War Quotes

The time approachesThat will with due decision make us knowWhat we shall say we have and what we owe.Thoughts speculative their unsure hopes relate,But certain issue strokes must arbitrate;Towards which, advance th

~ William Shakespeare

It was uncanny. You press a button and a man drops dead a hundred meters away. It seemed hollow and remote, falsifying everything. It was a trick of the lenses. The man is an accurate picture. Then he is upside down. Then he is right side up. You shoot at a series of images conveyed to you through a metal tube. The force of a death should be enormous but how can you know what kind of man you’ve killed or who was the braver and stronger if you have to peer through layers of glass that deliver the image but obscure the meaning of the act? War has a conscience or it’s ordinary murder.

~ Don Delillo

We have become a Nazi monster in the eyes of the whole world—a nation of bullies and bastards who would rather kill than live peacefully. We are not just Whores for power and oil, but killer whores with hate and fear in our hearts. We are human scum, and that is how history will judge us. . . . No redeeming social value. Just whores. Get out of our way, or we’ll kill you.Well, shit on that dumbness. George W. Bush does not speak for me or my son or my mother or my friends or the people I respect in this world. We didn’t vote for these cheap, greedy little killers who speak for America today—and we will not vote for them again in 2002. Or 2004. Or ever.Who does vote for these dishonest shitheads? Who among us can be happy and proud of having all this innocent blood on our hands? Who are these swine? These flag-sucking half-wits who get fleeced and fooled by stupid little rich kids like George Bush?They are the same ones who wanted to have Muhammad Ali locked up for refusing to kill gooks. They speak for all that is cruel and stupid and vicious in the American character. They are the racists and hate mongers among us—they are the Ku Klux Klan. I piss down the throats of these Nazis.And I am too old to worry about whether they like it or not. Fuck them.

~ Hunter S. Thompson

In other words, they appeal to the state for protection, but the state is precisely that from which they require protection. To be protected from violence by the nation-state is to be exposed to the violence wielded by the nation-state, so to rely on the nation-state for protection from violence is precisely to exchange one potential violence for another. There may, indeed, be few other choices.

~ Judith Butler

Precarity designates that politically induced condition in which certain populations suffer from failing social and economic networks of support and become differentially exposed to injury, violence, and death.

~ Judith Butler

I argue that even as the war is framed in certain ways to control and heighten affect in relation to the differential grievability of lives, so war has come to frame ways of thinking multiculturalism and debates on sexual freedom, issues largely considered separate from foreign affairs.

~ Judith Butler

They understood what had really held the market together before. Violence. After all, what good was a debt if the creditor couldn't compel it to be paid?

~ Alex London

We kill at every step, not only in wars, riots ad executions. We kill every time we close our eyes to poverty, suffering and shame.

~ Eberhard Arnold

Eastward and westward storms are breaking,--great, ugly whirlwinds of hatred and blood and cruelty. I will not believe them inevitable.

~ W.e.b. Du Bois

It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded.

~ Steven Galloway

A bullet leaves evidence that a mortar doesn't.

~ Steven Galloway

Isn't it amazing that, historically, the Prince of Peace has most often been introduced to new cultures through extreme violence? European and American colonialists bring this disparity to light in a way that makes me wish that forced conversion didn't work so extraordinarily well.

~ David G. Mcafee

It were indeed to be wish'd that our art had been less ingenious, in contriving means destructive to mankind; we mean those instruments of war, which were unknown to the ancients, and have made such havoc among the moderns. But as men have always been bent on seeking each other's destruction by continual wars; and as force, when brought against us, can only be repelled by force; the chief support of war, must, after money, be now sought in chemistry.

~ Hermann Boerhaave

Violence is not the answer. Terrorism is the most dangerous of answers.

~ Elie Wiesel

If the militarily most powerful and least threatened states need nuclear weapons for their security, how can one deny such security to countries that are truly insecure? The present nuclear policy is a recipe for proliferation. It is a policy for disaster.

~ Joseph Rotblat

Ciba: I thought you were supposed to be some big brave war hero. What about that goddamn gold star you polish every night?Natalya: You know what this shiny piece of tin is, you fucking space cadet? It's the way stupid boys trick other stupid boys into dying for bullshit causes ... and I'm done acting like one of them.

~ Brian K. Vaughan

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

~ Mahatma Gandhi

Before the thunderous clamor of political debate or war set loose in the world, love insisted on its promise for the possibility of human unity: between men and women, between blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, haves and have-have-nots, self and self.

~ Aberjhani

If German boys had learned to be contemptuous of violence, Hitler would have had to take up knitting to keep his ego warm.

~ J.d. Salinger

The tank, the submarine, the torpedo, the machine-gun, even the rifle and the hand grenade are still in use.

~ George Orwell

But strength doesn’t always mean brute force. You don’t have to kick ass to be a fighter. Violence doesn’t equal strength. Lead your army by example. There’s a better answer to all this. War isn’t going to solve anything, but it will tear our two worlds apart, and there will be casualties, including humans. There’s nothing heroic about this war. It will lead to a destruction unlike anything you or I have ever seen

~ Becca Fitzpatrick

Never on me let such wrath lay hold, as the wrath you cherish, you whose valor causes harm!

~ Augustus Taber Murray

What sparks wars? The will to power, the backbone of human nature. The threat of violence, the fear of violence, or actual violence, is the instrument of this dreadful will. You can see the will to power in bedrooms, kitchens, factories, unions and the borders of states. Listen to this and remember it. The nation state is merely human nature inflated to monstrous proportions. QED, nations are entities whose laws are written by violence. Thus it ever was, so ever shall it be.

~ David Mitchell

In answer to 'But violence hasn't solved anything!'The hell it hasn't. The application of violence - of killing and a willingness to be killed - on a massive scale is responsible for a lot of solutions. The most recent mass application of violence liberated Kuwait. The most recent mass application of violence on a global scale alone cleansed the world of the Third Reich. Nonviolence and passive resistance did less than nothing to stop Hitler and his henchmen. The Atlantic slave trade wasn't stopped by 'dialogue' or 'passive resistance' or conferences, but by the opened gunports of the Royal Navy; Dachau and Chang-I weren't liberated with pamphlets.

~ Markham Shaw Pyle

If you carry a weapon, war will follow you. If you carry a smile, love will knock at your door.

~ Amit Ray

All through the night, men looked at the sky and were saddened by the stars.

~ Joseph Heller

We were all survivors—every last one of us who limped our way out to the sidewalks that afternoon and spit in Death’s cold face.

~ Cat Winters

Your shield must surpass your weaponry.

~ Toba Beta

Louie was furious at the sharks. He had thought that they had an understanding:The men would stay out of the sharks' turf - the water - and the sharks would stay off of theirs - the raft. That the sharks had taken shots at him when he had gone overboard, and when the raft had been mostly submerged after the strafing, had seemed fair enough. But their attempt to poach men from their reinflated raft struck Louie as dirty pool. He stewed all night, scowled hatefully at the sharks all day, and eventually made a decision. if the sharks were going to try to eat him, he was going to try to eat them.

~ Laura Hillenbrand

Multiculturalism destroys the true diversity which nature requires for the continued evolution of the species through the natural selection process of differentiation and competition between specialized populations within a group.

~ Billy Roper

Afterward, there was that long, crowded pause in which everyone decides that although they are very shaken, and possibly upside down, they are, to their surprise, still alive.

~ Terry Pratchett

Luck often comes to those who are brave.

~ Kateryna Kei

The biggest threats to human survival today are not wars or conflict, it is modern business.

~ Steven Magee

No matter what the reason, the ways I tried to justify the situation, the second-guessing that lingered, nothing could change the fact that people stopped existing because of me.

~ Clint Van Winkle

There are casualties in war. Those who don’t make it back to a place of sound hopes and dreams. Some take on their demons alone. They are deceived into fearlessness and trampled by the hooves of their oppressor. Besides intervention, there is little justice for the thousands-upon-thousands hacked to pieces all around us. How dare we try to take life to the next level. Instead of merely protecting ourselves or scrounging up our next meal, we have the audacity to hope for something more—a witness for our lives who will survive alongside us.

~ Christopher Hawke

Commanders and historians are the people who discuss wars; I was in the infantry, and most of the time I did not know where I was or what I was doing except that I was obeying orders and trying not to be killed in any of the variety of horrible ways open to me.

~ Robertson Davies

That day I saw people trying to feed themselves but managing to do so only on a subsistence level. And people who are hungry are not worried about communism or Communists.

~ Nick Mills

Bad bloods aren't born evil or dangerous. We are taught to be, but only because we have to if we want to survive.

~ Shannon A. Thompson

War created the conditions for great advances in technology...without war men would not traverse oceans in hours, travel in space, or microwave popcorn.

~ Adrian R. Lewis

No matter how fast weapons and technology evolve in the 21st century, one thing remains constant is that war is a human endeavor, a grueling contest between two learning and adaptive forces. Victory, therefore rests on how smart, how tough, and how dedicated our boots on the ground.

~ Agus Harimurti Yudhoyono