and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all of its own -- for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is...that these things cannot be confined...to the Twilight Zone."

"We have defined colonialism as the forcible takeover of land and economy, and, in the case of European colonialism, a restructuring of non-capitalist economies in order to fuel European capitalism. This allows us to understand modern European colonialism not as some trans-historical impulse to conquer but as an integral part of capitalist development."

"Great things thro' greatest hazards are achiev'd, And then they shine."

"We still talk in terms of "conquest"-whether it be of the insect world or of the mysterious world of space. We still have not become mature enough to see ourselves as a very tiny part of a vast and incredible universe, a universe that is distinguished above all else by a mysterious and wonderful unity that we flout at our peril."

"Veni, vidi, vici."

"While paintings, poems, films and histories memorialise the great naval battles – Salamis, Lepanto, Trafalgar, Midway – when one navy destroyed another, the main strategic purpose of navies is to control the seas, and the highways that criss-cross them, and prevent their enemies from doing so. Even today land communications are vulnerable to disruption, either man-made or natural; how much more so in the past before surfaced roads and railways? Ever since humans began to build floating craft, water has been the most reliable way of moving people and material. Navies exist to protect their nations, their coasts, people and shipping, and to project their power abroad. By landing troops on enemy coasts, acting as floating gun and aircraft platforms in more recent times to bring firepower to bear on land targets, or destroying enemy capacity to wage war, whether by sinking or seizing enemy and sometimes neutral shipping or blockading ports so that needed resources, including soldiers, cannot move in or out, a powerful navy can make it difficult, even impossible, for its enemy to wage war on land or at sea. ‘We destroy the national life afloat,’ said the leading British naval theorist Julian Corbett, who taught generations of officers before the First World War, ‘and therefore check the vitality of that life ashore, as far as one is dependent on the other.’"

"Our Mountains are cover'd with Imperial Oak Whose Roots, like our liberties, ages have nourished But long e're our Nation submits to the Yoke Not a Tree shall be left on the Field where it Flourished Should Invasion impend, every Tree would defend From the Hill tops they shaded, our Shores to defend For ne'er shall the Sons of Columbia be Slaves While the Earth bears a Plant, or the Sea rolls its Waves."

"It may not be fit, in point of discipline, that a subordinate officer should dispute the commands of his superior, if he were ordered to go to the mast head: but if the superior were to order him thither, knowing that, for some bodily infirmity, it was impossible he should execute the order, and that he must infallibly break his neck in the attempt, and it were so to happen, the discipline of the navy would not protect that superior from being guilty of the crime of murder."

"War itself is a great evil, but it is chosen to avoid a greater. The practice of pressing is one of the mischiefs war bringeth with it. But it is a maxim in law, and good policy too, that all private mischiefs must be borne with patience for preventing a national calamity. And as no greater calamity can befall us than to be weak and defenceless at sea in a time of war, so I do not know that the wisdom of the nation hath hitherto found out any method of manning our navy, less inconvenient than pressing; and at the same time, equally sure and effectual."

"The navy is the most important defence of the country, in which every subject of the Queen has an interest of the deepest character."

"The salvation of this country depends upon the discipline of the fleet; without discipline they would be a rabble, dangerous only to their friends, and harmless to the enemy."

"The condition of the British Navy is, no doubt, a matter of national importance and public interest."