Top 100 Go To War Quotes
#1. Somehow whether or not the war is winnable is beyond our scope, an irrelevant detail. We don't do it to win anymore; we do it because it's what we know how to do. Get ready to go. Get ready to come back. And the moments in between we mark on the calendar. It's our battle rhythm.
Angela Ricketts
#2. Why is it easier to get men to go to war than to see a counselor?
Steven Gould
#3. This tune goes manly.
Come, go we to the King. Our power is ready;
Our lack is nothing but our leave. Macbeth
Is ripe for shaking, and the powers above
Put on their instruments. Receive what cheer you may.
The night is long that never finds the day.
They exit.
William Shakespeare
#4. You should not go to war for the privilege of withdrawal. You need to define your objective and the outcome, and it cannot be the removal of one man.
Henry A. Kissinger
#5. On the contrary, I tried on numerous occasions to convince the American president not to go to war. I did what was within my capabilities to avoid that happening.
Silvio Berlusconi
#6. It's always fallen to women to forge the peace between all these hot-blooded men, always ready to go to war at the slightest provocation....Why do men behave the way they do, warring?"
"What do you think?" he asked.
"Maybe because they've got no sense of grief?
Nuruddin Farah
#7. Victory will not go to those who can inflict the most suffering, but to those who can survive the most.
CrimethInc.
#9. There is certainly greatness in the '60s generation. They changed our attitudes about race in America, which was long overdue. They didn't just stand up and salute when told to go to war. Women finally began to realize a more equal place in our society.
Tom Brokaw
#10. I have never met a man [in the military], in or out of uniform, who ever said, "Let's use the missiles." They are even more terrified that the Bishops, because a great many of them don't expect to go to Heaven, which at least the Bishops do.
Clare Boothe Luce
#11. You can drive at 16, go to war at 18, drink at 21, and retire at 65. So who can say what age you have to be to find your true love?
M.R. James
#12. War! We go on killing each other to no purpose! It is war waged by humanity against humanity, and it will only end when there's no one left to fight.
Jonathan Safran Foer
#13. I feel my body weakening but my spirit is fine, ready to go to war with devils at the drop of a dime
Immortal Technique
#14. If something is said about the Raiders, I'm ready to go to war.
Jim Otto
#15. I think there are writers who take a quieter approach to their work - one that is just about respectfully showing up for your vocation day after day, steadily doing your best, and letting go of the results. Not going to war against anyone else, or against their talents, or against themselves.
Elizabeth Gilbert
#16. You don't go to war with the President you want, you go to war with the President you have.
Jeff Rich
#17. Most of our lives in public are spent papering over, rationalizing, and otherwise denying our fear. We go to war because we're afraid, and we often go to spiritual events for the very same reason.
Seth Godin
#18. Sandra says that he enjoyed having "adult" conversations and that he would talk about the war Iraq, ask what it was like to be older and couldn't wait to learn to drive and go to college. All in all, he could be described as "different.
Alexander Scott
#19. We should never go to war unless we have been attacked or are under direct, immediate threat of attack. Never. And never again.
Joe Klein
#20. There has always been tension between reporters and the administration, particularly when it comes to war in the modern era. You can go to Kennedy or Johnson and see that they weren't happy with David Halberstam or Morley Safer.
Lowell Bergman
#21. Wars, invented and organized by the highest available consciousnesses (do the worms go to war? do the fish? do the paramecia?), are the planet's chief source and cause of torment.
Cynthia Ozick
#22. I got to do something I never do, which is go to Starbucks and read 'The New York Times' until 7 a.m. I took my daughter to school on the East Side, which was a lot of fun. And I admit I played Call of Duty, one of those war video games.
Joe Scarborough
#23. [I am] saddened, saddened, that this president [Bush] failed so miserably at diplomacy that we're now forced to go to war. Saddened that we have to give up one life because this president couldn't create the kind of diplomatic effort that was so critical for our country.
Tom Daschle
#24. The CIA created, armed and financed the Contras. My father backed them with everything he had. It was my father's war, and almost everyone in Nicaragua has lost somebody as a result of it. I couldn't go down there, being his daughter, and expect not to feel those people's wrath.
Patti Davis
#25. As a parent you try to maintain a certain amount of control and so you have this tug-of-war ... You have to learn when to let go. And that's not easy.
Aretha Franklin
#26. We are brothers and sisters; not enemies. It is not the will of God that countrymen go to war against one another.
Jaime Sin
#27. If I could cause world peace by taking someone out to lunch, I'd go, 'Well, war isn't that terrible.'
Gilbert Gottfried
#28. We go to war only to make peace. We never went to war with any other design. We carry the national conscience wherever we go.
William McKinley
#29. In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird.
Laura Hillenbrand
#30. If Iraq and Afghanistan have taught us anything in recent history, it is the unpredictability of war and that these things are easier to get into than to get out of, and, frankly, the facile way in which too many people talk about, 'Well, let's just go attack them.'
Robert M. Gates
#31. If 'pleasing the people' is the only criterion (of a 'big' leader), then going to war or pretending to go to war or simulating outrage and bad mouthing states you can do nothing about, is the playbook for you.
Khaled Ahmed
#32. The rule of law in place of force, always basic to my thinking, now takes on a new relevance in a world where, if war is to go, only law can replace it.
Roger Nash Baldwin
#33. We're fighting an enemy that is far different than any we have got before. It's a nontraditional kind of war, and I think we need to step back, recalibrate how we go about protecting our borders and protecting our people, and resetting our position in the world.
Jon Huntsman Jr.
#34. The decision to go to war is the most important decision that I can make as a representative in Congress. As a veteran, I see any potential military action first through the eyes of the young men and women who volunteered to wear the uniform and would carry out such a mission.
Mark Kirk
#35. If there were no war, if there was peace in the world, I'd say fine, have fun! But, Montag, you mustn't go back to being just a fireman. All isn't well with the world.
Ray Bradbury
#36. First make yourself unbeatable, then go to war." -Sun Tzu
Phil Pierce
#37. Fool!" cried the hunchback. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well known is this: 'Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.
William Goldman
#38. If things were different, if there were no revolution, no war, no threads of light, if he were rich, would he go back to London with her and ask for her hand in marriage? He smiled, for the answer was simple. Yes, yes, he would.
Sally Gardner
#39. Henry,that's how you get rid of fleas. You keep them from laying eggs. You go to war with them.
Jason Jack Miller
#40. It's a war out there and either they're going to hurt you or you're going to hurt them. I just go out there and play with my heart.
Jeremy Shockey
#41. My objection to war was not that I had to kill somebody or be killed senselessly, that hardly mattered. What I objected to was to be denied the right to sit in a small room and starve and drink cheap wine and go crazy in my own way and at my own leisure.
Charles Bukowski
#42. The high point of civilization is that you can hate me and I can hate you but we develop an etiquette that allows us to deal with each other because if we acted solely upon our impulse we'd probably go to war.
Stanley Crouch
#43. "Star Wars" was the right movie for me. I watched the MSE-6 droid leading the stormtroopers where they needed to go when they were under attack, and that got my attention much more so than C-3PO and R2-D2 because we could actually build that.
Colin Angle
#44. Never trust a soldier who's eager to go to war.
Ramez Naam
#45. I wanted to be a war reporter - scrabbling around, exposing things. I didn't want to go to university, I wanted to get a job, but Auntie Beryl said I should go to Oxford.
Nina Bawden
#46. It takes all kinds to make the world go 'round. If everyone was straight-laced and uptight, it would sure be a drag. We need a little tug of war in society.
Nikki Sixx
#47. Jesus is busy with his own stuff, and is not going to get involved in your little tug-of-war. Plus, don't forget, he has his own mother to deal with. She's all he can handle, as far as mothers go.
Anne Lamott
#48. Democracies don't go to war against each other, and by and large they don't sponsor terrorism. They're more likely to respect the environment and human rights and social justice. It's no accident that most of the terrorists come from non-democratic countries.
William J. Clinton
#49. Nineteen people flew into the towers. It seems hard for me to imagine that we could go to war enough to make the world safe enough that nineteen people wouldn't want to do harm to us. So it seems like we have to rethink a strategy that is less military-based.
Jon Stewart
#50. When I came to America, I was already a writer, already published in Bosnia. I was planning to go back, but I had no choice but to stay here after the civil war, so I enrolled at Northwestern in a master's program and studied American literature.
Aleksandar Hemon
#51. When I take risks now, I do so only when I have to and with every precaution. I used to prospect for news, dropping into places to see what was up. Well, I could go to parts of Libya today and find lots of good stories, but I probably wouldn't be around to tell them.
Richard Engel
#53. I just don't identify myself with a place. I just don't get it. Like, why am I cheering for this town? Towns are good and bad but they don't have principles, constitutions. You wouldn't go to war for your town.
Steve Martin
#54. Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is in their interest to go to war.
Thomas Jefferson
#56. Americans assume that we never go to war to sustain our wealth, because war must be understood as a moral enterprise commensurate with our being a democracy.
Stanley Hauerwas
#57. Firing off 1,000 or 500 or 2,000 nuclear warheads on a few minutes' consideration has always struck me as an absurd way to go to war.
William Odom
#58. If you've got a camera, go to a war zone and tell a story.
Rhys Ifans
#59. And finally, and most importantly, the next time we go to war, don't give a specific reason for the war that the left can seize upon and later flog us with it ad nauseam, just do it. Remember, the first rule of Fight Club is that you don't talk about Fight Club.
Dennis Miller
#60. The Anarchists set off World War I with a gunshot in Sarajevo - but they faded away. It wasn't that the police drove them out of business. The ideology had nowhere to go except into permanent negativity.
Pete Hamill
#61. It is an old custom amongst Jewish children, to become war-like on the 'L'ag Beomer.' They arm themselves from head to foot with wooden swords, pop-guns and bows and arrows. They take food with them, and go off to wage war.
Sholom Aleichem
#62. Dwight D. Eisenhower, in my judgment, will go down in history as one of the four 'great' presidents since the U.S. reluctantly became an empire in World War II; Richard Nixon as the nearest to a sociopath by the time he was compelled to resign.
Nigel Hamilton
#63. If [pacifists] imagine that one can somehow "overcome" the German army by lying on one's back, let them go on imagining it, but let them also wonder occasionally whether this is not an illusion due to security, too much money and a simple ignorance of the way in which things actually happen.
George Orwell
#64. When men talk about war, the stories and terminology vary - it's this battle, these weapons, this terrain. But no matter where you go in the world, women use the same language to speak of war. They speak of fire, they speak of death, and they speak of starvation.
Abigail Disney
#65. The only foreign policy advice I heard from China was when they said to Sudan, 'Don't go back to war.' That's all they said. They didn't push anything else.
Emmanuel Jal
#66. Conflicts often stem from a couple of leaders on both sides that are badly brought up. They'd rather go to war than compromise. And in business, you're competing with other companies all the time, but you don't end up going to war with each other.
Richard Branson
#67. My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement ... Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half.
Winston Churchill
#68. The time to take counsel of your fears is before you make an important battle decision. That's the time to listen to every fear you can imagine! When you have collected all the facts and fears and made your decision, turn off all your fears and go ahead!
George S. Patton
#70. The constant tug-of-war between 'YES, I WANT TO GO EXPERIENCE EVERYTHING RIGHT NOW' and 'Wow, I need a lot of time to process these experiences, can I take a breather?
Heidi Priebe
#72. As a woman I can't go to war, and I refuse to send anyone else.
Jeannette Rankin
#73. I'd single-handedly go to war and burn their whole organization to the ground before I ever let them harm what was mine. And there were no two ways about it- Brighton would always be mine.
A. Zavarelli
#74. An affected laugh shows lack of self-respect in a man and lewdness in a woman. It is carelessness to go about with one's hands inside the slits in the sides of his hakama.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo
#75. If you go to war with your mind, you will always be at war.
T. Scott McLeod
#76. The only time France wants us to go to war is when the German Army is sitting in Paris sipping coffee.
Regis Philbin
#77. I'm praying we don't go to war with Iraq. If we do, I may have to go back to work earlier.
Elizabeth Vargas
#78. In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it anymore.
Ernest Hemingway,
#79. I wouldn't want to go back over my life. I've done it all. I wouldn't have wanted to miss the Marine Corps. I wouldn't have wanted to miss the war. I wouldn't have missed college. Or playin' for the Colts. I got all the money I need. Five children. I got a truck. I have no regrets whatsoever.
Art Donovan
#80. Only - only that, if you believe the tales, it's in the nature of our people to go to war and to kill, just as it is to sing and play and tell stories. Perhaps they are two halves of the same whole.
Juliet Marillier
#81. I never desired to go into war zones. I never had any thought about it. It sort of just happened as part of the job.
Kate Adie
#82. When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you ... Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.
Ernest Hemingway,
#83. Like every thoughtful parent in every age of history, Neil consoled himself, My generation failed, but this new one is going to change the entire world, and go piously to the polls even on rainy election-days, and never drink more than one cocktail, and end all war.
Sinclair Lewis
#84. In 1945, when the male soldiers started coming back home from Europe, she and all the other women pilots that had served as WASPs during the war were unceremoniously told to go home and never received a dime or even thanks from the government.
Fannie Flagg
#85. My generals should be like bull terriers on chains, and they should want war, war, war ... But what happens now? I want to go ahead with my aggressive politics and the generals try to stop me. That's a false situation.
Adolf Hitler
#86. You want to cry some more, go on ahead. I did the same last night." "You, sir?" "God's truth. Thinking of everything ahead. Both sides figuring the other side will just give up, and soon, and the war done in weeks, and us all home. Well, that's not how it's going to be. And maybe that's why I cried.
Ray Bradbury
#87. All of a sudden, making a Spanish-American War joke. I think you sort of had to go to probably to an American high school to have remembered that.
David Mandel
#88. I was drafted during the Korean War. None of us wanted to go ... It was only a couple of years after World War II had ended. We said, 'Wait a second? Didn't we just get through with that?'
Clint Eastwood
#89. I think it is rather heroic to go into a war zone where everyone is trying to kill you, and you have no way of shooting back.
Kerry Greenwood
#90. But it cannot follow that because weapons and troops are now being deployed we are bound to go to war.
Douglas Hurd
#91. I was disappointed, not because we had lost the war but because our people had allowed it to go on for so many years, instead of heeding the few voices of protest against all that mass insanity and slaughter.
George Grosz
#92. I don't believe that being in love absolves you of anything. I no longer believe that all's fair in love and war. I'd go so far as to say your actions in love are not an exception to who you are. They are, in fact, the very definition of who you are.
Taylor Jenkins Reid
#93. I think the US and Russia are mirroring each other and they have this love/hate relationship since the Cold War. You feel it when you go to Russia; they admire and hate the US at the same time, and here also there's this mistrust and it's always going to be there.
Sophie Barthes
#94. There's always a reaction based on fear. People assume if you're criticizing a decision to go to war, then you're saying something against the soldiers-which is not the case.
Ed Harris
#95. I feel like I partly came to writing through being in college during the start of the Iraq war, and knowing that those issues mattered lot to me, and wanting to go see for myself.
Sarah Stillman
#96. If we're all aggressive, obedient solders [sic], who's going to write the poems and play the blues and go on anti-war protest marches?
Ken Follett
#97. I will never conduct a war or start a war because we want to; the United States of America should only go to war because we have to. And if you live by that guidance, you'll never have veterans throwing away their medals or standing up in protest.
John F. Kerry
#98. A couple of weeks after I telephoned my old war buddy, Bernard V. O'Hare, I really did go to see him. That must have been in 1964 or so - whatever the last year was for the New York World's Fair.
Kurt Vonnegut
#99. We have to go to war against the people who enable the gun violence, the people who stop us from keeping guns out of the hands of mentally unstable people, of felons, and that means the NRA leadership.
Jerrold Nadler
#100. A miniature dancing bear that had to go potty. Scooping him up, Grace ran for the front door, getting him outside just in time for him to race to the closest tree and lift a stumpy leg. Toby, still in his Star War's pj's, trotted across the yard to join him in anointing the tree.
Jill Shalvis
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