Top 100 Self War Quotes
#1. Before the thunderous clamor of political debate or war set loose in the world, love insisted on its promise for the possibility of human unity: between men and women, between blacks and whites, northerners and southerners, haves and have-have-nots, self and self.
Aberjhani
#2. It is a skill we learn early, the art of inventing stories to explain away the fearful scared strangeness of the world. Storytelling and make-believe, like war and agriculture, are among the arts of self-defense, and all of them are ways of enclosing otherness and claiming ownership.
William Kittredge
#3. Beware At war Or at peace, More people die Of unenlightened self-interest Than of any other disease
Octavia Butler
#4. The warrior has awareness ... we are aware that we are at war , and the war in our minds requires discipline. Not the discipline of a soldier but the discipline of a warrior. Not the discipline from the outside to tell us what to do and not to do, but the discipline to be ourselves, no matter what.
Miguel Ruiz
#5. Nowhere on the planet, nowhere in history, was there a regime more vicious, more bloodthirsty, and at the same time more cunning than the Bolshevik, the self-styled Soviet regime.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#6. Harboring anger, hatred and resentment within you, is containing the venom within you. You are the only one affected ...
Jacqueline Ripstein
#7. To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.
Tom Stoppard
#8. It [the Mexican War] was a training ground for generals, so that when the sad self-murders settled on us, the leaders knew the techniques for making it properly horrible.
John Steinbeck
#9. Manner and morals have improved, improved wages and world travel during the war have had effect, and the farm labourer now is an intelligent, self respecting workman, on a level at least with the town artisan. The village rustic of the past no longer exists outside of the comic papers.
Flora Thompson
#10. A war is an incarnation. A battle is a day of your life. So we do one day at a time in self-discovery.
Frederick Lenz
#11. If you go to war with your mind, you will always be at war.
T. Scott McLeod
#12. Long periods of recession, which tend to be self-perpetuating, are usually ended by war, or by preparations for it.
Paul Johnson
#13. The war against terror is not really about terror. It's about a superpower's self-destructive impulse toward supremacy, stranglehold, global hemegony.
Arundhati Roy
#14. It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest.
Michael Scheuer
#15. 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
#16. This is my war, and I don't know what side I'm on.
Unknown
#17. Inside of every being there is a constant war being raged. The part that tell us to do what is right and what is decent and the part of us that is self-serving. The part that wants what it wants regardless of who is hurt getting it.
Kinley MacGregor
#18. Why do progress and beauty have to be so opposed? ; 75
Also, as in war, the case, like a great bubbling cauldron of life itself, threw up both good and evil. Greed, madness, cruelty and indifference were countered by goodness, devotion, self-sacrifice, and courage. p 178
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
#19. Arrogance is the armour of the weak. They are always at war to hide their real self.
Balroop Singh
#20. Only those who recognize the value of war and exercise it have any degree of self-determination.
Frank Herbert
#21. When the red wrath perisheth, when the dulled swords fail, These three who have walked with Death these shall prevail. Hell bade all its millions rise; Paradise sends three: Pity, and Self-sacrifice, and Charity.
Theodosia Garrison
#22. Legitimate steps of self-defence which Israel takes in its war against Palestinian terror - actions which any sovereign state is obligated to undertake to ensure the security of its citizens - are presented by those who hate Israel as aggressive, Nazi-like steps.
Ariel Sharon
#23. Could it be that those who were reared in the postwar years really were spoiled, as we used to hear? Did a child-centered generation, raised in depression and war, produce a self-centered generation that resents children and parenthood?
C. Sommerville
#24. One of the most significant characteristics of healthy self esteem is that it is the state of one who is not at war either with himself or with others.
Nathaniel Branden
#25. The Human Condition has a vacancy ... a transient declaring It's Self The Victor! Till death do us part in This War for human isolation.
Rosemarie Yusen
#26. At the center of a man's purpose rests the hunger for competition, war, chaos, and calmness. You take it away, there is nothing but a self-reflection of stagnation for him.
Lionel Suggs
#27. Total war uses every conceivable means toward the end of national self-preservation. Everything is right and permitted that serves the cause of one's own people.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
#28. The phenomenon of war is its hermaphroditism: the principles of victory and of defeat inhabit the same body and the necessary opponent, enemy, is merely the bed they self-exhaust each other on.
William Faulkner
#29. When we speak of peace, we should not mean just the absence of war. True peace rests on the pillars of individual freedom, human rights, national self-determination, and respect for the rule of law.
Ronald Reagan
#30. As international support for Obama's decision to attack Syria has collapsed, along with the credibility of government claims, the administration has fallen back on a standard pretext for war crimes when all else fails: the credibility of the threats of the self-designated policeman of the world.
Noam Chomsky
#31. I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me.
Mother Teresa
#32. Europe is overpopulated, the world will soon be in the same condition, and if the self-reproduction of man is not rationalized ... we shall have war.
Henri Bergson
#33. It is something great and greatening to cherish an ideal; to act in the light of truth that is far-away and far above; to set aside the near advantage, the momentary pleasure; the snatching of seeming good to self; and to act for remoter ends, for higher good, and for interests other than our own.
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
#34. Be at peace with yourself, or you'll be at war with everyone.
Raheel Farooq
#35. I run through the woods, at once applauding myself for my wit-"
"Well deserved, sir. Well deserved."
"And at the self instant, I am grinding my teeth because I am a vain, revenging idiot and shall be run down because of it.
M T Anderson
#36. As a grandiose self-deception, war is o' the same magnitude as religion. We embrace war or religion - usually both at the same time - as a means o' defeatin' death, but neither o' them do a blinkin' thing but sanction dyin'. Throughout history, Death's best friend has been a priest with a knife.
Tom Robbins
#37. Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.
Alice Walker
#38. All suffering is caused by one belief....the belief in separation
Vivian Amis
#39. It is the business of a general to be serene and inscrutable, impartial and self-controlled.
Sun Tzu
#40. To heal our world we must be silent; willing to listen to the roars of the wounded. We must teach eachother how to feel, only than can an entire nation grow in peace, as the war within will slowly diminish.
Nikki Rowe
#41. PERCY MISSED BOB. He'd gotten used to having the Titan on his side, lighting their way with his silver hair and his fearsome war broom. Now their only guide was an emaciated corpse lady with serious self-esteem issues.
Rick Riordan
#42. It is a doctrine of war not to assume the enemy will not come, but rather to rely on one's readiness to meet him; not to presume that he will not attack, but rather to make one's self invincible.
Sun Tzu
#43. I believe that there was a great age, a great epoch when man did not make war: previous to 2000 B.C. Then the self had not reallybecome aware of itself, it had not separated itself off, the spirit was not yet born, so there was no internal conflict, and hence no permanent external conflict.
D.H. Lawrence
#44. But inwardly we are as corrupt as the person who sits in an office and plans war-because, we want to be somebody in the family, in a group, in society, in the nation.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
#45. Media censorship is a prohibition of words and pictures. The war on drugs is a complete failure, and so is the American war on words. When you forbid a word, you give it power. Self-proclaimed rebels will use words like shit or fuck, simply to shock and sound cool.
Oliver Markus
#46. We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.
John F. Kennedy
#47. Junior athletics is but one facet of the real gem: life's endless war against the self you cannot live without.
David Foster Wallace
#48. The most self confident aces began to wonder when their turn would come.. Faced by the empty chairs of men you had laughed and joked with at lunch. And, miraculously, you were still there. Until tomorrow..
Cecil Lewis
#49. No victory without war. No prize without price. No winning without contest.
Ikechukwu Joseph
#50. By creating an image of low self- esteem within ourselves, we bomb and terrorize our true self. When we refuse to forgive, we create an insensible war from old grudges. When we allow stress to impede our healthy flow of energy, we create the weapon of destruction that kills humanity.
Forrest Curran
#51. In our world, in our pre-World War III condition, meditation is considered a cult activity and people who practice self-discovery are actually persecuted and ridiculed.
Frederick Lenz
#52. [These]were the legitimate acts of self-defense which had been forced upon the Irish people by English aggression... We did not initiate the war, nor were we allowed to choose the battleground.
Michael Collins
#53. Were the ironies of taxation any better: raising money for schools and hospitals and roads and bridges, and spending it on blowing up schools and hospitals and roads and bridges in self-defeating wars?
Edward St. Aubyn
#54. In perseverance, in self command, in forethought, in all virtues which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been surpassed.
Thomas B. Macaulay
#55. Most people spend their whole lives waging war - against people they don't even know. And against themselves, whom they know least of all.
from BETWEEN TWO DESERTS
Germaine Shames
#56. What kind of people are these with such low self-esteem that they need a war to feel better about themselves?
Bill Hicks
#57. It is good to know one's enemy.
It is better to know one's self.
Max Hawthorne
#58. Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
#59. Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.
George Orwell
#60. Invincibility depends on one's self; the enemy's vulnerability on him.
Sun Tzu
#61. A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
Alexander Cockburn
#62. Peace is not out there and no one can really give you peace. Most often than not you are at war with yourself. To find the peace create the inner calmness, tranquility and practice self love.
Debasish Mridha
#63. So much of western self-perception and intellectual worldview has been shaped by the moral rhetoric of the Cold War, the discourse in which communism featured as a clear enemy, determined to rule the world.
Pankaj Mishra
#64. Human violence as a kind of fractal - self-similar on all scales from bar fight to system-wide war. The buildup of insults and lost face that swelled over the course of an evening or a century. The shoving and shoving back, neither side sure they wanted to escalate and uncertain how to back down.
James S.A. Corey
#65. With the more endowed nations constrained by their own higher technological capacity for self-destruction as well as by self interest, war may have become a luxury that only the poor peoples of this world can afford.
Zbigniew Brzezinski
#66. Constancy, far from being a virtue, seems often to be the besetting sin of the human race, daughter of laziness and self-sufficiency, sister of sleep, the cause of most wars and practically all persecutions.
Freya Stark
#67. French existentialism is an unhelpful philosophy in which to couch modern feminism: born from the ravages of the Second World War, it is a cynical, individualistic school of thought that posits the self and personal choice as the measure of life's entire meaning.
Naomi Wolf
#68. Leadership is only courage and wisdom, and a great carefulness of self.
John Buchan
#69. Zeal is that pure and heavenly flame,The fire of love supplies ;While that which often bears the name,Is self in a disguise.True zeal is merciful and mild,Can pity and forbear ;The false is headstrong, fierce and wild,And breathes revenge and war.
John Newton
#70. The belief in the inevitability of war is a self-fulfilling prophecy ... We need an alternative vision, to see the world as one, as interconnected.
Dennis Kucinich
#71. In my opinion, a war between England and Germany was a war between brothers. In my inner self I admired the English government and political system.
Walter Schellenberg
#72. Among all the tragic consequences of depression and war, this suppression of personal self-expression through one's life work is among the most poignant.
Henry Wriston
#73. I was more of a Star Wars kid, actually. I always thought Star Trek was a lot of talk, and it felt a little self-important. It was hard for me to get into it.
J.J. Abrams
#74. Dictatorship played a decisive role in the North's successful effort to maintain the Union by force of arms ... one man was the government of the United States ... Lincoln was a great dictator ... This great constitutional dictator was self appointed.
Clinton Rossiter
#75. A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Simone Weil
#76. Don't forget the real business of the war is buying and selling. The murdering and the violence are self-policing, and can be entrusted to non-professionals.
Thomas Pynchon
#77. Know thy self, know thy enemy. A thousand battles, a thousand victories.
Sun Tzu
#78. There is a price which is too great to pay for peace, and that price can be put in one word. One cannot pay the price of self-respect.
Woodrow Wilson
#79. Since the gap between the rich countries and the poor can be removed, it will be. If we are shortsighted, inept, incapable either of good-will or enlightened self-interest, then it may be removed to the accompaniment of war and starvation: but removed it will be. The questions are, how, and by whom.
C.P. Snow
#80. When you educate yourself about clitoredectomies, infibulation, forced prostitution, rape as a war tactic, patriarchal religions, women painters, filmmakers, poets, writers, activists, politicians, sex-industry workers, historians, archelogoists and musicians, that's self-protection.
Inga Muscio
#81. Often, the pretexts for starting a war are not real shortages of land, food or fuel, but rather perceptions - like fear, honor and perceived self-interest.
Victor Davis Hanson
#82. If we are safe today, it is because America has stood with us. If we are to remain safe tomorrow, it will be because America remains powerful and self-confident. When, therefore, the Americans face difficulties, we need to say to them more clearly: We are with you.
Margaret Thatcher
#83. There are good points about all ... wars. People forget self. The virtues of magnanimity, courage, patriotism, etc., are called into life. People are more generous, more sympathetic, better, than when engaged in the more selfish pursuits of peace.
Rutherford B. Hayes
#84. If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are.
Kristin Hannah
#85. War, except in self-defense, is a failure of moral imagination.
Bill Moyers
#87. In his mind World War III represents the final self-destruction and imbalance of an asymmetric world, the last suicidal spasm of the dextro-rotatory helix, DNA. The human organism is an atrocity exhibition at which he is an unwilling spectator ...
J.G. Ballard
#88. For thousands of years, most marriages were in Stage I
survival-focused. After World War II, marriages increasingly flirted with Stage II
a self-fulfillment focus ... Love's definition is in a transition.
Warren Farrell
#89. With Midway as the turning point, the fortunes of war appeared definitely to shift from our own to the Allied side. The defeat taught us many lessons and impelled our Navy, for the first time since the outbreak of war, to indulge in critical self-examination.
Mitsuo Fuchida
#90. The war ... must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks ... unless you acknowledge our right to self-government. We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for Independence,and that, or extermination, we WILL have.
Jefferson Davis
#91. There is a noticeable element of the pathological in some current leftist critiques, which I tend to attribute to feelings of guilt allied to feelings of impotence. Not an attractive combination, because it results in self-hatred.
Christopher Hitchens
#92. Since war itself is the most extreme form of terrorism, a war on terrorism is profoundly self-contradictory.
Howard Zinn
#93. It was humanity's ability to heal so quickly, by means of babies, which encouraged so many people to think of explosions as show business, as highly theatrical forms of self-expression, and little more.
Kurt Vonnegut
#94. Like the bee, we distill poison from honey for our self-defense
what happens to the bee if it uses its sting is well known.
Dag Hammarskjold
#95. I'm just a kid, Chiron," I said miserably. "What good is one lousy hero against something like Kronos?"
Chiron managed a smile. '"What good is one lousy hero'? Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain said something like that to me once, just before he single-handedly changed the course of your Civil War.
Rick Riordan
#96. Lack of self-esteem is what causes wars because people who really love themselves don't go out and try to fight other people ... It's the root of all the problems.
Oprah Winfrey
#97. I read in 'Life' magazine that Asians had developed an operation to enlarge eyes, and I yearned to have this done. I wanted to dye my hair brown and to anglicize my name. Self-hate was the most terrible cost of the war years for me.
David Suzuki
#98. Before World War I, self-improvement meant being less self-involved, less vain: helping others, focusing on schoolwork, becoming better read, and cultivating empathy. Author
Peggy Orenstein
#99. There's so many bigger things in the world. The art world is such a tiny little thing compared to wars and migration crises. It's weird to be self-absorbed in it.
Jim Shaw
#100. LOGOMACHY, n. A war in which the weapons are words and the wounds punctures in the swim-bladder of self-esteem - a kind of contest in which, the vanquished being unconscious of defeat, the victor is denied the reward of success.
Ambrose Bierce
