War Quotes

War isn't just about bravery and courage and jingoism and patriotism. It's also fundamentally about grief. And the people that go and do the fighting and the dying are never the people who actually benefit from the fighting and the dying.

~ Russell Crowe

We've always had this experience that things take long, but I'm 100% convinced that our principles will in the end prevail. No one knew how the Cold War would end at the time, but it did end. This is within our living experience... I'm surprised at how fainthearted we sometimes are and how quickly we lose courage.

~ Angela Merkel

War is an arena for the display of courage and virtue. Or war is politics by other means. War is a quasi-mystical experience where you get in touch with the real. There are millions of narratives we impose to try to make sense of war.

~ Phil Klay

I don't - you know, I'm very disillusioned with our political system. If we don't wake up in America and realize that we have to vote out of our courage and integrity for candidates who reflect our own beatitudes, and not the beatitudes of the war machine and the corporations, we are - we're doomed.

~ Cindy Sheehan

Howard Dean has been successful because he was clear in his opposition to the war. People appreciate a politician with the courage to say, I oppose this war.

~ Bianca Jagger

When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most.

~ Drew Gilpin Faust

War criminals in the U.S. and Israel are not punished: no international court has the courage to put them on trial.

~ Nawal El-Saadawi

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.

~ Rebecca Harding Davis

The President regards the Japanese as a brave people; but courage, though useful in time of war, is subordinate to knowledge of arts; hence, courage without such knowledge is not to be highly esteemed.

~ Townsend Harris

For as long as this nation has known war, we have embraced the heroes it has produced. Americans have rightfully noted the honor and nobility of courage under hostile fire and thanked those who perished in their defense.

~ James T. Walsh

The drug war has been a war where the direct casualties have primarily been America's poor; America's minorities; and often, unfortunately, America's vulnerable, in terms of people with disease and addiction and mental health.

~ Cory Booker

The doctors and nurses at the Biamba Marie Mutombo Hospital are saving lives every day and helping improve health care in the DRC which has been ravaged by more than a decade of war and disease.

~ Dikembe Mutombo

Competition makes things come out right. Well, what does that mean in health care? More hospitals so they compete with each other. More doctors compete with each other. More pharmaceutical companies. We set up war. Wait a minute, let's talk about the patient. The patient doesn't need a war.

~ Donald Berwick

The thing about Hemingway that people forget is that all the stuff he did was at a time where people weren't traveling that much. At 19 he travels to Italy. He goes to the Spanish Civil War. He goes to China, he goes to Africa so at that time to travel that much is really incredible.

~ Clive Owen

I believe that everyone can appreciate the right of a family to grieve the loss of a loved one in peace, regardless of anyone's position on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

~ Dave Reichert

Since this war began our sympathy has gone out to all the suffering people who have been dragged into it. Further hundreds of millions have become involved since I spoke at Limerick fortnight ago.

~ Eamon De Valera

Reasoned arguments and suggestions which make allowance for the full difficulties of the state of war that exists may help, and will always be listened to with respect and sympathy.

~ Stafford Cripps

To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.

~ George Santayana

The battle against cancer has made me strong. It's like winning a war! When I was diagnosed, I was told by doctors my kidney, liver and other organs could fail. It was tough. I didn't know if I could save my life. But I was positive, and because of that, the doctor told me that I would be a man who would never have cancer.

~ Yuvraj Singh

I can't envision an honest war novel that left war in a positive light.

~ Kevin Powers

As I approached my 18th birthday and prepared to enter military service in World War II, I was recommended to receive the Melchizedek Priesthood.

~ Thomas S. Monson

Traditionally Presidents Day was Washington's birthday. It was celebrated as a public holiday on February 22 each year, in peace or in war.

~ Nigel Hamilton

My father was one of the fortunate wartime servicemen: he made a full recovery from his injuries, was promoted to captain, survived the war, had a satisfying career as a colonial officer and, eventually, died in February 2002, a month before his 85th birthday.

~ Michael Ashcroft

Television and movies were our biggest teachers. When we came to the United States, the Vietnam War was just ratcheting up. And so the Asian faces that I saw on the news, they were the face of the enemy. Asian men, particularly, were either small, ineffective, or they were evil. And those messages were deeply, deeply embedded in me for many years.

~ Alex Tizon

There was a Russian director named Elem Klimov, who did his films during the communist days. They were constantly struggling with the authorities and to be allowed to express themselves. But he did one of the best war movies I've ever seen - it's called 'Come and See.'

~ Stellan Skarsgard

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

~ Howard Thurman

Our platform calls for a balanced deficit reduction plan where the wealthy pay their fair share. And when your country is in a costly war, with our soldiers sacrificing abroad and our nation facing a debt crisis at home, being asked to pay your fair share isn't class warfare - it's patriotism.

~ Cory Booker

What this country needs what every country needs occasionally is a good hard bloody war to revive the vice of patriotism on which its existence as a nation depends.

~ Ambrose Bierce

Given the knee-jerk patriotism of recent war movies, it's discouraging to see 'Windtalkers' evade pertinent facts that could have recast the doubled-edged issues of racism and loyalty and made them relevant to contemporary times.

~ Elvis Mitchell

Patriotism is an instant reaction that fades away when the war starts.

~ Mick Jagger

I think the reaction to a World War II situation would be the same today as it was in 1942. Initially, people would question, but once patriotism got stirred up, the whole thing would gather momentum and we'd all pull together.

~ Parker Stevenson

Although the war in which you fought took place more than half-a-century ago, your courage, your sacrifice and your patriotism reaches through the decades and inspires us today.

~ Mike Ferguson

As someone who has researched and written about the Mexican cartels and the futile 'war on drugs' for coming on twenty years, I know how tough a subject it is. Mind-bending, soul-warping, heartbreaking, it challenges your intellect, your beliefs, your faith in humanity and God.

~ Don Winslow

After the desperate years of their own war, after six years of repression inside Spain and six years of horror in exile, these people remain intact in spirit. They are armed with a transcendent faith; they have never won, and yet they have never accepted defeat.

~ Martha Gellhorn

Whether one believes in evolution, intelligent design, or Divine Creation, one thing is certain. Since the beginning of history, human beings have been at war with each other, under the pretext of religion, ideology, ethnicity and other reasons. And no civilization has ever willingly given up its most powerful weapons.

~ Mohamed Elbaradei

My mother had a son from previous marriage and her husband died in Second World War.

~ Mikhail Baryshnikov

The right rules of engagement means giving our forward commanders the authority and flexibility to take the initiative and win. Trust our forward deployed warriors to do their job. Political appointees running the war from Washington is just wrong.

~ Ryan Zinke

When you have been born in a war like me, living in a war as a child, when you have been in wars as a war correspondent all your life - trust me! You develop a form of fatalism; you are always ready to die.

~ Oriana Fallaci

Do I appreciate the idea of jealousy, revenge and all these so-called dark qualities? Yes. Do I write these songs in order to engage in some public war with someone? No.

~ Alanis Morissette

The jealousy and resentment that animate the terrorists also affect many of our former cold war allies.

~ Richard Perle