The Good War Quotes

#1. You say that a good cause will even sanctify war! I tell you, it is the good war that sanctifies every cause!

Friedrich Nietzsche

#2. It is the good war that hallows every cause.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#3. You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause. War and courage have accomplished more great things than love of the neighbor. Not your pity but your courage has so far saved the unfortunate.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#4. Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Winston Churchill

#5. Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.

Sun Tzu

#6. Ran "Inchon" - it is a brutal but gripping picture about the Korean War and for once we're the good guys & the Communists are the villains. The producer was Japanese or Korean which probably explains the preceding sentence.

Ronald Reagan

#7. Blood mixture and the result drop in the racial level is the sole cause of the dying out of old cultures; for men do not perish as a result of lost wars, but by the loss of that force of resistance which is continued only in pure blood. All who are not of good race in this world are chaff.

Adolf Hitler

#8. One must apply one's reason to everything here, learning to obey, to shut up, to help, to be good, to give in, and I don't know what else. I'm afraid I shall use up all my brains too quickly, and I haven't got so very many. Then I shall not have any left for when the war is over.

Anne Frank

#9. Something in me died at Peleliu. Perhaps it was the childish innocence that accepted as faith the claim that Man is basically good. Possibly I lost faith that politicians in high places, who do not have to endure war's savagery, will ever stop blundering and sending others to endure it.

Eugene B. Sledge

#10. 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

#11. War is the action of low man: Low in morality, low in humanity, and low in all the good values!

Mehmet Murat Ildan

#12. The Balance, my boy, is the war that has been waged since before time was time, the battle within ourselves to do what is good and reject what is bad. It is a delicate line we all walk, a constant struggle of push and pull.

Nikolas Lee

#13. I get why no one bothers with the usual rules," ... "I was in the war, too, you know. Nothing looks or feels the same anymore, so what's the point?" ... "Still, I miss good old-fashioned honorable people just trying to make something of life. Simply, without hurting anyone else.

Paula McLain

#14. People create their own gods so that they could compete with other people's gods. It is not the humanity that fights but human gods. God war. Good war.

Aporva Kala

#15. Try to be pleasant to one another, get plenty of fresh air, read a good book now and then, depose your government when it suspends the free press, try to use the mechanism of the state to adjudicate fairly and employ diplomatic means wherever possible to avoid armed conflict.

Jasper Fforde

#16. I am more anxious than I can express that my men should be not only good soldiers of their country, but also good soldiers of the cross.

Stonewall Jackson

#17. It is the responsibility of all of us to remind governments of their commitments to settle disputes by peaceful means and to negotiate in good faith under the UN Charter, and to denounce war agitation particularly by the media.

Alfred-Maurice De Zayas

#18. I was twenty when I discovered war and photography. I can't say that I wanted to bear witness and change the world. I had no good moral reasons: I just loved adventure, I loved the poetry of war, the poetry of chaos, and I found that there was a kind of grace in weaving between the bullets.

Luc Delahaye

#19. Our hearts are with you and we are ready to provide any assistance at any time ... This is a war between good and evil and between humanity and the bloodthirsty.

Ariel Sharon

#20. I'm in the infantry. What you just showed me, for us that's not even good pornography.

Henry V. O'Neil

#21. Because, sometimes you've got to think about more than your own safety! Sometimes you've got to think about the greater good! This is war!

J.K. Rowling

#22. Do you guys ever think about how Hitler has affected the whole world? That just one man did all this? I mean, what if he had been a good man, instead?

Elizabeth Berg

#23. If we examine the Hague Convention carefully, we see that it considers the offer of good offices a duty of every nation. In other words, such offers should be made whenever a dispute becomes critical and threatens to explode into war.

Charles Albert Gobat

#24. There are many ways of fighting. Many a man or woman has waged a good war for truth, honor, and freedom, who did not shed blood in the process. Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is the violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

Louis L'Amour

#25. I see this piece of legislation as essentially being a declaration of virtual war. It is giving the President tremendous powers to pursue war efforts against a sovereign nation ... I think it is another example of a flawed foreign policy that we have followed for a good many decades.

Ron Paul

#26. To be a good reporter, writing about war, you have to write about the people. It's not about the tanks or the RPGs or military strategy. It's always about the effect war has on civilians, on society, and how it disrupts and destroys lives.

Janine Di Giovanni

#27. Doctor. The word for healer and wise man throughout the universe. We get that word from you, you know?' River Song, A Good Man Goes to War

Cavan Scott

#28. It is the last territorial claim which I have to make in Europe, but it is a claim from which I will not recede and which, God willing, I will make good.

Adolf Hitler

#29. Nine g's is good, if the pilot can stand it. We couldn't stand it. Not in the airplanes of World War II.

Adolf Galland

#30. History was full of the bones of good men who'd followed bad orders in the hope that they could soften the blow. Oh, yes, there were worse things they could do, but most of them began right where they started following bad orders.

Terry Pratchett

#31. Well, I think everybody's a little jealous of the Vietnam Wall, even people from wars that already have good monuments. You have a monument like the Wall and nobody ever forgets your war, you can bet on that.

Bruce Jackson

#32. Two live grenades that nearly detonated each other. Wave the white flag and count your dead. The war is over. Nurse the wounded and heal your cuts. Write down the memories and tell the tales in later years when you can see the good with the bad.

Kate Monahan

#33. That would be one lousy way to end the human race, locked in a nuclear war with the Block while a Drasin fleet came down on all their heads. Not that there are many good ways to end the human race, I suppose.

Evan Currie

#34. 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

#35. Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.

Otto Von Bismarck

#36. I don't expect the U.S. and China to get into a trade war simply because I think there are good people on both sides who realize that that's not in either economy's interest.

Glenn Hubbard

#37. World War II is the greatest drama in human history, the biggest war ever and a true battle of good and evil. I imagine writers will continue to get stories from it, and readers will continue to love them, for many more years.

Ken Follett

#38. War makes death real to us, and that would have been regarded as one of its blessings by most of the great Christians of the past. They thought it good for us to be always aware of our mortality. I am inclined to think they were right.

C.S. Lewis

#39. We had the great good fortune and shortcomings of character that marked every generation that had never seen war.

Joshua Ferris

#40. The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us an answer to this question?

John Hersey

#41. Though the contradictions of war seem sudden and simultaneous, history stalks before it strikes. Something tolerated soon becomes something good.

Anne Michaels

#42. 'Foyle's War' made me realise that Churchill actually had questionable morals; his decisions meant that good people died. It must have weighed heavily on his soul, but he never let his personal demons get in the way of what was best for our country.

Honeysuckle Weeks

#43. The most part of all princes have more delight in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.

Thomas More

#44. Much of the blame is the malarkey that artists have created to glorify war, which as we all know, is nonsense, and a good deal worse than that - romantic pictures of battle, and of the dead and men in uniform and all that. And I did not want to have that story told again.

Kurt Vonnegut

#45. There is a greater war, Uhtred. Not the fight between Saxon and Dane, but between God and the devil, between good and evil! We are part of it!

Bernard Cornwell

#46. In the end, we're just showmen. But, I think that it's an important factor. Not to be anything else but clear about that - for me, creativity is an important part of our evolution. Art has probably done more good for the world than war. But they're equally powerful. They both create revolutions.

Nicolas Winding Refn

#47. A lot of movies that come from Israel are about war, but there is such good, funny, rounded writing that comes from the country that I wish more people would discover.

Odeya Rush

#48. A good Navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guaranty of peace.

Theodore Roosevelt

#49. Of course I do know it is the French who are so wicked; but there are all these people who keep coming and going - the Austrians, the Spaniards, the Russians. Pray, are the Russians good now? It would be very shocking - treason no doubt - to put the wrong people in my prayers.

Patrick O'Brian

#50. You can't equate the game we play to a war. Kellen Winslow said he's a soldier. No, he's not. This is not a war ... not a good comparison.

Ken Rosenthal

#51. There was no imminent threat. This was made up in Texas, announced in January to the Republican leadership that war was going to take place and was going to be good politically. This whole thing was a fraud.

Edward Kennedy

#52. A pen is neither good nor bad. It's what you do with it that makes it a weapon of war or a tool of peace.
Likewise, love is neither good nor bad. It's what you do with it that makes it the ultimate punishment or the greatest reward.

Lilly Mance

#53. When I was at Hartford in Connecticut, where I lived during the war, I published several pieces which were well received, not only by those of my own colour, but by a number of the white people, who thought they might do good among their servants.

Jupiter Hammon

#54. Israel is in the midst of a difficult military and diplomatic campaign against terrorists. An organisation that works to prove allegations that Israel is committing war crimes should be so good as to do so with its own resources and not with civilian national service volunteers and state funds.

Uri Orbach

#55. This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age?

Rick Santorum

#56. Our relationship with the United States is not reduced to questions of fighting terrorism and the Iraq war. German-American relations were so good for so many years because they extended deeply into the normal lives of people.

Angela Merkel

#57. I am as willing to serve now as in the beginning in any capacity and at any post where I can do good. The lower the position, the more suitable to my ability and the more agreeable to my feelings.

Robert E.Lee

#58. The Civil War defined us as what we are and it opened us to being what we became, good and bad things ... It was the crossroads of our being, and it was a hell of a crossroads.

Shelby Foote

#59. The months have been good to Tiberias Calore. A life of war suits him. He seems vibrant and alive, even after narrowly escaping death on the walls.

Victoria Aveyard

#60. The final word belongs to one of Truman's aides, George Elsey. "It's all well and good to come along later and say the bomb was a horrible thing," he commented subsequently. "The whole goddamn war was a horrible thing.

William E. Leuchtenburg

#61. How many fears came between us? Earthquakes, diseases, wars where hell rained smoldering pus from skies made of winged death. Horror tore this world asunder. While inside the bleeding smoke and beyond the shredded weeping flesh we memorized tales of infinite good. -from The History Lesson

Aberjhani

#62. Fobbit is fast, razor sharp, and seven kinds of hilarious. Thank you, Mr. Abrams, for the much needed salve
it feels good to finally laugh about Iraq. Fobbit deserves a place alongside Slaughterhouse Five and Catch-22 as one of our great comic novels about the absurdity of war.

Jonathan Evison

#63. The sinews of war are not gold, but good soldiers; for gold alone will not procure good soldiers, but good soldiers will always procure gold.

Niccolo Machiavelli

#64. You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!

Leo Tolstoy

#65. With 300 Marines, you could probably take over Iraq if you wanted to and get rid of ISIS completely. Make no mistake about it, Marines are war fighters. I mean they are really good at what they do. The only time they are not good at what they do is when someone puts the shackles on them,

Marcus Luttrell

#66. War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always.

Sophocles

#67. been rounded up during a raid.2 We were lucky: Our neighbors, who were good people, had a key to our house, and they took everything they could carry and hid it for us. After the war, we got back our photographs, a set of cutlery, a figurine, and a clock.

Marcel Prins

#68. Blank cartridges should never be used against a mob, nor should a volley be fired over the heads of the mob even if there is little danger of hurting persons in the rear. Such things will be regarded as an admission of weakness, or an attempt to bluff, and may do more harm than good.

Douglas MacArthur

#69. But there are many men-and women-who do things in a time of war that they wouldn't dream of doing in peacetime, and all for the common good.

Jacqueline Winspear

#70. General Peckem even recommends that we send our men into combat in full-dress uniform so they'll make a good impression on the enemy when they're shot down.

Joseph Heller

#71. To me, the Republican Party is the real great tragedy of the last 25 years because there are lot of good and decent people and a lot of good political points [that have] come from the Republican Party in the post-war period, but it has been hijacked by these fundamentalist wackos.

Alec Baldwin

#72. I had an experience of knowing the Polish people when I was a child, and where my father worked many Poles came to work after the war. They were good people, and this has stayed in my heart.

Pope Francis

#73. I was a callow boy, and then a man, good and bad. Now at last I'm the hero. I am the one to root for in the never-ending war story of our marriage.

Gillian Flynn

#74. Terry Farish seems to breathe the reader into the emotional spaces of war, exile, and refugee life. The Good Braider is a delicate stunning exploration of its young protagonist's life and heart.

Uma Krishnaswami

#75. But Clara's father believed that nations never see themselves clearly in the mirror, much less when war preys on their minds. He had a good understanding of history and knew that the future could be read much more clearly in the streets, factories, and barracks than in the morning press.

Carlos Ruiz Zafon

#76. Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

#77. And I'm a slow writer: five, six hundred words is a good day. That's the reason it took me 20 years to write those million and a half words of the Civil War.

Shelby Foote

#78. The first quality of a soldier is constancy in enduring fatigue and hardship. Courage is only the second. Poverty privation and want are the school of the good soldier.

Napoleon Bonaparte

#79. The Americans won't win. They're not fighting for their homeland. They just want to be good. In order to be good, they just have to fight awhile and then leave.

Denis Johnson

#80. If feels good to live after death. It feels good to not be dead. It feels so good to find myself alive and flying home. The music plays in my ears and I float further and further away from war. Fucking Baghdad.

Michael Hastings

#81. Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object

Abraham Lincoln

#82. Terrorism and war have something in common. They both involve the killing of innocent people to achieve what the killers believe is a good end.

Howard Zinn

#83. Yes, our old age is not going to be sunny orchard drowse. By shutting down the fire curtain, though, I find I can live in the moment; which is good; why yield a moment to regret or envy or worry? Why indeed? (24 December 1940)

Virginia Woolf

#84. Since there will be no one left to talk peace after the next war, it makes good sense to break with tradition and hold the peace conference first.

William Glasser

#85. Females create life, males end it. War, crime, violence, are primarily male franchises. Man shit. It's nature's supreme joke.
Deep in the womb, men start out as the good thing, and wind up as the crappy thing. Not all men. Just enough. Just enough to fuck things up.

George Carlin

#86. A battle that you win cancels any other bad action of yours. In the same way, by losing one, all the good things worked by you before become vain.

Niccolo Machiavelli

#87. [O]ur War of the Revolution was, in good measure, fought as a protest against standing armies.

Earl Warren

#88. The best newspapermen I know are those most thrilled by the daily pump of city room excitements; they long fondly for a good murder; they pray that assassinations, wars, catastrophes break on their editions.

Pete Hamill

#89. The Cold War was a boring thing. Nobody gets better for it. Tremendous money is wasted. Our lives get more difficult. We look at each other as enemies. What's good in that? In any case, I will do anything in my power in order to stop another Cold War, with the U.S. or any other country in the world.

Dmitry Medvedev

#90. They could take the money from building enough nukes to kill all the Russians in the world and give it to libraries. What good does an independent nuclear deterrent do Britain, compared to the good of libraries?

Jo Walton

#91. And I couldn't help wondering where the hell the fatherland was, what exactly were we fighting for? Did I find out? Ah, that's a good point. It may sound strange, but from talking to the other militiamen I realised it was our childhood memories we were fighting for.

Andres Neuman

#92. What he called his own personal night was about the feeling of being nothing, of having no worth, of having spent himself in a war nobody cared about, and having given up everything that was important and good.

Stephen Hunter

#93. She died in my arms saying, "I don't want to die." That is what death is like. It doesn't matter what uniforms the soldiers are wearing. It doesn't matter how good the weapons are. I thought if everyone could see what I saw, we could never have war anymore.

Jonathan Safran Foer

#94. It was not,' said Jutta, reaching the limits of her French, 'very easy to be good then.

Anthony Doerr

#95. This is a war between good and evil. And we have made it clear to the world that we will stand strong on the side of good, and we expect other nations to join us. This is not a war between our world and their world. It is a war to save the world.

George W. Bush

#96. The priest was good but dull. The officers were not good but dull. The King was good but dull. The wine was bad but not dull.

Ernest Hemingway,

#97. Demons run when a good man goes to war
Night will fall and drown the sun
When a good man goes to war
Friendship dies and true love lies
Night will fall and the dark will rise
When a good man goes to war
Demons run, but count the cost
The battle's won, but the child is lost

Steven Moffat

#98. 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

#99. I firmly believe that in this fiery ordeal, in this suffering, misery, and woe, the South is but undergoing a purification by fire and steel that will, in good time, and by God's decree, work out her own independence.

Belle Boyd

#100. Except for the people who were there that one day they discovered the polio vaccine, being part of history is rarely a good idea. History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

Sarah Vowell