Top 100 Quotes About The Nature Of War
#1. I wish that George W. Bush had gone to Vietnam, because he would have seen history in a different light. He would've experienced it in a different light because I don't think he understood the nature of war.
Oliver Stone
#2. The nature of war is constant change.
Sun Tzu
#3. The doctrine of "exit strategy" fundamentally misunderstands the nature of war and, more generally, the nature of historical action. for the knowledge of the end is not given to us at the beginning.
Leon Wieseltier
#4. I have always hated war and am by nature and philosophy a pacifist, but it is the English who are forcing war on us, and the first principle of war is to kill the enemy.
Constance Markievicz
#5. War is never lenient but where it is wanton; where men are compelled to fight in self-defence, they must hate and avenge. This may be bad, but it is human nature; it is the clay as it came from the hands of the Potter.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#6. The second coming of Christ will be so revolutionary that it will change every aspect of life on this planet. Disease will be eliminated. Death will be abolished. War will be eradicated. Nature will be transformed.
Billy Graham
#7. Maybe creatures that are not like each other are supposed to hurt each other to find out which one is stronger, so that the stronger one can take the things it wants. A competition. A game. War! Sex! Football!
Isaac Marion
#8. The first, the supreme, the most far-reaching act of judgment that the statesman and commander have to make is to establish by that test the kind of war on which they are embarking; neither mistaking it for, nor trying to turn it into, something that is alien to its nature.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#9. Physical nature lies at our feet shackled with a hundred chains. What of the control of human nature? Do not point to the triumphs of psychiatry, social services or the war against crime. Domination of human nature can only mean the domination of every man by himself.
Johan Huizinga
#10. The very nature of interstate war puts innocent civilians into great jeopardy, especially with modern technology.
Murray Rothbard
#11. Islam is not a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of war, and most Muslims don't understand the true nature of Islam.
Mosab Hassan Yousef
#12. It is hard, I submit, to loathe bloodshed, including war, more than I do, but it is still harder to exceed my loathing of the very nature of totalitarian states in which massacre is only an administrative detail.
Vladimir Nabokov
#13. I was surrounded by nature and trying to come to terms with this blissful nature versus the inhumane mentality of war. People were being deluded by someone using the word peace.
Thurston Moore
#14. Ethical obligation has to subordinate itself to the totalitarian nature of war.
Karl Brandt
#15. Why do we decorate the world with the ugliness of war when nature is so beautiful and kind?
Debasish Mridha
#16. What's this war in the heart of Nature? Why does Nature vie with itself? The Land contend with the Sea? Is there an avenging power in Nature? Not one power, but two?
Terrence Malick
#17. War is a part of human nature, and we Japanese are human. But we have never fought, we have certainly never built weapons of mass destruction, to convince the world of the rightness of an idea. It took America and its bastard twin, communism, to do that." He
Barry Eisler
#18. The point of departure of the process to which we wish to contribute is the fact that war is the natural reaction of human nature in the savage state, while peace is the result of acquired characteristics.
Elihu Root
#19. Many of the seminal social issues of our time - poverty, lack of education, human trafficking, war and torture, domestic abuse - can track their way to our theology of, or beliefs about, women, which has its roots in what we believe about the nature, purposes, and character of God.
Sarah Bessey
#20. It would be wrong to kill oneself if one did not know exactly the nature of one's eyes.
Kate Williams
#21. We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
Alan Watts
#22. The evil of technology was not technology itself, Lindbergh came to see after the war, not in airplanes or the myriad contrivances of modern technical igenuity, but in the extent to which they can distance us from our better moral nature, or sense of personal accountability.
David McCullough
#24. Peace is defined as harmony among those who are divided. When, therefore, we end the civil war within our nature and cultivate peace within ourselves, we become at peace.
Gregory Of Nyssa
#25. 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
#26. War is often described as a law of nature-this is not true: Among the lower animals, war is unknown.
Aldous Huxley
#27. We are acknowledging the close personal nature of our 10 years at war and the strong bonds of fidelity that Marines have for one another, especially for those fellow Marines who we have lost.
James F. Amos
#28. Whatever a work of art may be, the artist certainly cannot dare to be simple. He must have a nature as complicated and as violent, as totally unsuggestive of the word innocence, as a modern war.
Rebecca West
#29. On the twelfth of June, the forces of Western Europe crossed the borders of Russia, and war began
that is, an event took place contrary to human reason and to the whole of human nature.
Leo Tolstoy
#31. The sinister nature of the American soil is apparent in places like Gettysburg. Fertilize it with the blood of heros, and it brings forth a frozen-custard stand.
Russell Baker
#32. The limitation upon this mode of promoting peace lies in the fact that it consists in an appeal to the civilized side of man, while war is the product of forces proceeding from man's original savage nature.
Elihu Root
#33. Another powerful principle of our nature, which is the spring of war, is the passion for superiority, for triumph, for power. The human mind is aspiring, impatient of inferiority, and eager for preeminence and control.
William Ellery Channing
#34. It was the seventh of November, 1918. The war was finally over. Maybe it would be declared a holiday and named War's End Day or something equally hopeful and wrong. Wars would break out again. Violence was part of human nature as much as love and generosity.
Claire Holden Rothman
#35. The nature of ignorance is to lack deep communication with nature or with the universe. It is to separate, to isolate, to create discrimination and differences, so that finally we cannot communicate as a harmonious whole. These differences we create appear as fighting, anger, hatred, and war.
Dainin Katagiri
#36. The nature of the new war places a high premium on other factors, such as the ability to quickly obtain information from captured terrorists and their sponsors in order to avoid further atrocities against American civilians.
Alberto Gonzales
#37. What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
Henry David Thoreau
#38. Those who looked with revulsion at the oppressive might of her arms, were obliged to marvel at the egalitarian nature of her social programmes.
A.H. Septimius
#39. In the first place, most princes apply themselves to the arts of war, in which I have neither ability nor interest, instead of to the good arts of peace. They are generally more set on acquiring new kingdoms by hook or by crook than on governing well those that they already have.
Thomas More
#40. 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
#41. Shadow is ever besieged, for that is its nature. Whilst darkness devours, and light steals. And so one sees shadow ever retreat to hidden places, only to return in the wake of the war between dark and light.
Steven Erikson
#42. Part of the terrible irony of war is that it enlists the best in human nature for purposes of mutual destruction.
Lesslie Newbigin
#43. Another part or piece,' said Diabolus, 'of mine excellent armour, is a dumb and prayerless spirit, a spirit that scorns to cry for mercy, let the danger be ever so great; therefore be you, my Mansoul, sure that you make use of this.
John Bunyan
#44. Mr. Lincoln was generous by nature, and though his whole heart was in the war, he could not but respect the valor of those opposed to him. His soul was too great for the narrow, selfish views of partisanship. Brave by nature himself, he honored bravery in others, even his foes.
Elizabeth Keckley
#45. With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war.
Immanuel Kant
#46. Christendom and heathendom now stand face to face ... At bottom is a violent and irreconcilable quarrel about the nature of God and the nature of an and the ultimate nature of the universe; it is a war of dogma.
Dorothy L. Sayers
#47. The world is full of grief and no peace but every body has a different way of ending it.
Auliq Ice
#48. Sometimes it seems to me that man is come where he is not wanted, where there is no place for him; for if not, why should he want all the place? Why should he run about here and there making a great noise about himself, talking about the stars, disturbing the blades of grass?
Joseph Conrad
#49. In peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons.
Herodotus
#50. The war on terror involves Saddam Hussein because of the nature of Saddam Hussein, the history of Saddam Hussein, and his willingness to terrorize himself.
George W. Bush
#51. Where eldest Night And Chaos, ancestors of Nature, hold Eternal anarchy amidst the noise Of endless wars, and by confusion stand; For hot, cold, moist, and dry, four champions fierce, Strive here for mast'ry.
John Milton
#52. We do wrong to seek peace in Nature; we should rather seek the nobler sort of war; and see all the trees as green banners.
G.K. Chesterton
#53. In our world photographs of one dead terrorist mastermind carry no real news or information about the nature or horror of war. They just create sensation instead of deeper understanding.
Philip Gourevitch
#54. I shall proceed from the simple to the complex. But in war more than in any other subject we must begin by looking at the nature of the whole; for here more than elsewhere the part and the whole must always be thought of together.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#55. If you are a warrior, the nature and scale of your enemies will determine the nature and scale of your actions. In this sense, it is even more important to choose your enemies more wisely than your friends.
CrimethInc.
#56. Nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of the legislative authority.
Alexander Hamilton
#57. In peace, children inter their parents; war violates the order of nature and causes parents to inter their children.
Herodotus
#58. War is in truth a disease in which the juices that serve health and maintenance are used for the sole purpose of nourishing something foreign, something at odds with nature.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#59. The nature of the new world system was not so different from the old. It was for the moment more stable, but a reasonable forecast would be that Africa in particular had a century of border wars ahead of it.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan
#60. Humanity is as horrified and repulsed by real nature as it is by real death. Thus, we strike back against this formidable opponent with our sharpest weapon: our imagination. From this noble tool - born of necessity and elevated to beauty - culture was born, and the war against nature begun.
Anthony Marais
#61. The laws of certain states ... give an ownership in the service of Negroes as personal property ... But being men, by the laws of God and nature, they were capable of acquiring liberty - and when the captor in war ... thought fit to give them liberty, the gift was not only valid, but irrevocable.
Alexander Hamilton
#62. As a Korean War Veteran, I know too well the troubling nature of war. This is why I will always support a diplomatic answer before military intervention.
Charles B. Rangel
#63. I started studying what the nature of a monument is and what a monument should be. And for the World War III memorial I designed a futile, almost terrifying passage that ends nowhere.
Maya Lin
#64. I have read of the great wars of ages past, and men slaughtered by the tens of thousands. And we give but fleeting consideration to their deaths, for it is our nature to banish such thoughts.
Seth Grahame-Smith
#65. I abominate war as Unchristian. I hold it the greatest of human crimes. I deem it to involve all others,
violence, blood, rapine, fraud; everything that can deform the character, alter the nature, and debase the name of man.
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham And Vaux
#66. Such is the nature and make-up of the French that they are only good at the start. Then they are worse than devils, but, given time, they're less than women.
Francois Rabelais
#67. War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene.
Wilhelm Von Humboldt
#68. There is no War on Terrorism; it is The Great Game speeded up. The difference is the rampant nature of the superpower, ensuring infinite dangers for us all.
John Pilger
#69. Wisdom consists of knowing how to distinguish the nature of trouble, and in choosing the lesser evil.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#70. Mud and water and the stumps of trees. In every direction that was all there was. Bodies fell, but the trees died standing up.
Josh Ritter
#71. Updates from Coin about the nature of the bombs. Certainly, the war is still being waged, but as to its status, we're in the
Suzanne Collins
#72. Those people who say that words have no power know nothing of the nature of words. Words, well placed, can end a regime; can turn affection to hatred; can start a religion or even a war. Words are the shepherds of lies; they lead the best of us to the slaughter.
Joanne Harris
#73. War provides an outlet for every evil element in man's nature. It enfranchises cupidity and greed gives a charter to petty tyranny, glorifies cruelty and places in positions of power the vulgar and base.
C.E.M. Joad
#74. I believe we will see a biofuels resurgence. While gas prices skyrocket and we continue to wage wars for oil, while spills, fracking, tar sands and the oil madness of our empire continue, people are waking up and realizing that you can't be against petroleum and against fuels that come from nature.
Josh Tickell
#75. It is difficult to believe in the dreadful but quiet war lurking just below the serene facade of nature.
Charles Darwin
#76. 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
#77. According to the first image of international relations, the locus of the important causes of war is found in the nature and behavior of man. Wars result from selfishness, from misdirected aggressive impulses, from stupidity.
Kenneth Waltz
#78. The curse of modern times is the preponderance of male hormones in places where they can do long-term damage. Even if were not talking about wars between nations or assaults on nature, there's still that aggressiveness that keeps us apart from each other and the problems we need to be working on.
Robert James Waller
#79. The most privileged position, in life as in society, is that of an educated soldier. Rough warriors, at any rate, remain true to their character, and as great strength is usually the cover for good nature, we get on with them at need.
Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
#80. On the twelfth of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to human reason and to human nature.
Leo Tolstoy
#81. [Nature said] The sea shall disjoin the people [of England] from others, and knit them to a fierce nationality. It shall give them markets on every side. Long time I will keep them on their feet, by poverty, border-wars ... seafaring ...
Marsilio Ficino
#82. The previous regime ... reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.
Vaclav Havel
#83. War is not the best engine for us to resort to; nature has given us one in our commerce, which if properly managed, will be a better instrument for obliging the interested nations of Europe to treat us with justice.
Thomas Jefferson
#84. President George W. Bush's aggressive war on Islamic terrorism produced a 100 percent perfect track record of keeping the United States safe from another attack. The result has been increased security for the American people, who, in turn, have become complacent about the true nature of the threat.
Monica Crowley
#85. I hate the way war is seen as something inherently brutal and ugly. Yes, much of war brings out the worst part of our [people's] nature. But in war, all kinds of noble human traits have been developed, such as discipline, cohesion, pride.
Robert Greene
#86. It was through the Second World War that most of us suddenlyappreciated for the first time the power of man's concentrated efforts to understand and control the forces of nature.We were appalled by what we saw.
Vannevar Bush
#87. In a rich moonlit garden, flowers open beneath the eyes of entire nations terrified to acknowledge the simplicity of the beauty of peace.
Aberjhani
#88. With grace and a keen appreciation of human nature, Nicholas Thompson has written a revealing, moving history of the Cold War through two fascinating men.
Evan Thomas
#89. From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of higher animals, directly follows.
Charles Darwin
#90. A war not only arises, but derives its nature , from the political ideas, the moral sentiments, and the international relations obtaining at the moment when it breaks out. This amounts to saying:;: try and know why and with the help of what you are going to act; then you will find out how to act.
Ferdinand Foch
#91. Because we want the peace with half a heart and half a life and will, the war, of course, continues, because the waging of war, by its nature, is total - but the waging of peace, by our own cowardice, is partial.
Daniel Berrigan
#92. When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones. For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope; if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped to go rolling down.
Sun Tzu
#93. The war cured me of all the "isms", he said. 'Nazism, communism, socialism, patriotism, nationalism, capitalism. I have seen them all. The problem is human nature. People. Shit always floats to the top.
Magda Szubanski
#94. I am the king. You're the knight sitting at my round table. That's the nature of our relationship when it comes to war or other conflict resolution in this family.
Sarah Black
#95. Bit by bit [the Second World War] really changed my view of what people were capable of, and therefore what human nature was.
William Golding
#96. A book is a fragile creature, it suffers the wear of time, it fears rodents, the elements and clumsy hands. so the librarian protects the books not only against mankind but also against nature and devotes his life to this war with the forces of oblivion.
Umberto Eco
#97. Democracies are notorious for a tendency to obey the feelings rather than the mind; thus the nature of democracies often makes itdifficult to conclude a peace after a hard-won war. Generous victors are rare.
Amos Elon
#98. The only animal capable of giving man a fair fight is man. Actually, among ourselves, we fight unfairest of all, and the more we practice, the nastier we get.
Robert Buettner
#99. Politicians used AIDS to energize anti-gay supporters and religious conservatives who heralded it as a consequence of immorality. Pat Buchanan, an adviser to President Reagan, declared, "The poor homosexuals - they have declared war upon nature, and now nature is exacting an awful retribution." A
Sean Strub
#100. In a war the most dangerous thing is to understand the enemy. To understand is to forgive. And we
have no right to do that - we never have had, not since the creation of the world.
Sergei Lukyanenko
