War

"Never run against a war hero."

"Waste of Blood, and waste of Tears Waste of youth's most precious years, Waste of ways the saints have trod, Waste of Glory, waste of God, War!"

"Hobbes clearly proves that every creature Lives in a state of war by nature."

"War, that mad game the world so loves to play."

"Deos fortioribus adesse."

"אין לך מלחמה שנוצחת שאין בה מזרעו של עשו"

"Militarism... is fetish worship. It is the prostration of men's souls before, and the laceration of their bodies to appease, an idol. ...Reverence for economic activity and industry and what is called business is also fetish worship, and in their devotion to that idol they torture themselves as needlessly, and indulge in the same meaningless antics."

"A little more grape, Captain Bragg."

"Half a league, half a league, Half a league onward, All in the valley of Death Rode the six hundred. "Forward the Light Brigade! Charge for the guns!" he said, Into the valley of death Rode the six hundred."

"Forward, the Light Brigade! Was there a man dismayed? Not tho' the soldier knew Some one had blunder'd. Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of death Rode the six hundred."

"Omnia prius experiri verbis quam armis sapientem decet."

"Ten good soldiers, wisely led, Will beat a hundred without a head."

"It makes me hate war, but it doesn't make me believe that we're in a world that can live without war yet."

"War," a friend of mine said, "is not about sound at all. It is actually about silence, the silence of humanity."

"[There is] an obliteration of all the religious, moral and legal habits which acted as a barrier against acts of murder or of aggression against personal inviolability."

"Uppermost on everybody’s mind of course, particularly here in America, is the horror of what has come to be known as 9/11. Nearly three thousand civilians lost their lives in that lethal terrorist strike. The grief is still deep. The rage still sharp. The tears have not dried. And a strange, deadly war is raging around the world. Yet, each person who has lost a loved one surely knows secretly, deeply, that no war, no act of revenge, no daisy-cutters dropped on someone else’s loved ones or someone else’s children, will blunt the edges of their pain or bring their own loved ones back. War cannot avenge those who have died. War is only a brutal desecration of their memory."

"I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war."

"Those who took refuge in the cave of Zeret tried to reproduce their traditional way of life underground, far from the omnivoyance of the Italian colonial army. This seems to be a characteristic of 20th century war: from the Madrid tube in the 1930s to the present Al-Qaeda bunkers in Afghanistan, all the way through the Vietcong tunnels and the American nuclear shelters of the 1960s. Talking about the Iraq War, Stephen Graham (2004: 18) writes: ‘this time... the key is between trans-global, near instantaneous killing power, operating on the fringes of the outer space, and deep, subterranean, terrestrial space’. Except for the outer space, though, there is nothing really new in the War against Terror—an offspring of colonial warfare (Mbembe 2003). For the last hundred years, against the destructiveness of industrial war, the only option of survival has been going underground. And this is what the followers of Abebe Aregai did."

"Patriots always talk of dying for their country, and never of killing for their country."

"[The Russians] dashed on towards that thin line tipped with steel."

"There are two sides of war. There is a side that fights, and there is a side that keeps the schools and the factories and the hospitals open. There is a side that is focused on winning battles, and there is a side that is focused on winning life. There is a side that leads the front-line discussion, and there is a side that leads the back-line discussion. There is a side that thinks that peace is the end of fighting, and there is a side that thinks that peace is the arrival of schools and jobs. There is a side that is led by men, and there is a side that is led by women. And in order for us to understand how do we build lasting peace, we must understand war and peace from both sides. We must have a full picture of what that means."

"To accept the legitimacy of the state is to embrace the necessity for war."

"Mr. Speaker, in the brief time I have let me give you five reasons why I'm opposed to giving the President a blank check to launch a unilateral invasion and occupation of Iraq and why I will vote against this resolution. One: I have not heard any estimates of how many young American men and women might die in such a war, or how many tens of thousands of women and children in Iraq might also be killed. As a caring nation, we should do everything we can to prevent the horrible suffering that a war will cause. War must be the last recourse in international relations, not the first. Second... If President Bush believes that the US can go to war at any time against any nation, what moral or legal obligation can our government raise if another country chose to do the same thing."

"War was a masculine art, but when you started attacking women, you’d stopped engaging in war. You deserved anything that happened to you after that point."

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

"Let no one ever, from henceforth say one word in any way countenancing war. It is dangerous even to speak of how here and there the individual may gain some hardship of soul by it. For war is hell, and those who institute it are criminals. Were there even anything to say for it, it should not be said; for its spiritual disasters far outweigh any of its advantages."

"Qui fuit peut revenir aussi; Qui meurt, il n'en est pas ainsi."

"Ein Schlachten war's, nicht eine Schlacht, zu nennen! It was a slaughter rather than a battle."

"In the lost battle, Borne down by the flying, Where mingles war's rattle With groans of the dying."

""Charge, Chester, charge! On, Stanley, on!" Were the last words of Marmion."

"There was a stately drama writ By the hand that peopled the earth and air, And set the stars in the infinite, And made night gorgeous and morning fair; And all that had sense to reason knew That bloody drama must be gone through. Some sat and watched how the action veered— Waited, profited, trembled, cheered— We saw not clearly nor understood, But yielding ourselves to the masterhand, Each in his part as best he could, We played it through as the author planned."

"I'm dedicating my little story to you; doubtless you will be among the very few who will ever read it. It seems war stories aren't very well received at this point. I'm told they're out-dated, untimely and as might be expected - make some unpleasant reading. And, as you have no doubt already perceived, human beings don't like to remember unpleasant things. They gird themselves with the armor of wishful thinking, protect themselves with a shield of impenetrable optimism, and, with a few exceptions, seem to accomplish their "forgetting" quite admirably. But you, my children, I don't want you to be among those who choose to forget. I want you to read my stories and a lot of others like them. I want you to fill your heads with Remarque and Tolstoy and Ernie Pyle. I want you to know what shrapnel, and "88's" and mortar shells and mustard gas mean. I want you to feel, no matter how vicariously, a semblance of the feeling of a torn limb, a burnt patch of flesh, the crippling, numbing sensation of fear, the hopeless emptiness of fatigue. All these things are complimentary to the province of war and they should be taught and demonstrated in classrooms along with the more heroic aspects of uniforms, and flags, and honor and patriotism. I have no idea what your generation will be like. In mine we were to enjoy "Peace in our time". A very well meaning gentleman waved his umbrella and shouted those very words...less than a year before the whole world went to war. But this gentleman was suffering the worldly disease of insufferable optimism. He and his fellow humans kept polishing the rose colored glasses when actually they should have taken them off. They were sacrificing reason and reality for a brief and temporal peace of mind, the same peace of mind that many of my contemporaries derive by steadfastly refraining from remembering the war that came before."

"Fortune is always on the side of the largest battalions."

"It is an irrepressible conflict between opposing and enduring forces."

"There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war."

"In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine."

"Hold the Fort! I am coming."

"War is hell."

"War is the remedy our enemies have chosen. Other simple remedies were within their choice. Yon know it and they know it, but they wanted war, and I say let us give them all they want; not a word of argument, not a sign of let up, no cave in till we are whipped or they are."

"I've been where you are now and I know just how you feel. It's entirely natural that there should beat in the breast of every one of you a hope and desire that some day you can use the skill you have acquired here. Suppress it! You don't know the horrible aspects of war. I've been through two wars and I know. I've seen cities and homes in ashes. I've seen thousands of men lying on the ground, their dead faces looking up at the skies. I tell you, war is hell!"

"You do not understand what happens in war—a sort of sublime madness, an unholy hatred that is twisted into an unreasoning sense of righteousness…"

"J'ai vécu."

"All's fair in love and war."

"Sainte Jeanne went harvesting in France, But ah! what found she there? The little streams were running red, And the torn fields were bare; And all about the ruined towers Where once her king was crowned, The hurtling ploughs of war and death Had scored the desolate ground."

"War is never fatal but always lost. Always lost."

"War was a kind of poverty with bullets."

"Speed is the essence of war. Take advantage of the enemy's unpreparedness; travel by unexpected routes and strike him where he has taken no precautions."

"[I]n war 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."

"Either this or upon this. (Either bring this back or be brought back upon it)."

"One blast upon his bugle horn Were worth a thousand men."