Top 100 Before The War Quotes
#1. Since the outbreak of war, there has been in our country a steady increase in the consumption of spirits, wine and beer. It is estimated that in dollar volume, the annual outlay is now practically double what it was before the war.
William Lyon Mackenzie King
#2. Most of the victims of Nazi aggression were before the war less well off than Germany. They should not be expected by Germany to bear, unaided, the major costs of Nazi aggression.
James F. Byrnes
#3. That was my first lesson from Ben-Gurion. Then I saw him making peace, and I saw him making war. He mobilized me before the war. The man was a very rare combination between a real intellectual and a born leader. There is a contradiction between the two.
Shimon Peres
#4. Before the war it had seemed incredible that such terrors and slaughters, even if they began, could last more than a few months. After the first two years it was difficult to believe that they would ever end.
Winston Churchill
#5. In Oxford before the war, I had, with this interest in mind, written a short textbook entitled, An Introduction to Economic Analysis and Policy. It was now my intention to rewrite this work.
James Meade
#6. Not slaves," said Halyard, chuckling patronizingly. "Citizens, employed by government. They have same rights as other citizens - free speech, freedom of worship, the right to vote. Before the war, they worked in the Ilium Works, controlling machines, but now machines control themselves much better.
Anonymous
#7. Before the war an apple tree had stood behind the church. It was an apple tree that ate its own apples.
Herta Muller
#8. Before the war there were many who were more or less ignorant of the international labor movement but who nevertheless turned to it for salvation when the threat of war arose. They hoped that the workers would never permit a war.
Hjalmar Branting
#9. I think the fact that Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World and talked about anthrax bombs probably helped because at least we ... people had the understanding before the war began that's something we didn't want to get into.
Freeman Dyson
#10. Before the war, the domain of culture seemed to offer a haven from the increasingly hateful world of politics. Now, when I hear the word culture, I pull out the quote commonly attributed to Hermann Goring: When I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.
Aleksandar Hemon
#11. Before the war it was always the United States *are*, after the war it was the United States is ... it made us an is.
Shelby Foote
#12. I was born in London, England, in 1938, a few months before the war, and spent the first years of my life there, although I was evacuated a couple of times for short periods. My schooling was very interrupted, both by frequent moves and by ill health.
Anne Perry
#13. The bottom line is that the CIA knew before the war, during and war, and after the war where most of these chemicals were and most of these biological agents.
Christopher Shays
#14. A 2006 Senate Report on the intelligence gathered about Iraq before the war also concluded, "Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi.
Charles River Editors
#15. Before the war, and especially before the Boer War, it was summer all the year round.
George Orwell
#16. No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it's not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.
Ernest Hemingway,
#17. I saw Kuwait many times before the war. I remember it as a beautiful place, full of very nice people, and it's a tragedy to see that somebody could set out to deliberately destroy a country the way the Iraqis have.
Norman Schwarzkopf
#18. Sloane looked at him for a moment, his eyes bright and intent as they had been before the war. Then the film of indifference settled over them, and he turned away from Stoner and shuffled some papers on his desk.
John Edward Williams
#19. Before the war, she'd never have gone out in the rain and happily stood in it. Now, it was a reminder that she was alive...
Soraya Lane
#20. But the people of the church in Jerusalem had been commanded by a revelation, vouchsafed to approved men there before the war, to leave the city and to dwell in a certain town of Perea called Pella.
Eusebius
#21. Before the war. Adults must use this phrase a zillion times a day.
Eva Gray
#22. Those first few years of marriage, before the war interrupted all our lives, Phil and I had a very happy time. I grew up considerably, mostly thanks to him.
Katharine Graham
#23. There was a very serious communist strain among American intellectuals before the war. America was a more tolerant place in those days, and Communists were not treated as pariahs. That ended with the McCarthy era.
Ken Follett
#24. How to achieve the moral breakdown of the enemy before the war has started - that is the problem that interests me. Whoever has experienced war at the front will want to refrain from all avoidable bloodshed.
Adolf Hitler
#25. Because of the times, and because the child has been living in a world filled with every kind of thrill and adventure, it is safe to assume that he is not interested in the same type of radio that amused him before the war.
Judith C. Waller
#26. The peasants of Sicily, who have kept their own wheat and make their own natural brown bread, ah, it is amazing how fresh and sweet and clean their loaf seems, so perfumed, as home-made bread used all to be before the war.
D.H. Lawrence
#27. I can't go back to who I was before the war," he eventually said. "And I can't be who I was during the war. And if I'm not either of those men, I'm not sure what I'm left with.
Lisa Kleypas
#28. I think everybody must be aware that this society is a whole lot shakier now than it was before the war. I was trying to examine, in 'Dog Soldiers,' the process of that blow falling on America.
Robert Stone
#29. These memories sustained him, but not so easily. Too often they reminded him of where he was when he last summoned them. They lay on the far side of a great divide in time, as significant as B.C. and A.D. Before prison, before the war, before the sight of a corpse became a banality.
Ian McEwan
#30. No one is now what they were before the war. There's just no getting any of it back.
Catherynne M Valente
#31. Being in this business for as long as I've been in it, it's sort of like living in a town or a city before the war and then after the war and then during the reconstruction and then during the time that it sprawls out to the malls.
Carly Simon
#32. I also argued before the war that the administration was underestimating Arab nationalism and Iraqi nationalism, that it was not going to be as easy to rule Iraq as they thought.
Juan Cole
#33. Before the war is ended, the war party assumes the divine right to denounce and silence all opposition to war as unpatriotic and cowardly.
Robert M. La Follette
#34. Yes, these new young people, of the rising generation, who did not remember the days before the war or even the war itself - they were the hope of the world.
Philip K. Dick
#35. Sir, when the love of peace degenerates into fear of war, it becomes of all passions the most despicable." - Senator Giles of Virginia, to President Thomas Jefferson, before the War of 1812
Joe Buff
#36. What was I before the war? It's hard to remember that far back. But I think maybe I was human.
A.J. Vega
#37. Dr. Rice's record on Iraq gives me great concern. In her public statements she clearly overstated and exaggerated the intelligence concerning Iraq before the war in order to support the President's decision to initiate military action against Iraq.
Carl Levin
#38. All the disappointments of our life before the war were a fool's paradise.
Glenway Wescott
#39. I was 20 years old at Pearl Harbor. I was in the Navy about a year and four months before the war.
Barney Ross
#40. Ursula missed the sound of church bells. There were so many simple things she had taken for granted before the war. She wished that she could go back and appreciate them properly.
Kate Atkinson
#41. Poor Andy Nave was killed. He refused to surrender and was shot by Dick Fields. I felt sorry as he used to be quite friendly towards me before the war, but it could not be helped.
Stand Watie
#42. The world was different before the war,' he said. 'We didn't have this instantaneous access to information that your generation has. The world was a bigger, more mysterious place - we still dreamed of secret caves in the Mountains of the Moon, and tiger hunting in the Punjab.
Ben Aaronovitch
#43. World War II proved a hypothesis that Alexis de Tocqueville advanced a century before: the war-fighting potential of a democracy is at its greatest when war is most intense; at its weakest when war is most limited. This is a lesson with enduring relevance to our own times - and our own wars.
David Frum
#44. The faint of lemon verbena surrounded her, floating gently from Eleanor Butler's silk gown and silken hair. It was the fragrance that had always been part of Ellen O'Hara, the scent for Scarlett of comfort, of safety, of love, of life before the War
Alexandra Ripley
#46. I would love to make a film about aging that would take place before the war. It would follow the stages in the life of a woman who would not have at her disposal the resources of today like cosmetic surgery, creams and pills.
Roman Polanski
#47. I just don't know whether it was all destroyed years ago - I mean, there's no question that there were chemical weapons years ago - whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they're still hidden.
David Petraeus
#48. My father had played the guitar when he was young, and my uncle Jack had worked for Kalamazoo, before the war, developing guitar pickups. So there was a kind of family thing about the guitar, although it was considered something of an anomaly then.
Pete Townshend
#49. The immense accumulations of fixed capital which, to the great benefit of mankind, were built up during the half century before the war, could never have come about in a Society where wealth was divided equitably.
John Maynard Keynes
#50. As soon as you think of fishing you think of things that don't belong to the modern world. The very idea of sitting all day under a willow tree beside a quiet pool - and being able to find a quiet pool to sit beside- belongs to a time before the war, before radio, before aeroplanes, before Hitler.
George Orwell
#51. American socialism had lost momentum even before the war. (Socialist leader Norman Thomas received 885,000 votes in his 1932 run for the presidency, but only 187,500 in 1936.)
Benjamin Balint
#52. We need to get insurance out of the way and let the consumer interact with their doctor the way they did basically before World War II,
Rand Paul
#53. Rachel kneeled beside Jacob. She took the child's hand and pressed it to the dirt. Her father had told Rachel that Harmons had been on this land since before the Revolutionary War.
"Don't ever forget what it feels like, Jacob," she whispered, and let her hand touch the ground as well.
Ron Rash
#54. One musn't overrate the culture of what used to be called "top people" before the wars. They had charming manners, but they were as ignorant as swans.
Kenneth Clark
#55. With regard to ground of this nature, be before the enemy in occupying the raised and sunny spots, and carefully guard your line of supplies. Then you will be able to fight with advantage.
Sun Tzu
#56. Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can't complain, the wounded would have given far more than that to escape as they have, and the unwounded regard the money as a consolation prize for still being here.
Robert Graves
#57. The Balance, my boy, is the war that has been waged since before time was time, the battle within ourselves to do what is good and reject what is bad. It is a delicate line we all walk, a constant struggle of push and pull.
Nikolas Lee
#58. They have destroyed your weapons," he had told the generals, in effect. "But these weapons would in any case have become obsolete before the next war. That war will be fought with brand-new ones, and the army which is least hampered with obsolete material will have a great advantage.
Winston S. Churchill
#59. Modern warfare wasn't supposed to have this much blood in it. The weapons were supposed to cook everyone neatly, like eggs in their shells. (Mark Vorkosigan's first experience with warfare, on seeing Miles Vorkosigan splattered before him)
Lois McMaster Bujold
#60. People take sides on political things, such as the Vietnam War. War is immoral and war is wrong, but I don't think the clergy ought to bring it before the Church.
Warren Giles
#61. that's why I want you to continue toward your goal. If you have to wait until the war is over, then wait. But if you have to go before then, go on in pursuit of your dream.
Paulo Coelho
#62. When the higher officers are angry and insubordinate, and on meeting the enemy give battle on their own account from a feeling of resentment, before the commander-in-chief can tell whether or not he is in a position to fight, the result is ruin.
Sun Tzu
#63. Before you start a war, you better know what you're fighting for.
The Cab
#64. Terrorists can endanger some of us, but the war on terror endangers us all. How much more can the Constitution be diminished before it is completely replaced by arbitrary government power?
Paul Craig Roberts
#65. Watergate enabled the Democrats to cut off all aid to South Vietnam and ensure American defeat in a war their party entered and had effectively lost, before Nixon salvaged a non-Communist South Vietnam while effecting a complete American withdrawal.
Conrad Black
#66. The United States came within a whisker of invading Utah in 1858 and starting a civil war three years before the Civil War. Because the conflict ended up fizzling out, it's not the most dramatic story about the West.
David Roberts
#67. I answered the call to heal before I answered the call of duty to my country. My job is to help and heal, not to destroy.
Jesseca Wheaton
#68. A week passes but it feels as if he's never been anywhere else. It's one of the things war does to you. Everything you see works to replace moments and people from your life before, until you can't remember why any of it mattered. It doesn't help if you're a soldier. The effect is the same.
Paula McLain
#69. Some say men continually war against circumstances, but I say they perpetually flee. What are the works of men if not a momentary respite, a hiding place soon to be discovered by catastrophe? Life is endless flight before the hunter we call the world. - EKYANNUS VIII, 111 APHORISMS Spring,
R. Scott Bakker
#70. The War Powers Act requires presidents to seek the consent of the American people, through their representatives, before sending our troops into war. It is the responsibility of Congress to deliberate and consult with the executive branch before involving ourselves in a military conflict.
Charles B. Rangel
#71. But let's be clear. We're talking about a country where there's no opposition. As leader he can ignore Parliament and - sorry that's Tony Blair isn't it? Um, so he doesn't even have to ask the country before he goes to war - sorry that's still Tony Blair.
Rory Bremner
#72. Circumstances cause us to act the way we do. We should always bear this in mind before judging the actions of others. I realized this from the start during World War II.
Thor Heyerdahl
#73. When two sides who consider each other enemies converge in armed struggle, for the moment they are no longer enemies. They are fellow human beings who face the same two choices that their ancestors did for centuries before them: to destroy each other or to prosper together.
Thomas Huynh
#74. Some of those drawn into the holy war had been secular nationalists only a few years before. If one looks at the biographies of these people, remarkable continuities are revealed.
Jurgen Habermas
#75. President Bush was widely ridiculed for consulting the Reverend Billy Graham before the Gulf war.
William Bennett
#76. Before the Iraq war I was quite disturbed by some of the neoconservatives, who were saying things like, "What is the point of being a superpower if you can't do such-and-such, take on these responsibilities?" The point of being a superpower is that people will leave you alone.
Thomas Sowell
#77. Fear was the terrible secret of the battlefiled and could afflict the brave as well as the timid. Worse it was contagious, and could destroy a unit before a battle even began. Because of that, commanders were first and foremost in the fear suppression business.
David Halberstam
#78. So do your duty, boys, and join with prideServe your country in her suicideFind the flags so you can wave goodbyeBut just before the end even treason might be worth a tryThis country is too young to dieI declare the war is overIt's over, it's over.
Phil Ochs
#79. General, if you put every Union soldier now on the other side of the Potomac on that field to approach me over the same line, I will kill them all before they reach my line.
James Longstreet
#80. Going to war is a serious matter. And it should be done very carefully and deliberately with clear national interests at stake before the United States or our Commander-in-Chief acts.
Joe Pitts
#81. In the beginning, science is a thing imagined; in the beginning, war is a thing imagined; in the beginning, love is a thing imagined; in the beginning, even God is a thing imagined. There is nothing that has not first been imagined. Even before there are words, there is imagination.
Bakhtiyar Ali
#82. The problems I had existed before I did, and I discovered them.
Guy Sajer
#83. I do believe that the genre reached its peak before the First World War.
Robyn Davidson
#84. Back when the country was strong, back before Elvis and before the Vietnam war came along.
Merle Haggard
#85. Long before 9/11 and the war in Iraq, a lot of people hated the United States and the West. But what the Iraqi war seems to have done, at least in ... I mean, I'm just reporting what I see from the people on the ground, is that it has silenced many pro-American forces in the Muslim world.
Yaroslav Trofimov
#86. With the Truman book, I wrote the entire account of his experiences in World War I before going over to Europe to follow his tracks in the war. When I got there, there was a certain satisfaction in finding I had it right - it does look like that.
David McCullough
#87. In the end, they pardoned me and packed me off to a home for the shell-shocked. Shortly before the end of the war, I was discharged a second time, once again with the observation that I was subject to recall at any time.
George Grosz
#88. Would that we could choose the last image we see before death closes our eyes forever to this world.
Nick Hirst
#89. Feel no fear before the multitude of men, do not run in panic,
but let each man bear his shield straight toward the fore-fighters,
regarding his own life as hateful and holding the dark spirits of death as dear as the radiance of the sun.
Tyrtaeus
#90. Kruger paused. He glared at the crowd massed before him, he squared his shoulders and, shaking his dusty fist towards them, he growled, "This time, when I say war, it will be war to the bitter end.
Martin Marais
#91. The freedom to express yourself without fear - that perhaps is something we in the U.S. take for granted. It's almost inconceivable to think we would be afraid to express our opinions or thoughts, but that's not true for all parts of the world now, and certainly not before World War II.
Friedrich St. Florian
#92. Love and war, it seemed, worked by the same rules. One had to hurry, before the fires flared out.
Robin Oliveira
#93. I was in the war. I know how to kill. I was over there. I know how to do it. I've done it before. It's no big deal. You just make an adjustment. You convince yourself it's all right. That's all. It's easy. You just slaughter them.
Sam Shepard
#94. When he came he first covered me with his revolver', Christine write in her official report, but it was not long before Waem put the gun down on the table between them.
Clare Mulley
#95. One of the lessons of Vietnam, which we failed to heed in the Iraq war and the Afghanistan surge, is that before you commit U.S. military forces to aid or assist, it is essential to know what you want them to achieve.
Kathleen Troia McFarland
#97. People should go about their daily lives, to work, to live, to travel, to shop, to do the things people did in the same way as they did them before 11 September.
Tony Blair
#98. Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.
Anne Michaels
#99. We want to get the hell over there. The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit.
George S. Patton
#100. War has always been a part of science fiction. Even before the birth of SF as a standalone genre in 1926, speculative novels such as 'The Battle of Dorking' from 1871 showed how SF's trademark 'what if' scenarios could easily encompass warfare.
Paul Di Filippo
