War

"War and peace are not separate compartments. Peace depends on threats and force; often peace is the crystallisation of past force."

"No wars are unintended or 'accidental'. What is often unintended is the length and bloodiness of the war."

"War tore the guts out of the British empire, weakening it in resources and morale. The first major loss was Ireland."

"[The great questions of the day] are not decided by speeches and majority votes, but by blood and iron."

"Ich sehe in unserm Bundesverhältnisse ein Gebrechen Preussens, welches wir früher oder später ferro et igne werden heilen müssen."

"Lieber Spitzkugeln als Spitzreden."

"L'affaire Herzegovinienne ne vaut pas les os d'un fusilier poméranien."

"Wars are God's way of teaching Americans geography."

"Just for a word—"neutrality," a word which in war-time had so often been disregarded—just for a scrap of paper, Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her."

"We Germans have a far greater and more urgent duty towards civilization to perform than the Great Asiatic Power. We, like the Japanese, can only fulfil it by the sword."

"Our next war will be fought for the highest interests of our country and of mankind. This will invest it with importance in the world's history. "World power or downfall" will be our rallying cry."

"War is a biological necessity of the first importance, a regulative element in the life of mankind which cannot be dispensed with. ... But it is not only a biological law but a moral obligation and, as such, an indispensable factor in civilization."

"The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of development, must be repeatedly emphasized."

"Wars invariably serve as classrooms and laboratories where men and techniques and states of mind are prepared for the next war."

"Gaily! gaily! close our ranks! Arm! Advance! Hope of France! Gaily! gaily! close our ranks! Onward! Onward! Gauls and Franks!"

"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."