Motivational Quotes

War

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

- Albert Einstein

Best Quotes about War

Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.

Reagan, Ronald

War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

Kraus, Karl

Cry havoc! and let slip the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.

Shakespeare, William

Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow -- perhaps it all will.

Einstein, Albert

The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

Sun Tzu

The cannon thunders... limbs fly in all directions... one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice... it's Humanity in search of happiness.

Baudelaire, Charles

Either war is obsolete or men are.

R. Buckminster Fuller

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

Eisenhower, Dwight D.

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once'The Unnecessary War'.

Sir Winston Churchill

10.

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

Hoffer, Eric

11.

There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it.

Tocqueville, Alexis De

12.

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

Gandhi, Mahatma

13.

It is the coward who fawns upon those above him. It is the coward who is insolent whenever he dares be so.

Junius

14.

Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person, but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen.

Epictetus

15.

The cowards never started -- and the weak died along the way.

16.

Suppose they gave a war, and no one came?

Parrish-Bach, Leslie

17.

How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.

Kraus, Karl

18.

There are several good protections against temptation, but the surest is cowardice.

Twain, Mark

19.

The idea of thanking staff should mean giving them something that they would never buy for themselves.

Crook, Jayne

20.

It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.

Gandhi, Mahatma

21.

What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.

Franklin, Benjamin

22.

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.

Kennedy, John F.

23.

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.

Hoover, Herbert Clark

24.

What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.

Vonnegut Jr., Kurt

25.

War is the father of all things. But who is the mother?

Kocher, Gerhard

26.

War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.

Mumford, Lewis

27.

What are we hoping to get out of it, what's it all in aid of -- is it really just for the sake of a gloved hand waving at you from a golden coach?

Osborne, John

28.

War is the trade of Kings.

Dryden, John

29.

The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.

Graves, Robert

30.

Man gives every reason for his conduct save one, every excuse for his crimes save one, every plea for his safety save one; and that one is his cowardice.

Shaw, George Bernard

31.

Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage. That is all true. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul a people.

Davis, Rebecca Harding

32.

Wars are carried out by large organizations; Peace is brought one by one.

Manor, Rachel

33.

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein

34.

War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.

Eliot, T. S.

35.

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo

36.

What the horrors of war are, no one can imagine. They are not wounds and blood and fever, spotted and low, or dysentery, chronic and acute, cold and heat and famine. They are intoxication, drunken brutality, demoralization and disorder on the part of the inferior... jealousies, meanness, indifference, selfish brutality on the part of the superior.

Nightingale, Florence

37.

The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

George Orwell

38.

The cross of the Legion of Honor has been conferred on me. However, few escape that distinction.

Twain, Mark

39.

War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.

Bagehot, Walter

40.

Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.

Meehan, Francis

41.

If it were not for the war, this war would suit me down to the ground.

Sayers, Dorothy L.

42.

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.

Arendt, Hannah

43.

War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory, and good fortune.

Raleigh, Sir Walter

44.

War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.

Mencken, H. L.

45.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Thoreau, Henry David

46.

I think the mark of a great ruler, is not his ability to make war but to achieve peace.

Monica Fairview

47.

A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

Bierce, Ambrose

48.

Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the 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.

Sir Winston Churchill

49.

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

Weil, Simone

50.

All men would be cowards if they could.

Rochester, Earl