Motivational Quotes

War

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

Best Quotes about War

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

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.

Weil, Simone

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

Crook, Jayne

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

Twain, Mark

A wage hike is very hard to take away, but bonuses and profit-sharing can disappear very quickly in hard times...More people are realizing that bonuses look like raises, but really aren't.

Bauman, Al

It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

Baudouin I

War is the great scavenger of thought. It is the sovereign disinfectant, and its red stream of blood is the Condy's Fluid that cleans out the stagnant pools and clotted channels of the intellect. We have awakened from an opium-dream of comfort, of ease, of that miserable poltroonery of the sheltered life. Our wish for indulgence of every sort, our laxity of manners, our wretched sensitiveness to personal inconvenience, these are suddenly lifted before us in their true guise as the specters of national decay; and we have risen from the lethargy of our dilettantism to lay them, before it is too late, by the flashing of the unsheathed sword.

Gosse, Sir Edmund

I'm a hero with coward's legs.

Milligan, Spike

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

10.

If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.

Benedict, Ruth

11.

America is addicted to wars of distraction.

Ehrenreich, Barbara

12.

Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.

Massie, Allan

13.

He that does good for good's sake seeks neither paradise nor reward, but he is sure of both in the end.

Penn, William

14.

I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.

Thoreau, Henry David

15.

All men would be cowards if they could.

Rochester, Earl

16.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Churchill, Winston

17.

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

18.

Those who dare to interpret God's will must never claim Him as an asset for one nation or group rather than another. War springs from the love and loyalty which should be offered to God being applied to some God substitute, one of the most dangerous being nationalism.

Runcie, Robert

19.

War is a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.

Thomas Mann

20.

What we believe is more important than our material existence, therefore warfare is a legitimate extension of values.

Johnson, Edward

21.

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

22.

Neither enemy faces, nor the mothers that love them, come to mind when one is thinking of nothing but endeavouring to survive. Philosophising about war is useless under fire.

Linda Berdoll

23.

For cowards the road of desertion should be left open; they will carry over to the enemy nothing, but their fears.

Bovee, Christian Nevell

24.

It is better to be the widow of a hero than the wife of a coward.

Ibarruri, Dolores

25.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Thoreau, Henry David

26.

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

Benjamin, Walter

27.

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

28.

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.

Confucius

29.

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

Monica Fairview

30.

Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.

W. L. George

31.

War is not nice.

Barbara Bush

32.

The pioneers of a warless world are the young men and women who refuse military service.

Einstein, Albert

33.

A reward cannot be valued if it is not understood

Grant, Phillip C.

34.

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

Reagan, Ronald

35.

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.

Hazlitt, William

36.

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

37.

Either war is obsolete or men are.

R. Buckminster Fuller

38.

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

39.

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

40.

I have known war as few men now living know it. It's very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.

Macarthur, Douglas

41.

Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

Gellhorn, Martha

42.

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.

Woolf, Virginia

43.

The reward of great men is that, long after they have died, one is not quite sure that they are dead.

Renard, Jules

44.

Perhaps the reward of the spirit who tries is not the goal but the exercise.

Cooke, E. V.

45.

As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it's fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.

Wilde, Oscar

46.

It is far easier to make war than to make peace.

Clemenceau, Georges

47.

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief... for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

Twain, Mark

48.

Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.

Vauvenargues, Marquis De

49.

Great occasions do not make heroes or cowards; they simply unveil them to the eyes of men.

Westcott, Bishop

50.

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

Hoover, Herbert Clark