Top 100 General War Quotes
#1. In most communities it is illegal to cry "fire" in a crowded assembly. Should it not be considered serious international misconduct to manufacture a general war scare in an effort to achieve local political aims?
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#2. All forces are a deterrent to and would be employed in a general war. Most of our forces could be employed in a limited war, if required
Thomas S. Gates Jr.
#3. Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.
Sun Tzu
#4. When we are sick, we want an uncommon doctor; when we have a construction job to do, we want an uncommon engineer, and when we are at war, we want an uncommon general. It is only when we get into politics that we are satisfied with the common man.
Herbert Hoover
#5. Sir, if you ever presume again to speak disrespectfully of General Grant in my presence, either you or I will sever his connection with this university.
Robert E.Lee
#6. The majority of the common people loathe war and pray for peace; only a handful of individuals, whose evil joys depend on general misery, desire war.
Desiderius Erasmus
#7. Thus the skilful general conducts his army just as though he were leading a single man, willy-nilly, by the hand.
Sun Tzu
#8. We wanted to see this country win the war just as much as those advisors did. We felt we would help to do that by reporting the truth. And so there was the moral outrage over this general and the ambassador in Saigon who kept denying the truth we would see.
Neil Sheehan
#9. Before this war is over, I intend to be a Major General or a corpse.
Isaac R. Trimble
#10. The general at the radar screenRubbed his hands with glee,And grinning pressed the buttonAnd started world war three.
Roger McGough
#11. 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
#12. When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War.
Trevor Nunn
#13. When a general, unable to estimate the enemy's strength, allows an inferior force to engage a larger one, or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one, and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank, the result must be rout.
Sun Tzu
#14. It is too true, however disgraceful it may be to human nature, that nations in general will make war whenever they have a prospect of getting anything by it.
John Jay
#15. In any war who pulls their general out? No one.
Ray Lewis
#16. But Polybius brought out the basic lesson in his reflection-'for as a ship, if you deprive it of its steersman, falls with all its crew into the hands of the enemy; so, with an army in war, if you outwit or out-manoeuvere its general, the whole will often fall into your hands'.
B.H. Liddell Hart
#17. Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.
Lester B. Pearson
#18. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat: - let such a one be dismissed!
Sun Tzu
#19. People in general are scared to death of the war and all the exhibition have been a failure, because the rich - don't want to buy anything
Frida Kahlo
#20. I was raised on the Hudson, in a house that had been the stable of the financier and Civil War general Brayton Ives. In midcentury, we had fire pits in the floor for heating, and rats everywhere, because they nested in the hay insulation.
Mark Helprin
#21. The world is progressing, the future is bright and no one can change this general trend of history. We should carry on constant propaganda among the people on the facts of world progress and the bright future ahead so that they will build their confidence in victory.
Mao Zedong
#22. General, unless he offers us honorable terms, come back and let us fight it out!
James Longstreet
#23. A clever general, therefore, avoids an army when its spirit is keen, but attacks it when it is sluggish and inclined to return.
Sun Tzu
#24. The chief problem is, of course, whether the marching of the general spirit of things is heading consciously or sub- consciously toward an idea of extension of boundaries.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#25. How many have gone? How many more to go? The Admiralty is fast asleep and lethargy & inertia are the order of the day. However everybody seems delighted - so there is nothing to be said. No plans, no enterprise, no struggle to aid the general cause. Just sit still on the spacious throne and snooze.
Winston Churchill
#26. The histories which we have of the great tragedy give no idea of the general wretchedness, the squalid misery, which entered into every individual life in the region given up to the war. Where the armies camped the destruction was absolute.
Rebecca Harding Davis
#27. Our cause in the war on terror isn't helped when we have army officers like Lieutenant General William Boykin speaking in evangelical churches and claiming this as some sort of battle for the Christian religion. That's wrong. That's un-American.
John F. Kerry
#28. Khaldoun believed that the great curse of civilization is not war or famine but humidity: "When the moisture, with its evil vapors ascends to the brain, the mind and body and the ability to think are dulled. The result is stupidity, carelessness and a general intemperance.
Eric Weiner
#29. A weapon is merely a weapon, nothing more. What matters is how you use it.
Kaoru Kurimoto
#30. The Chinese general Sun Tzu said that all war was based on deception. Oscar Wilde said the same thing of romance.
Marco Tempest
#31. Finally one evening somebody suggested Python (a great name for an untrustworthy impresario, I thought), someone else added Monty, which had connotations of our greatest World War II general, there was hysteria, and history was made. A
John Cleese
#32. The thing that had fueled these utopian communities was a literal belief, and not just a general sense of optimism, that the earth was about to become a paradise. That idea cannot hold water after the war.
Christine Jennings
#33. My dad was in the Second World War with General Patton. He won medals for bravery, but he came home quite damaged, so he was a handful. He told us some terrible stories, and I guess you'd say he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
Jerry Hall
#34. There's no way the writing staff of 'Game of Thrones' haven't read 'The Art of War.' There's definitely an influence on 'Game of Thrones' from this book in both a general way and on the character of Lord Baelish and his strategies.
Aidan Gillen
#35. President Eisenhower was a fine general and a good, decent man, but if he had fought World War II the way he fought for civil rights, we would all be speaking German now.
Roy Wilkins
#36. The 'Cold War' impinged on the daily lives of Americans. The wars after 11 September 2001 have been fought without the general American population having to make any sacrifices. It goes on, and so do we.
Stanley Hauerwas
#37. Wo Hunger herrscht, ist auf die Dauer kein Friede."
("Where there is hunger, there cannot be lasting peace.)
Speech before the United Nations General Assembly, September 26, 1973
Willy Brandt
#38. It's our tendency to approach every problem as if it were a fight between two sides. We see it in headlines that are always using metaphors for war. It's a general atmosphere of animosity and contention that has taken over our public discourse.
Deborah Tannen
#39. Three cheers for the war. Three cheers for Italy's war and three cheers for war in general. Peace is hence absurd or rather a pause in war.
Benito Mussolini
#40. Floyd did not accept the blame for his defeat. He blamed his fellow general Henry Wise for not committing some of his regiments to the battle. Wise reacted to the charge by calling Floyd "that bullet-hit son of a bitch.
Clint Johnson
#41. General [John] Pope is impulsive and hasty, but energetic, and, what is of most importance, patriotic and sound
perfectly sound.I look for good results.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#42. I thought it [Star Wars] was too wacky for the general public. Right or wrong this is my movie, this is my decision, and this is my creative vision, and if people don't like it, they don't have to see it.
George Lucas
#43. The advent of electronically synthesized sound after World War II has unquestionably had enormous influence on music in general.
George Crumb
#44. Modern war appears as a struggle led by all the State apparatuses and their general staffs against all men old enough to bear arms ...
Simone Weil
#45. In her opinion, Alexander Graham Bell and Clarence Birdseye are the two greatest Americans that ever lived excluding Robert E. Lee. She believes we never lost the War Between the States, that General Lee thought General Grant was the butler and just naturally handed him his sword.
Fannie Flagg
#46. Humanity also suffered; though, save in the regions near the seat of war, it was in general only the children and the old people who suffered greatly.
Olaf Stapledon
#47. All morning they watched for the plane which they thought would be looking for them. They cursed war in general and PTs in particular. At about ten o'clock the hulk heaved a moist sigh and turned turtle.
John Hersey
#48. A victorious general must know how to employ severity, justness, and mildness by turns, if he would allay sedition or prevent it.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#49. The mind of a general ought to resemble and be as clear as the field-glass of a telescope.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#50. It is exceptional and difficult to find in one man all the qualities necessary for a great general.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#51. As for charity, it is a matter in which the immediate effect on the persons directly concerned, and the ultimate consequence to the general good, are apt to be at complete war with one another.
John Stuart Mill
#52. His view of war - and he had seen a great deal of it - was that a general made as many blunders as he fought battles, but, by the grace of the gods, the opposing generals' blunders were sometimes worse.
Aubrey Menen
#53. Poland, after the First World War, was beset by chaos, disorder, and a foolish incursion by the Red Army, which helped to produce the ultra-nationalist military dictatorship of General Pilsudski.
Tariq Ali
#54. I was in charge of price controls in World War II and had a ceiling on overall prices. Everybody who was subject to general maximum price regulation wanted an exception and went to Congress to persuade a Congressman, or a group of people on the Hill, that I was being a menace to their industry.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#55. With such incentives to brave deeds, and with the trust that God is with us, your generals will lead you confidently to the combat - assured of success. General commanding
Shelby Foote
#56. A writer's brush is a warrior's bow, the letters it shapes are arrows that must hit the mark on the page. The calligrapher is an archer, or a general on a battlefield. Someone wrote that long ago. She feels that way this morning. She is at war.
Guy Gavriel Kay
#57. General Patton, upon seeing the Roman ruins at Agrigento, remarked to a local expert, "Seventh Army didn't cause that destruction, did it, sir?" The man replied, "No sir, that happened in the last war." "What war was that?" "The Second Punic War."5
Robert M. Edsel
#58. A female war correspondent so popular that she had some credibility in saying she controlled half of her newspaper's circulation approached General Winfield Scott during the Mexican War with information that could help him. He was unwilling to get help from someone in petticoats.
Harold Holzer
#59. The leaders of the world face no greater task than that of avoiding nuclear war. While preserving the cause of freedom, we must seek abolition of war through programs of general and complete disarmament. The Test-Ban Treaty of 1963 represents a significant beginning in this immense undertaking.
Robert Kennedy
#60. After lunch we went into the garden for coffee and I turned on the Surgeon-General with his graphics, percentages etc. of sick and wounded to entertain the Premier.
Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig
#61. Read over and over again the campaigns of Alexander, Hannibal, Caesar, Gustavus, Turenne, Eugene and Frederic ... This is the only way to become a great general and master the secrets of the art of war.
Napoleon Bonaparte
#62. These are six ways of courting defeat, which must be carefully noted by the general who has attained a responsible post.
Sun Tzu
#63. It is the business of a general to be quiet and thus ensure secrecy; upright and just, and thus maintain order.
Sun Tzu
#64. It is the business of a general to be serene and inscrutable, impartial and self-controlled.
Sun Tzu
#65. This war will be a war of extermination and a momentous massacre which will be spoken of like the Mongol massacres and the Crusades. - by Arab League Secretary General Abdul Rahman Azzam
Sol Stern
#66. Courteous Reader, Astrology is one of the most ancient Sciences, held in high esteem of old, by the Wise and the Great. Formerly, no Prince would make War or Peace, nor any General fight in Battle, in short, no important affair was undertaken without first consulting an Astrologer.
Benjamin Franklin
#67. A general message to "everyone" on the planet would go something along the lines of, "Make Love, Not War."
Jake T. Austin
#68. Stand by General Burnside as you have stood by me and all will be well.
George B. McClellan
#69. It would be better for our country and the world in general, if at least the few people who were capable of thought stood for reason and the love of peace instead of heading wildly with blind obsession for new war.
Hermann Hesse
#70. You might be a redneck if more than one living relative is named after a Southern Civil War general.
Jeff Foxworthy
#71. Everyone has the best of feelings towards mankind in general, but not towards the individual man. We'll kill men, but we want to save mankind. And that isn't right, your Reverence. The world will be an evil place as long as people don't believe in other people.
Karel Capek
#72. If there is disturbance in the camp, the general's authority is weak.
Sun Tzu
#73. The Continental army got more generals than they got private soldiers, these days. An officer lives through more 'n two battles, they make him some kind of general on the spot. Now, gettin' any pay for it, that's a different kettle of fish.
Diana Gabaldon
#74. Arthur Scargill is the Labour movements nearest equivalent to a First World War General.
Neil Kinnock
#75. I love general history. That's all I read really. I don't read novels, I read history. I love it. I live in an area that's really rich in Civil War history. I live in Kentucky on a farm. A lot of revolution, a lot of military history I love.
Steve Zahn
#76. Never take advice from anyone in a tie. They'll bankrupt you. Don't ask a general for advice on war, and don't ask a broker for advice on money.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#77. I'm fonder of you than anybody on earth. I couldn't tell you that in New York. It'd mean I was a faggot. That was what the Civil War was about. Abraham Lincoln was a faggot. He was in love with General Grant. So was Jefferson Davis. Lincoln just freed the slaves on a bet.
Ernest Hemingway,
#78. As for the general view that the Church was discredited by the War - they might as well say that the Ark was discredited by the Flood. When the world goes wrong, it proves rather that the Church is right. The Church is justified, not because her children do not sin, but because they do.
G.K. Chesterton
#79. The task is not to overcome opponents in general but only those opponents against whom one has to summon all one's strength, one's skill and one's swordsmanship-in fact to master opponents who are one's equals.
Friedrich Nietzsche
#80. General Sickles, this is in some respects higher ground than that to the rear, but there is still higher in front of you, and if you keep on advancing you will find constantly higher ground all the way to the mountains.
George Meade
#81. I read '1984' at a precocious age, like 8, and when I did the math, I realized that Julia, Winston Smith's lover, was born the same year I was, 1957. I read that book over and over again with the 1960s as a backdrop: anti-war and anti-bomb protests and this general pervasive sense of doom.
Elizabeth Hand
#82. In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort.
Bill Kristol
#83. As to the war with Japan, the President had already received my memorandum in general as to the possibility of getting a substantial unconditional surrender from Japan which I had written before leaving Washington and which he had approved.
Henry L. Stimson
#84. Seeing the enemy as human. A general's ultimate nightmare.
Sabaa Tahir
#85. Marxists have more than once pointed out that the capitalist world economic system contains in itself the seeds of a general crisis and of warlike clashes.
Joseph Stalin
#86. We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.
Winston Churchill
#88. If you want an expert on war, you get a retired general. I'm not exactly a general, but I am retired.
Sydney Biddle Barrows
#89. Wonderful?" wrote J.O. Young in his diary. "To stand cheering, crying, waving your hat and acting like a damn fool in general. No one who has spent all but 16 days of the this war as a Nip prisoner can really know what it means to see 'Old Sammy' buzzing around over camp.
Laura Hillenbrand
#90. Are we entirely ready, sir?" said Lieutenant Hornett, with the special inflection that means "We are not entirely ready, sir."
"We had better be. Glory awaits, gentlemen. In the words of General Tacticus, 'let us take history by the scrotum.' Of course, he was not a very honourable fighter.
Terry Pratchett
#91. In general, I hate films that are overtly either very masculine or very feminine, you know? The same way that I don't like a war movie about soldiers smashing people's heads. But a chick flick I like would be Cassavetes' movies. 'A Woman Under the Influence,' 'Husbands.'
Gael Garcia Bernal
#92. As General Eisenhower discovered, it is easier to end the Cold War or stamp out poverty than to master this devilish pastime.
James Reston Jr.
#93. One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies.
Terry Eagleton
#94. I was with the U.N. Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali on the day that Srebrenica fell, which happened to be a huge historical turning point in the Bosnian war.
Michael Ignatieff
#95. Colonel Walker, did it ever occur to you that General Jackson is crazy?
Richard S. Ewell
#96. Haw! Haw! Inconceivable stupidity is just what you're going to get! (Brigadier-General Henry Wilson, on being challenged in 1910 about the likelihood of a European war)
Max Hastings
#97. I cannot see the war as historians see it. Those clever fellows study all the facts and they see the war as a large thing, one of the biggest events in the legend of the man, something general, involving multitudes.
William, Saroyan
#98. One Soviet general, looking at a map of the territory Russia had acquired on the Karelian Isthmus, is said to have remarked: "We have won just about enough ground to bury our dead
William R. Trotter
#99. I may be wrong in that, but not I think in putting the questions. In our modern democracy the government needs not a unanimous but a general support for war before it orders our forces to fight.
Douglas Hurd
#100. Writing again, he stressed that the events of war are always uncertain. Then, paraphrasing a favorite line from the popular play Cato by Joseph Addison - a line that General Washington, too, would often call upon - Adams told her, We cannot insure success, but we can deserve it.
David McCullough
