Top 100 On War Quotes
#1. Moms and daughters can negotiate over anything, and they can go on longer than it took to settle the Vietnam War.
Steve Schirripa
#2. Firefly: Now that you're Secretary of War, what kind of an army do you think we oughta have? Chicolini: Well, I tell you what I think. I think we should have a standing army. Firefly: Why should we have a standing army? Chicolini: Because then we save money on chairs.
Groucho Marx
#3. Humans without humanity, A world of dread and fear for eternity.
Mouloud Benzadi
#4. It is not enough to live together in peace, with one race on its knees.
Daniel H. Wilson
#5. What we have in the Bush team is a faith-based administration. It launched a faith-based war in Iraq, on the basis of faith-based intelligence, with a faith-based plan for Iraqi reconstruction, supported by faith-based tax cuts to generate faith-based revenues.
Thomas Friedman
#6. If we had pursued what President Nixon declared in 1970 as the war on cancer, we would have cured many strains. I think Jack Kemp would be alive today. And that research has saved or prolonged many lives, including mine.
Arlen Specter
#7. Guess there is a war on between them and us. But we never do anything about holding up our side of the war, except to keep our parade sites and our storage centers secret and to get out of bodies every time there's an air raid or the enemy fires a rocket or something.
Kurt Vonnegut
#8. There is no place for innocence on the battlefield.
Jocelyn Murray
#9. There is a "yoga body" aesthetic, which is long and sinewy. I am curvy. I get praised on a regular basis, with people telling me, "Wow, you're so brave," simply for showing my curvy body. Being brave is going to war; being curvy is not brave. We need to be careful with how we use our words.
Kathryn Budig
#10. In the half-reclined bed, Yaz slept, mouth open, snoring - probably doped. Mike turned on the TV. For twenty minutes, he watched retired generals on CNN discussing Afghanistan and troop surges as though they knew what the hell war was all about.
Pete Barber
#11. I think it is now widely understood that the so-called "War on Drugs" has largely been a failure. Too many people have developed criminal records for smoking marijuana. Too many people have gone to jail for nonviolent crimes. So I think it's important for us to rethink the war on drugs.
Bernie Sanders
#12. The military has been determined to control the images of war since Vietnam. They're convinced that they lost the war because of loss of political support back home, because people saw what was going on.
Bob Simon
#13. Come on boys! Give them the cold steel! Who will follow me?
Lewis Armistead
#14. Rome had freed the Greeks, but on condition that both war and class war should end. Freedom without war was a novel and irksome life for the city-states that made up Hellas; the upper classes yearned to play power politics against neighboring cities, and
Will Durant
#15. On the basis of this information, it would be possible to argue that if everybody spoke English (or Chinese or Esperanto for that matter) everybody would be at war even more often.
Andrew Dalby
#16. We have all the freedoms we want. But what we are missing is red ink: the language to articulate our non-freedom. The way we are taught to speak about freedom- war on terror and so on-falsifies freedom.
Slavoj Zizek
#17. If truth is the first victim of war, then read on - I've got some great lies for you this month.
Alan Gorrie
#18. I found that I was getting a warm reception for my message of freeing you from the income tax, releasing you from Social Security, ending the insane war on drugs, restoring gun rights, and reducing the federal government to just its constitutional functions.
Harry Browne
#19. They [American forces] are there as an expression of the American national interest to prevent the Iranian combination of imperialism and fundamentalist ideology from dominating a region on which the energy supplies of the industrial democracies depend.
Henry A. Kissinger
#20. If you want to go anywhere in modern war, in the air, on the sea, on the land, you must have command of the air.
William Halsey
#21. Federal Officer: "The arms piled on the ground were not worth 10 cents a ton.
Clint Johnson
#22. Milosevic will never stop, because he is fighting for personal power in Serbia. The only way to stop him is cutting the functioning of his war machine. He is spending $1.7 million a day on his war machine in Kosovo.
Fatos Nano
#23. Last week John McCain said the fundamentals of our economy are strong. This week, he said it's the worst crisis since World War II. So he suspended his campaign, unless you count doing interviews, airing attack ads, sending out surrogates on TV to attack Obama.
Bill Maher
#24. 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
#25. I knew by experience and by observing many of my friends the baneful, destructive effect which participation in a war has on almost every man.
(from 'The Specter of Alexander Wolf')
Gaito Gazdanov
#26. 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
#27. I didn't show up at the ceremony to collect any of my first three Oscars. Once I went fishing, another time there was a war on, and on another occasion, I remember, I was suddenly taken drunk.
John Ford
#28. 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
#29. Some of the greatest spiritual revivals in the past occurred just when the situation seemed to be the darkest. In the history of our own nation, for example, countless thousands turned to Christ during the darkest days of the Civil War, setting the stage for national reconciliation later on.
Billy Graham
#30. In war, God is always on your side, no matter which side you're on. God is invincible, but one side always loses. Nobody seems to see the fallacy in this.
Elliot MacDonald
#31. The primary theory embraced by the Bush administration to justify its War on Terror policies was that the 'battlefield' is no longer confined to identifiable geographical areas, but instead, the entire globe is now one big, unlimited 'battlefield.'
Glenn Greenwald
#32. President Bush admitted that the United States went to war in Iraq based on bad intelligence. But he says knowing what we know now he would still do it again. So at least we're learning from our mistakes.
Jay Leno
#33. Him and God are supposed to be at war with each other. But if God hates sin and Satan punishes the sinners, aren't they working the same side of the street? Aren't the judge and the executioner on the same team?
Joe Hill
#34. Peace in the Middle East isn't going to be created by another war or violent act on the other side.
Mandy Patinkin
#35. You learn, finally, that you'll die, and so you try to hang on to your own life, that gentle, naive kid you used to be, but then after a while the sentiment takes over, and the sadness, because you know for a fact that you can't ever bring any of it back again. You just can't.
Tim O'Brien
#36. It is notorious that, whenever the demand for labor is much greater than the supply, or the wages of labor are much higher than the expenses of living, very many, even on the ordinary laboring class, are remarkable for indolence, and work no more than compelled by necessity.
Edmund Ruffin
#37. At war a Russian man puts on a white shirt. He may live in sin, but he dies like a saint.
Vasily Grossman
#38. Happiness seems to depend on leisure, because we work to have leisure, and wage war to live in peace.
Aristotle.
#39. May I just single out for salutations, on the 'anti-war' side: Pop Stars For Appeasement, Dancers Against Democracy, Actors For Apathy, Fashionistas For Fascism and Jugglers For Genocide. All of them united under that flaccid flag of convenience, Show-Offs For Saddam.
Julie Burchill
#40. When the soldiers stand leaning on their spears, they are faint from want of food.
Sun Tzu
#41. Here I stand on the brink of war again, a citizen of no place, no time, no country but my own ... and that a land lapped by no sea but blood, bordered only by the outlines of a face long-loved.
Diana Gabaldon
#42. From a scientific perspective there is some indication that a nuclear war could deplete the earth's ozone layer or, less likely, could bring on a new Ice Age - but there is no suggestion that either the created order or mankind would be destroyed in the process.
Herman Kahn
#43. I averted my eyes, looked around, and stumbled through all the faces in the room till they finally rested on his. He was standing like a scared bird, waving one wing and using the other to hide his scar. Aya Rabah- Scars
Refaat Alareer
#44. War is sanctioned murder, no matter what side you're on.
Sarah J. Maas
#45. I find it amusing that those who helped to authorize and engineer the biggest foreign policy disaster in our generation are now criticizing me for making sure that we are on the right battlefield and not the wrong battlefield in the war against terrorism.
Barack Obama
#46. Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy ... use the conquered foe to augment one's own strength.
Sun Tzu
#47. Why should the Marquis de Cussy wage war on soup? I cannot understand a dinner without it. I hold soup to be the well beloved of the stomach.
Marie-Antoine Careme
#48. Good night, then - sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come. Brightly will it shine on the brave and true, kindly on all who suffer for the cause, glorious upon the tombs of heroes. Thus will shine the dawn.
Winston Churchill
#49. Defeating the enemy through deception with little loss of life is better than fighting face-to-face with the loss of many lives on both sides.
Aleksandra Layland
#50. Al Qaeda has declared war on the Somali pirates. That is awesome! Evil against evil. Like Alien versus Predator or Cheney versus his lawyer.
Craig Ferguson
#51. A modern gentleman [rich person] is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner.
George Bernard Shaw
#52. I believe in violence, I believe violence can be solved by greater violence. I also know greater violence breeds more violence. I'm certain now, that violence is like energy; it can't be destroyed, it will always be passed on, as it will be done to you
Cheyi Okoaye
#53. Move over, Helen of Troy; Jenny Trout is going to wage a war on good health and fit bodies!
Jennifer Armintrout
#54. Don't throw away luck on little stuff. Save it up.
Tim O'Brien
#55. We will not build a peaceful world by following a negative path. It is not enough to say we will not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it. We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war, but on the positive affirmation of peace
Martin Luther King Jr.
#56. It feels like last week, but in fact we're now closing in on five thousand days at war. I always picture Sami as a nine-year-old soccer stud ... and yet there are soldiers in Afghanistan today who were in fourth grade on 9/11.
Tucker Elliot
#57. Of course, it's wonderful to film any period piece - but especially 'Foyle's War' because the art direction is so imaginative and yet at the same time so real. You can open a drawer on set, and even though the camera never sees what's inside, it'll be filled with genuine 1940s documents.
Honeysuckle Weeks
#58. Standing on the defensive indicates insufficient strength; attacking, a superabundance of strength.
Sun Tzu
#59. First lay plans which will ensure victory, and then lead your army to battle; if you will not begin with stratagem but rely on brute strength alone, victory will no longer be assured
Sun Tzu
#60. The question is whether any civilization can wage relentless war on life without destroying itself, and without losing the right to be called civilized.
Rachel Carson
#61. When I wrote my eighth thriller, 'Inside Out,' in 2009, the villains were a group of CIA and other government officials who colluded to destroy a series of tapes depicting Americans torturing war-on-terror prisoners.
Barry Eisler
#62. War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves.
Rosanne Cash
#63. The American war-writing tradition is a proud one and booming in this era of the Global War on Terror - at least in the nonfiction realm. Hundreds of memoirs and press accounts from Iraq and Afghanistan have been published since 9/11.
Matt Gallagher
#64. When it comes to war, we focus more on the mainstream coverage of the event, rather than the event itself. People dying is never funny. Protest puppets are always funny.
Mo Rocca
#65. This war proceeds along its terrible path by the slaughter of infantry ... I say to myself every day. What is going on while we sit here, while we go away to dinner or home to bed? Nearly, 1000 - Englishmen, Britishers, and the other is America ... Everything else is swept away.
Winston Churchill
#66. We have to realize that this country in its private sector has been fighting the most successful war on poverty the world has seen for the last 200 years.
Ronald Reagan
#67. 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
#68. Barron and Paul ... rely on 'specialists' at the State and Defense Departments ... Elsewhere in the media, similiar figures are bandied about, with equal credibility.
Noam Chomsky
#69. The American way of war is to build an army, then another, then a third, while building fleets. If the war is still on at that point we smash.
Jerry Pournelle
#70. Men tell stories. Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over.
Kristin Hannah
#71. After the Second World War, San Francisco was the main point of re-entry for sailors returning from the Pacific. Out at sea, many of these sailors had picked up amatory habits that were frowned upon back on dry land. So these sailors stayed in San Francisco ...
Jeffrey Eugenides
#72. 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
#73. The vast majority of beings who incarnate on this planet are at the stage of their evolution where power is the dominant theme. They are learning about power. That is why we live in a world where there are so many wars and so much destruction.
Frederick Lenz
#74. Everything on this earth right now is about labor and slavery. War is the only American export left that anyone wants to buy.
Roseanne Barr
#75. 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
#76. Each hour, every hour of peace was a treasure. War boiled black and violent on the horizon, and when it came, it would engulf the world.
Nalini Singh
#77. Far be it from me to paint a rosy picture of the future ... But I should be failing in my duty if, on the other side, I were not to convey the true impression, that this great nation is getting into its war stride.
Winston Churchill
#78. If we're successful in Iraq ... we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who have had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.
Dick Cheney
#79. It ought to be remembered by all [that] the Games more than 2,000 years ago started as a means of bringing peace between the Greek city-states. And in those days, even if a war was going on, they called off the war in order to hold the Games. I wish we were still as civilized.
Ronald Reagan
#80. All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny.
Neil Simon
#81. First there is the 10-second war: can you do something in your first moments on stage to ensure people's eager attention while you set up your talk topic? Second is the 1-minute war: can you then use that first minute to ensure that they're committed to coming on the full talk journey with you?
Chris J. Anderson
#82. By 7:55 am on December 7, World War II in the Pacific had been in progress for more than eight hours.
Jeffrey Cox
#83. Dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others and to oversimplify.
Gerard K. O'Neill
#84. Stick-thin, alabaster-pale Etienne LeBlanc runs down the rue de Dinan with Madame Ruelle, the baker's wife, on his heels: the least-robust rescue ever assembled.
Anthony Doerr
#86. Were half the power that fills the world with terror, Were half the wealth bestowed on camps and courts Given to redeem the human mind from error, There were no need of arsenals or forts.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#87. The Lebanese civil war was not between the Lebanese; it was a holy war declared on the Christians.
Brigitte Gabriel
#88. 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
#89. If there is anything more frightening than the threat of global nuclear war, it is the certainty that humans not only stand on the verge of producing new life forms but may soon be able to tinker with them as if they were vintage convertibles or bonsai trees.
Michael Specter
#90. It really is my opinion that media in general are so bad that we have to question whether the world wouldn't be better off without them altogether. They are so distortive to how the world actually is that the result is.. we see wars, and we see corrupt governments continue on.
Julian Assange
#91. 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
#92. The final outcome of a war is often determined by the degree of initiative shown on each side.
Chiang Kai-shek
#93. How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?
Howard Zinn
#94. It was 1981. I was working on a novel. And I put that novel aside one day after I read a newspaper article. The story said there were 19 women still on the pension payroll who were Confederate war widows. They were women who very early in their lives had married very old men.
Allan Gurganus
#95. He was one of those, like Stuart, who looked on war as God's greatest game.
Michael Shaara
#97. You can't rewind war. It spools on, and on, and on, looping and jumping, distorted and cracked with age, and the stories contract until only the nuggets of hatred remain and no one can even remember, or imagine, why the war was organized in the first place.
Alexandra Fuller
#99. If, on the other hand, in the midst of difficulties we are always ready to seize an advantage, we may extricate ourselves from misfortune.
Sun Tzu
#100. The only thing going on was a war, and no one seemed to notice but Yossarian and Dunbar. And when Yossarian tried to remind people, they drew away from him and thought he was crazy.
Joseph Heller
