Top 100 War Art Quotes
#1. Next to war, art is the greatest way to immortalize a reputation.
Roman Genn
#2. Historically, art has always had a market. When one medieval fiefdom defeated another they would drag back its jewels, gold, tapestries and art objects as the spoils of war. Art equaled power, riches and culture.
Arne Glimcher
#3. I didn't like anti-Vietnam War art. I didn't like feminist art. I thought it was heavy-handed and stupid - as art.
Robert Barry
#4. Art transcends war. Art is the language of God and war is the barking of men. Beethoven is bigger than war.
Fannie Hurst
#5. Hence the saying: The enlightened ruler lays his plans well ahead; the good general cultivates his resources.
Sun Tzu
#6. Without doubt, ferocious and disordered men are much weaker than timid and ordered ones. For order chases fear from men and disorder lessens ferocity.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#7. Why,' said he, 'does not the emperor, who has devised so many clever and efficient modes of improving the art of war, organize a regiment of lawyers, judges and legal practitioners, sending them in the hottest fire the enemy could maintain, and using them to save better men?
Alexandre Dumas
#8. This is the body's nurse; but since man's wit
Found the art of cookery, to delight his sense,
More bodies are consumed and kill'd with it
Than with the sword, famine, or pestilence.
John Davies Of Hereford
#9. War is the art of killing each other brutally, diplomacy is the art of killing each other softly.
Bangambiki Habyarimana
#10. 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
#11. When the soldiers stand leaning on their spears, they are faint from want of food.
Sun Tzu
#12. Thus the skilful general conducts his army just as though he were leading a single man, willy-nilly, by the hand.
Sun Tzu
#13. Bring war material with you from home, but forage on the enemy ... use the conquered foe to augment one's own strength.
Sun Tzu
#14. 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
#15. It is the rule in war, if ten times the enemy's strength, surround them; if five times, attack them; if double, be able to divide them; if equal, engage them; if fewer, be able to evade them; if weaker, be able to avoid them.
Sun Tzu
#17. Like all art forms, film is a media as powerful as weapons of mass destruction; the only difference is that war destroys and film inspires.
Nicolas Winding Refn
#18. 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
#19. Wheels of justice grind slow but grind fine
Sun Tzu
#20. Militarism has been by far the commonest cause of the breakdown of civilizations. The single art of war makes progress at the expense of all the arts of peace.
Arnold Joseph Toynbee
#21. Abstract Expressionism - the first American movement to have a worldwide influence - was remarkably short-lived: It heated up after World War II and was all but done for by 1960 (although visit any art school today and you'll find a would-be Willem de Kooning).
Jerry Saltz
#22. And therefore those skilled in war bring the enemy to the field of battle and are not brought there by him.
Sun Tzu
#23. In war, numbers alone confer no advantage. Do not advance relying on sheer military power.
Sun Tzu
#24. I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war.
Abraham Lincoln
#25. The value of time, that is of being a little ahead of your opponent, often provides greater advantage than superior numbers or greater resources.
Sun Tzu
#26. Any army which does not train to use all the weapons, all the means and methods of warfare that the enemy possesses, or may possess, is behaving in an unwise or even criminal manner. This applies to politics even more than it does to the art of war.
Vladimir Lenin
#27. In the Soviets' view, chess was not merely an art or a science or even a sport; it was what it had been invented to simulate: war.
Pal Benko
#28. When two sides who consider each other enemies converge in armed struggle, for the moment they are no longer enemies. They are fellow human beings who face the same two choices that their ancestors did for centuries before them: to destroy each other or to prosper together.
Thomas Huynh
#29. When Lionel Giles began his translation of Sun Tzu's ART OF WAR, the work was virtually unknown in Europe. Its introduction to Europe began in 1782 when a French Jesuit Father living in China, Joseph Amiot, acquired a copy of it, and translated
Sun Tzu
#30. And the prince who has relied solely on their words, without making other preparations, is ruined, for the friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is merited but is not secured, and at times is not to be had.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#31. That's creativity in a nutshell. A messy tug-of-war with imagination to erase that feeling that nothing really matters anyway.
Zoe Whittall
#32. The triumph of the industrial arts will advance the cause of civilization more rapidly than its warmest advocates could have hoped, and contribute to the permanent prosperity and strength of the country far more than the most splendid victories of successful war.
Charles Babbage
#33. Attack where he is unprepared; sally forth when he does not expect you.
Sun Tzu
#34. Rather than comparing [war] to art we could more accurately compare it to commerce, which is also a conflict of human interests and activities; and it is still closer to politics, which in turn may be considered as a kind of commerce on a larger scale.
Carl Von Clausewitz
#35. Captive Greece took captive her savage conquerer and brought the arts to rustic Latium
Horace
#36. When men receive favours from someone they expected to do them ill, they are under a greater obligation to their benefactor ...
Niccolo Machiavelli
#37. Every nation has its prestigious military academies - or so few of them - that reach not only the virtues of peace but also the art of attaining it? I mean attaining and protecting it by means other than weapons, the tools of war. Why are we surprised whenever war recedes and yields to peace?
Elie Wiesel
#38. If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground. All we need to do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.
Sun Tzu
#39. Diplomacy is a disguised war, in which states seek to gain by barter and intrigue, by the cleverness of arts, the objectives which they would have to gain more clumsily by means of war.
Randolph Bourne
#40. When a general, unable to estimate the enemy's strength, allows an inferior force to engage a larger one, or hurls a weak detachment against a powerful one, and neglects to place picked soldiers in the front rank, the result must be rout.
Sun Tzu
#41. How could one of the most important and unbelievable moments in art history - not to mention the history of a world war - simply become a forgotten footnote? But that's exactly what happened.
Robert M. Edsel
#42. My mother supported my every artistic ambition. I don't wonder why. I'm beyond grateful. But when I think of my grandparents barely surviving the war, I feel so pampered. What an indulgence to be an artist. So this is it, this is all I can offer, to the living and to the dead.
Leela Corman
#43. 12
Lose Battles, But Win The War: Grand Strategy
Grand strategy is the art of looking beyond the present battle and calculating ahead. Focus on your ultimate goal and plot to reach it.
Robert Greene
#44. Throw your soldiers into positions whence there is no escape, and they will prefer death to flight. If they will face death, there is nothing they may not achieve.
Sun Tzu
#45. War stories deal in death. War illuminates love, while love is the greatest expression of hope, without which any story rings untrue to life. And to deny hope in a story about such darkness is to create false art.
Richard Flanagan
#46. And above all you ought to guard against leading an army to fight which is afraid or which is not confident of victory. For the greatest sign of an impending loss is when one does not believe one can win.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#47. This lonely, uncompromising, obsessive tug-of-war with presumed reality, this is what art is all about.
Tom Robbins
#48. When the enemy is at ease, be able to weary him; when well fed, to starve him; when at rest, to make him move. Appear at places to which he must hasten; move swiftly where he does not expect you.
Sun Tzu
#49. Art has no place in modern life. It will continue to exist as long as there is a mania for the romantic and so long as there are people who love beautiful lies and deception ... Every modern cultured man must wage war against art, as against opium ... Photograph and be photographed.
Alexander Rodchenko
#50. Know the enemy, know yourself; your victory will never be endangered. Know the ground, know the weather; your victory will then be total.
Sun Tzu
#51. The art of war, then, is governed by five constant factors, to be taken into account in one's deliberations, when seeking to determine the conditions obtaining in the field.
Sun Tzu
#52. The general that hearkens to my counsel and acts upon it, will conquer: let such a one be retained in command! The general that hearkens not to my counsel nor acts upon it, will suffer defeat: - let such a one be dismissed!
Sun Tzu
#53. In a similar way, The Art of War pinpoints anger and greed as fundamental causes of defeat.
Sun Tzu
#54. No one ever mentioned it, but thousands of men welcomed World War II as a way to escape their humdrum lives rather than a chance to fight for God and country.
Art Buchwald
#55. 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
#56. Walking away ends a battle in the heart of one,
and starts a war in the soul of another.
Jenim Dibie
#58. Now a soldier's spirit is keenest in the morning; by noonday it has begun to flag; and in the evening, his mind is only on returning to camp.
Sun Tzu
#59. Nagasaki was an embarrassment to the art of war
Don DeLillo
#60. Now an army is exposed to six several calamities, not arising from natural causes, 1 but from faults for which the general is responsible. These are: (1) Flight; (2) insubordination; (3) collapse; (4) ruin; (5) disorganisation; (6) rout.
Sun Tzu
#61. Life is seen as an ongoing war between art and philistinism - and although the philistines may win some of the battles, it is literature that always wins the war.
Helon Habila
#63. With regard to precipitous heights, if you are beforehand with your adversary, you should occupy the raised and sunny spots, and there wait for him to come up.
Sun Tzu
#64. You must never believe that the enemy does not know how to conduct his own affairs. Indeed, if you want to be deceived less and want to bear less danger, the more the enemy is weak or the less the enemy is cautious, so much more must you esteem him.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#65. I don't read a lot of inspirational books for life. But for writing, I think the two best books are The War of Art and William Zinsser's On Writing Well. I read a lot of classics;
Donald Miller
#66. Art is the war against what we do not choose to feel. It's the battle of color, words, sound, and shape, and it rages for or against love.
Tarryn Fisher
#67. If the enemy leaves a door open, you must rush in.
Sun Tzu
#68. Leaders can change the tenor of the workplace and create harmony in motion toward a favorable result. So every time you say to your team, "Let's rock and roll," make sure you have already set up the stage to where they can actually perform like rock stars.
Thomas Huynh
#69. 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
#70. It's great to listen to men talk about sports or fights or war or even hunting sometimes, but the presence of the other, the presence of art and beauty, which crude masculinity seems to discount, is essential. Real civilization and real manhood seem to me to include those.
James Salter
#71. The supreme excellence is not to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles. The supreme excellence is to subdue the armies of your enemies without having to fight them.
Sun Tzu
#73. When the enemy is relaxed, make them toil. When full, starve them. When settled, make them move.
Sun Tzu
#74. If newspapers were written by people whose sole object in writing was to tell the truth about politics and the truth about art we should not believe in war, and we should believe in art.
Virginia Woolf
#75. Invincibility depends on one's self; the enemy's vulnerability on him.
Sun Tzu
#76. The art of war," I told him, "is to make the enemy do your bidding.
Bernard Cornwell
#77. Sharing our depressions felt like having survived a war. The experience bonds you to the other person for life.
Art Buchwald
#78. They tell us that the rules of power and the rules of war are the same, the art is to deceive; and you will deceive, and be deceived in your turn, whether you are an ambassador or a suitor.
Hilary Mantel
#79. War is a matter of vital importance to the state; the province of life or death; the road to survival or ruin. It is mandatory that it be thoroughly studied.
Sun Tzu
#80. Ignorant of the arts of luxury, the primitive Romans had improved the science of government and war.
Edward Gibbon
#81. In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable.
Robert Hughes
#82. The art of war is the art of deception.
Sun Tzu
#83. Princes should delegate to others the enactment of unpopular measures and keep in their own hands the means of winning favours.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#84. Baseball is more like a novel than a war. It is like an ongoing, hundred-year work of art, peopled with thousands of characters, full of improbable events, anecdotes, folklore and numbers.
Luke Salisbury
#85. It is good to know one's enemy.
It is better to know one's self.
Max Hawthorne
#86. All efforts to make politics aesthetic culminate in one thing, war.
Walter Benjamin
#87. Strategy is the most important department of the art of war, and strategical skill is the highest and rarest function of military genius.
George Stillman Hillard
#88. The ability to get to the verge without getting into the war is the necessary art. If you try to run away from it, if you are scared to go to the brink, you are lost.
John Foster Dulles
#89. Victory is the main object in war.
Sun Tzu
#90. Do not engage an enemy more powerful than you. And if it is unavoidable and you do have to engage, then make sure you engage it on your terms, not on your enemy's terms.
Sun Tzu
#91. 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
#93. In warfare, there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent will succeed and win.
Sun Tzu
#94. Fighting with a large army under your command is nowise different from fighting with a small one: it is merely a question of instituting signs and signals.
Sun Tzu
#95. The sinews of art and literature, like those of war, are money.
Samuel Butler
#96. I have much to teach you. Come and learn the art of war from the one who invented it. (Takeshi)
Sherrilyn Kenyon
#97. The Art of War is self-explanatory
Sun Tzu
#98. What do you think an artist is? ... he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war.
Pablo Picasso
#99. To know in war how to recognize an opportunity and seize it is better than anything else.
Niccolo Machiavelli
#100. When the position is such that neither side will gain by making the first move, it is called temporising ground.
Sun Tzu
