War

"The combat deepens. On, ye brave, Who rush to glory, or the grave! Wave, Munich! all thy banners wave, And charge with all thy chivalry."

"La Garde meurt, mais ne se rend pas."

"War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other."

"There dwell and toil, in the British village of Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From these…there are successively selected, during the French War, say thirty able-bodied men: Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has suckled and nursed them; she has not without difficulty and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and trained them to crafts, so that once can weave, another build, another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty stone avoirdupois. Nevertheless, amid much weeping and swearing, they are selected; all dressed in red; and shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand miles, or say only to the south of Spain; and fed there till wanted. And now to that same spot in the south of Spain, are thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dumdrudge, in like manner wending: Till at length, after infinite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition; and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his hand. Straightway the word "Fire!" is given: and they blow the souls out of one another and in the place of sixty brisk useful craftsmen, the world has sixty dead carcasses, which it must bury, and anew shed tears for. Had these men any quarrel? Busy as the Devil is, not the smallest!... their Governors had fallen out; and, instead of shooting one another, had the cunning to make these poor blockheads shoot. Alas, so it is in Deutschland, and hitherto in all other lands..."

"O Chryste, it is a grief for me to telle, How manie a noble erle and valrous knyghte In fyghtynge for Kynge Harrold noblie fell, Al sleyne on Hastyng's field in bloudie fyghte."

"Is this a call to war? Does anyone pretend that preparation for resistance to aggression is unleashing war? I declare it to be the sole guarantee of peace. We need the swift gathering of forces to confront not only military but moral aggression; the resolute and sober acceptance of their duty by the English-speaking peoples and by all the nations, great and small, who wish to walk with them. Their faithful and zealous comradeship would almost between night and morning clear the path of progress and banish from all our lives the fear which already darkens the sunlight to hundreds of millions of men."

"The eagle has ceased to scream, but the parrots will now begin to chatter. The war of the giants is over and the pigmies will now start to squabble."

"To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war."

"Let us learn our lessons. … Never believe any war will be smooth and easy or that anyone who embarks on that strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events… incompetent or arrogant commanders, untrustworthy allies, hostile neutrals, malignant fortune, ugly surprise, awful miscalculations."

"Equidem ad pacem hortari non desino; quae vel iniusta utilior est quam iustissimum bellum cum civibus."

"Silent enim leges inter arma."

"Parvi enim sunt foris arma, nisi est consilium domi."

"Silent leges inter arma."

"Pro aris et focis."

"Nervi belli pecunia infinita."

"There's nothing more pornographic than glorifying war."

"We had a malfunction with a cluster bomb unit, and a couple of grenades fell on a schoolyard, and some, I think three, school children were killed... And two weeks later, I got a letter from a Serb grandfather. He said, “You’ve killed my granddaughter.” He said, “I hate you for this, and I’ll kill you.” And I got this in the middle of the war. And it made me very, very sad. We certainly never wanted to do anything like that. But in war, accidents happen. And that’s why you shouldn’t undertake military operations unless every other alternative has been exhausted, because innocent people do die."

"Well here's to the Maine, and I'm sorry for Spain, Said Kelly and Burke and Shea."

"War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means."

"War is only caused through the political intercourse of governments and nations … war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with an admixture of other means."

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

"War is fought by human beings."

"Of course wars are fought by teenagers. Do you realize that? They really should be fought by the politicians and the old people who start these wars."

"We made war to the end—to the very end of the end."

"War is not the answer For only love can conquer hate You know we've got to find a way To bring some lovin' here today"

"I make my war upon privilege and authority, whereby the right of property, the true right in that which is proper to the individual, is annihilated."

"What voice did on my spirit fall, Peschiera, when thy bridge I crossed? "'Tis better to have fought and lost, Than never to have fought at all.""

"[T]he honours, the fame, the emoluments of war, belong not to [the middle and industrial classes]; the battle-plain is the harvest field of the aristocracy, watered with the blood of the people...Whilst our trade rested upon our foreign dependencies, as was the case in the middle of the last century...force and violence, were necessary to command our customers for our manufacturers...But war, although the greatest of consumers, not only produces nothing in return, but, by abstracting labour from productive employment and interrupting the course of trade, it impedes, in a variety of indirect ways, the creation of wealth; and, should hostilities be continued for a series of years, each successive war-loan will be felt in our commercial and manufacturing districts with an augmented pressure."

"War in fact is becoming contemptible, and ought to be put down by the great nations of Europe, just as we put down a vulgar mob."

"The war had been going on long enough that soldiers digging graves for comrades would unearth bones of men killed in previous battles. And because they were starving just about anything went into the stewpot. Frogs. Mice. Bugs. Dogs. Snails. Worms. They slaughtered the horses and oxen that were pulling carts heaped with treasure; jeweled reliquaries, silver candlestick holders, and gold crucifixes were abandoned in scorched fields or left in carts too heavy for starving men to pull. They drank from stagnant puddles and filthy streams... a well or cistern... never mind the body floating on the surface. ...Blackburn [in Old Man Goya] reports that a soldier who approached a convent being used as a hospital saw amputated limbs along the wall, "while more arms and legs kept flying out the windows..." At La Coruña, two thousand horses were shot to prevent enemy soldiers from riding them. ...One Spaniard kept a bag of French ears and fingers. ...[A] pack of English hounds accompanied [the Iron Duke]. Between military engagements he would go fox hunting. At Talavera... a fire sprang up in dry grass where... soldiers lay dead or dying, "and men were ashamed because their pangs of hunger increased with the smell of roasting meat.""

"The flames of Moscow were the aurora of the liberty of the world."

"But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at."

"Hence jarring sectaries may learn Their real interest to discern; That brother should not war with brother, And worry and devour each other."

"General Taylor never surrenders."

"We give up the fort when there's not a man left to defend it."

"There was a war, just one in a long line of wars, fought for beliefs and principles as all wars have ever been fought and will ever be in days to come. Little was achieved, nothing was gained. Lives were taken and pain was inflicted. The real reasons are lost in the mists."

"War has revealed an overpowering national instinct. The conflicting theories of the exact nature and limitations of our government had blinded the shrewdest minds to the fact that we were a nation, with all the feelings and instincts of a nation, and that our quarrels must be settled inside and not outside."

"‘But human beans [...] is shootling guns and going up in aerioplanes to drop their bombs on each other's heads every week. Human beans is always killing other human beans.’"

"Men will seem to see new destructions in the sky. The flames that fall from it will seem to rise in it and to fly from it with terror. They will hear every kind of animals speak in human language. They will instantaneously run in person in various parts of the world, without motion. They will see the greatest splendour in the midst of darkness. O! marvel of the human race! What madness has led you thus! You will speak with animals of every species and they with you in human speech. You will see yourself fall from great heights without any harm and torrents will accompany you, and will mingle with their rapid course."

"From fear in every guise, From sloth, from love of pelf, By war's great sacrifice The world redeems itself."

"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords who inhabited the castles whose towers may still be seen along the Rhine concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another's throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose — especially their lives. They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. And here let me emphasize the fact — and it cannot be repeated too often — that the working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish the corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; Yours but to do and die. That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation. If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace."

"War is the ultimate realization of modern technology."

"The Trump administration has barred International Criminal Court investigators from entering the United States. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced Friday that the U.S. will start denying visas to members of the ICC who may be investigating alleged war crimes by the U.S. military in Afghanistan. In September, national security adviser John Bolton threatened U.S. sanctions against ICC judges if they continued to investigate alleged war crimes committed by U.S. troops in Afghanistan."

"Di qui non si passa."

"Non si passa, passeremo noi."

"What argufies pride and ambition? Soon or late death will take us in tow: Each bullet has got its commission, And when our time's come we must go."

"I'm iron. I lasted through ten years of war, and now I can last through this. It's true, it's not good for the nerves."

"A feat of chivalry, fiery with consummate courage, and bright with flashing vigor."

"Carry his body hence,— Kings must have slaves; Kings climb to eminence Over men's graves: So this man's eye is dim;— Throw the earth over him."

"In war men pass like shadows that stain the grass, Leaving their lives upon the green: While Earth bewails the crimson sheen, Men’s dreams and stars and whispers all helpless pass."