quotations about war
The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must--never for sport.
ROBERT A. HEINLEIN
Time Enough For Love
To me, the feeling of war is falling in love with something and having it killed in front of you, over and over again.
CHRIS ROESSNER
"Iraq vet talks about his Netflix movie, pulling CQ in Saddam's palace, debunking 'dysfunctional veteran' stereotype", Army Times, April 21, 2017
What small account
The All-living seems to take of this thin flame
Which we call life. He sends a moment's blast
Out of war's nostrils, and a myriad
Of these our puny tapers are blown out
Forever.
DINAH CRAIK
"Looking Death in the Face"
It is a much easier thing to unloose the demon war than to chain him up again.
M. D. CONWAY
attributed, Platt's Essays
The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.
J. R. R. TOLKIEN
The Return of the King
Always remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a chance.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
My Early Life: A Roving Commission
I don't reject the concept of preemptive war. I'm a mother of five. I have five grandchildren. And I always say: Think of a lioness. Think of a mother bear. You come anywhere near our cubs, you're dead. And so, in terms of any threat to our country, people have to know we'll be there to preemptively strike. But what the president [Bush] did was, on the basis of no real intelligence for an imminent threat to our country, chose to go into a war for reasons that are still unknown to us.
NANCY PELOSI
Online NewsHour, March 30, 2006
War is an environmental issue and a health issue that affects us all. Our entire planet is saturated by toxins due to these bombings in the long term because we share the same atmosphere.
SEELAI POPAL
"After MOAB, More Afghans Unite to Resist US War and Occupation", Truth-Out, April 20, 2017
O young men that shed your blood with so generous a joy for the starving earth! O heroism of the world! What a harvest for destruction to reap under this splendid summer sun! Young men of all nations, brought into conflict by a common ideal, making enemies of those who should be brothers; all of you, marching to your death, are dear to me.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Above the Battle
War is the most readily available form of chaos.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives--when the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
Only people who haven't lived through a war advocate it so eagerly.
DAVID GERROLD
Under the Eye of God
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Atlantic Monthly, November 1945
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
Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime.
BAN KI-MOON
"Starvation 'as a weapon' is a war crime, UN chief warns parties to conflict in Syria", UN News Centre, January 14, 2016
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
C. E. MONTAGUE
Disenchantment
War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
The Second World War, Volume III: The Grand Alliance
War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.
LEWIS MUMFORD
Technics and Civilization
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
news conference, August 11, 1954
All Wars are Follies, very expensive, and very mischievous ones. When will Mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their Differences by Arbitration? Were they to do it, even by the Cast of a Dye, it would be better than by Fighting and destroying each other.
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN
letter to Mary Hewson, January 27, 1783