Top 100 War Nation Quotes
#1. It is time we accept there's no Cronkite moment for Afghanistan. Perhaps it's time we value the hearts and minds of our own over distant Afghan tribes.
Tiffany Madison
#2. For as long as this nation has known war, we have embraced the heroes it has produced. Americans have rightfully noted the honor and nobility of courage under hostile fire and thanked those who perished in their defense.
James T. Walsh
#3. He who is the author of a war lets loose the whole contagion of hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death.
Thomas Paine
#4. The nation that would to-day disarm its soldiers and turn its people to the paths of peace would accomplish more to its building up than by all the war taxes wrong from its hostile and
unwilling serfs
Clarence Darrow
#5. We are a nation at war. This is also a time for hard choices. It's about ensuring that we are able to prevail in the conflicts in which we are now engaged. But it's also about being able to be strong and disciplined in applying our nation's limited resources to defending America.
Leon Panetta
#6. Much has changed since the end of the Cold War that augurs well for the survival of our nation.
Adam Schiff
#7. Japan knows the horror of war and has suffered as no other nation under the cloud of nuclear disaster. Certainly Japan can stand strong for a world of peace.
Martin Luther King Jr. Papers Project
#8. There is no bigger judgment for a president of the United States than how you take a nation to war.
John F. Kerry
#9. The United Nations was founded 70 years ago, at the end of World War II. Since that time, Japan has steadfastly walked the path of peace and rebuilt a nation. And, since the mid-1950s onward, we have actively worked to share our experience of development with other nations, especially in Asia.
Shinzo Abe
#10. The punishment of death is the war of a nation against a citizen whose destruction it judges to be necessary or useful.
Cesare Beccaria
#11. The year of my birth, 1940, was the fulcrum of America in the twentieth century, when the nation was balanced precariously between the darkness of the Great Depression on one side and the storms of war in Europe and the Pacific on the other.
Tom Brokaw
#12. What happened to our nation on a September day set in motion the first great struggle of a new century. The enemies who struck us are determined and they are resourceful. They will not be stopped by a sense of decency or a hint of conscience
but they will be stopped.
George W. Bush
#13. After the war, Prohibition was passed, and with liquor no longer legally available the nation plunged headlong into the Great Depression.
Dave Barry
#14. This year will go down in history. For the first time, a civilized nation has full gun registration. Our streets will be safer, our police more efficient, and the world will follow our lead into the future!
Adolf Hitler
#15. This time we'll be fighting for the nation. The company commander says that it's better to be the ghost of a fallen soldier than a nationless slave. For the sake of our fellow countrymen, our families and our children, we have to resist to the very end ... ("Vague Expectations")
Xiao Hong
#16. When one nation is at war with another nation, the political machine does everything it can to vilify the people of the other nation, so it makes it easier to kill them. Which is understandable and it's happened this way throughout history.
Alexander Siddig
#17. I can recall no parallel in history where a great nation recently at war has so distinguished its former enemy commander.
Douglas MacArthur
#18. The importance to the nation of a generously adequate food supply for the coming year cannot be overemphasized, in view of the economic problems which may arise as a result of the entrance of the United States into the war.
David F. Houston
#19. The more prosperous and settled a nation, the more readily it tends to think of war as a regrettable accident; to nations less fortunate the chance of war presents itself as a possible bountiful friend.
Lewis H. Lapham
#20. Detainee policy in this war is hard, it's complicated, but we must get it right. We would be better off as a nation if we could close Gitmo safely and start a new prison that he could use that the world would see as a better way to doing business.
Lindsey Graham
#21. If Germany won it would change the course of our civilization and make the United States a military nation [and] it would check his policy for a better international ethical code
Woodrow Wilson
#22. Causes of Civil War are also, that the Wealth of the Nation is in too few mens hands, and that no certain means are provided to keep all men from a necessity either to beg, or steal, or be Souldiers.
William Petty
#23. The blood of a nation ought never to be shed except for its own preservation in the utmost extremity.
Francois Fenelon
#24. A love for tradition has never weakened a nation, indeed it has strengthened nations in their hour of peril.
Winston S. Churchill
#25. When foreigners come into a nation, the best way is to make them no longer foreign. That is to say, let us marry our young together and let there be children. War is costly, love is cheap.
Pearl S. Buck
#26. We have carried out the attempted premeditated murder of an entire nation. We were caught in that criminal act and have been obstructed. Now we have to suffer the punishment ... In the Balkan Wars, Serbia not only doubled its territory, but also its external enemies.
Dimitrije Tucovic
#27. I see no reason to use offensive tools unless you're defending the country or in a state of war, or you want to achieve some really important thing for the good of the nation and others.
Keith B. Alexander
#28. How could a readiness for war in time of peace be safely prohibited, unless we could prohibit, in like manner, the preparations and establishments of every hostile nation?
James Madison
#29. Our decision about energy will test the character of the American people and the ability of the President and the Congress to govern this Nation. This difficult effort will be the moral equivalent of war, except that we will be uniting our efforts to build and not to destroy.
Jimmy Carter
#30. I am still profoundly troubled by the war in Nicaragua. The United States launched a covert war against another nation in violation of international law, a war that was wrong and immoral.
Bianca Jagger
#31. On faith's battered back calm eyes etch prayers that cool a nation's hot rage.
Aberjhani
#32. ISIL struck France because it is 'free' and 'the nation of human rights'. This is not a war of civilisation, as these assassins don't have any. This is a war against the jihadist menace that threatens not just France.
Francois Hollande
#33. Let the world see that this nation can bear prosperity; and that her honest virtue in time of peace is equal to her bravest valor in time of war.
Thomas Paine
#34. The disasters of the world are due to its inhabitants not being able to grow old simultaneously. There is always a raw and intolerant nation eager to destroy the tolerant and mellow.
Cyril Connolly
#35. Again and again, Americans have voted for a president to keep them out of a war, only to see the "peace" candidate elected who then brings the nation into war.
Howard Zinn
#36. As a nation we have, over the past seven years, been rebuilding our intelligence with powerful capabilities that many thought we would no longer need after the Cold War. We have been rebuilding our clandestine service, our satellite and other technical collection, our analytical depth and expertise.
George Tenet
#37. We are not isolationists except in so far as we seek to isolate ourselves completely from war. Yet we must remember that so long as war exists on earth there will be some danger that even the Nation which most ardently desires peace may be drawn into war.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
#38. If the tears I've shed for my fallen comrades and this nation were blood I'd be dead ...
Stanley Victor Paskavich
Disabled Gulf War Veteran
Stanley Victor Paskavich
#39. This nation has always struggled with how it was going to deal with poor people and people of color. Every few years you will see some great change in the way that they approach this. We've had the war on poverty that never really got into waging a real war on poverty.
Maxine Waters
#40. In Finland, we learned quite a lot from our own civil war. The wounds were visible when I was a boy, but my generation went into the Second World War and it united the Finnish nation, so I do not see any more wounds.
Harri Holkeri
#41. The certain way to victory ... lies in making everything on Imperial soil contribute to the war effort ... combining the total material and spiritual strength of the nation ...
Yoshijiro Umezu
#42. The Civil War was the climax of a tragedy that was preordained from the time of the Revolution. Only with the elimination of slavery could this nation that Jefferson had called "the world's best hope" for democracy even begin to fulfill its great promise.
Gordon S. Wood
#43. But through world wars and a Great Depression, through painful social upheaval and a Cold War, and now through the attacks of September 11, 2001, our Nation has indeed survived.
Nick Rahall
#44. A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens.
Sandra Day O'Connor
#45. The sure, quick, and lasting way to make people into a nation: war. His
Ursula K. Le Guin
#46. A nation's strength is found not in the number of its laws but in the character of its people.
James Montgomery Boice
#47. The powers-that-be understand that to create the appropriate atmosphere for war, it's necessary to create within the general populace a hatred, fear or mistrust of others regardless of whether those others belong to a certain group of people or to a religion or a nation.
James Morcan
#48. The Marine Corps has to ask itself, 'What does our nation need from its premier crisis response force?' We are America's shock troops in war and peace. I know it sounds corny, but it's not.
James F. Amos
#50. The War has been waged with success, although there have been in some instances errors and misfortunes. But the heart of the nation is sounder and its hopes brighter.
Gideon Welles
#51. Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam? Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud.
Pat Buchanan
#52. I wish to see, in process of disappearing, that only thing which ever could bring this nation to civil war.
Abraham Lincoln
#53. Food is about agriculture, about ecology, about man's relationship with nature, about the climate, about nation-building, cultural struggles, friends and enemies, alliances, wars, religion. It is about memory and tradition and, at times, even about sex.
Mark Kurlansky
#54. 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
#55. War is America's central liturgical act necessary to renew our sense that we are a nation unlike other nations.
Stanley Hauerwas
#56. 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
#57. The nation's first experiment with the income tax was tried at this time; another violation of the Constitution.
G. Edward Griffin
#58. All war is murder, robbery, trickery, and no nation ever escaped losses of men, prosperity and virility. War knows no victor.
David Starr Jordan
#59. 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
#60. The United States established itself as a trustworthy new nation in its first two decades after the Revolutionary War by paying its debts, even when many in the country believed it had no obligation to do so. Alexander Hamilton, the founder of this newspaper, insisted on it.
John Podhoretz
#61. But all history has taught us the grim lesson that no nation has ever been successful in avoiding the terrors of war by refusing to defend its rights - by attempting to placate aggression.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#62. With a nation at war against terrorism and our men and women on the front line defending our homeland from abroad, resources need to be prioritized and allocated properly.
Jeff Miller
#63. I've been a military lawyer for 33 years. A member of al Qaeda or their affiliate group can be detained under a law of war as long as their threat to our nation without a trial.
Lindsey Graham
#64. We talk about God as though he was like a somebody. We ask him to bless our nation, or save our Queen, or give us a fine day for the picnic. And we actually expect him to be on our side in an election or war even though our opponents are also God's children.
Karen Armstrong
#65. When I was a young man, I was poor. In a war with other nations, I was in eighty-seven fights. There I received my name and was made Chief of my nation. But now I am old and am for peace.
Red Cloud
#66. Starting and feeding into the cultural war is absolutely unequivocally wrong for us as a nation and bad for the conservative movement.
Tim Scott
#67. American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation.
Camille Paglia
#68. 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
#69. There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.
Sun Tzu
#70. A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Simone Weil
#71. This nation should be less worried about putting the Vietnam syndrome behind us than restarting the World War II victory syndrome that resulted in the Vietnam syndrome in the first place.
Karl Marlantes
#72. 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
#73. In this distribution of powers the wisdom of our constitution is manifested. It is the province and duty of the Executive to preserve to the Nation the blessings of peace. The Legislature alone can interrupt those blessings, by placing the Nation in a state of War.
Alexander Hamilton
#74. In time it will become clear to everyone that support for the policies of pre-emptive war and interventionist nation-building will have much greater significance than the removal of Saddam Hussein itself.
Ron Paul
#75. There is a widespread understanding among the people of this nation, and probably among the people of the world, that there is no safety except through the prevention of war.
Eleanor Roosevelt
#76. Every nation has its war party. It is not the party of democracy. It is the party of autocracy. It seeks to dominate absolutely.
Robert M. La Follette, Sr.
#77. A Failure in this Duty did once involve our Nation in all the Horrors of Rebellion and Civil War.
Charles Inglis
#78. All the aftermath that so frequently follows in the wake of war still confront the nation, and we now, as ever before, must hold fast to the ancient landmarks and see to it that all of these plagues that threaten so mightily shall be rendered harmless.
Alexander Henry
#79. We've suffered a war, and one thing we know: Whenever our nation's faced war, whether it was in the 1980s when we were winning the Cold War or in the 1940s during World War II, the responsible thing to do has been to borrow money to win the war.
Ken Mehlman
#80. Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.
Abraham Flexner
#81. Pearl Harbor caused our Nation to wholeheartedly commit to winning World War II, changing the course of our Nation's history and the world's future.
Joe Baca
#82. If you have a nation of men who have risen to that height of moral cultivation that they will not declare war or carry arms, for they have not so much madness left in their brains, you have a nation of lovers, of benefactors, of true, great, and able men.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
#83. It's critical how we want to use these spy programs, these electronic capabilities, where we want to draw the line, and who should approve these programs, these decisions, and at what level, for engaging in operations that could lead us as a nation into a war.
Edward Snowden
#84. We shall solve this problem, and afterwards Warsaw as the Capital and the pool of intelligentsia of that nation will be destroyed.
Heinrich Himmler
#85. When a nation becomes obsessed with the guns of war, it loses its social perspective ... There is something about a war like this that makes people insensitive. It dulls the conscience. It strengthens the forces of reaction, and it brings into being bitterness and hatred and violence.
Martin Luther King Jr.
#86. After a big war a nation doesn't want another for a generation or more.
Edward Grey
#87. From the point of the view of the nation's power, it was obvious that while we were fighting the Sino-Japanese war, every effort was to be made to avoid adding to our enemies and opening additional fronts.
Hideki Tojo
#88. The only time in the history of the world that we have had any extended periods of peace is when there has been a balance of power. It is when one nation becomes infinitely more powerful in relation to its potential competitors that the danger of war arises.
Richard M. Nixon
#89. Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage.
Rebecca Harding Davis
#90. Israel is now sustaining a war for its own existence. A nation defending its citizens against terrorist bombings and a military and diplomatic onslaught by an array of Arab foes is practicing survival, not genocide.
Jack Schwartz
#91. There are a growing number of conservatives and Republicans who, while they support the president and support the war in Iraq, wonder how many of these nation-building wars we're going to engage in and what the parameters of that are.
Lamar Alexander
#92. Glory to God in the highest, Ohio has saved the Nation.
Abraham Lincoln
#93. A war for a great principle ennobles a nation.
Albert Pike
#94. Historically, alliances had been formed to augment a nation's strength in case of war; as World War I approached, the primary motive for war was to strengthen the alliances.
Henry Kissinger
#95. If we don't stop extending our troops all around the world in nation-building missions, we're going to have a serious problem coming down the road.
George W. Bush
#96. The German people are not a warlike nation. It is a soldierly one, which means it does not want a war, but does not fear it. It loves peace but also loves its honor and freedom
Adolf Hitler
#97. Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation - none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy.
Leonard Cohen
#98. No one is going to question my commitment to the defence of our nation. I don't know what it is these Republicans, who didn't serve in any war, have against those of us who are Democrats who did.
John F. Kerry
#100. History is not always pessimistic for if World War II Europe has taught us anything it is that the rebuilding of cities is possible and the mending of a nation's spirit can be achieved.
Aysha Taryam
