Browsing Topic Best Great War Quotes

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it.

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations, that every war must appear to be a war of defence against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate. Guilt and guilelessness must be assessed geographically and all the guilt must be on the other side of the frontier.

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.

The next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force…Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

This is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation and we live in it.

The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home.

Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.

Great wars can only be fought by great powers.

Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country.

This war is really the greatest insanity in which white races have ever been engaged.

No future historian of the United States will be able to use quotations from her twentieth-century poets in support of an imperial policy of conquest and slaughter.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.

War does not determine who is right – only who is left.

The people at the Café Lehmitz had a presence and a sincerity that I myself lacked. It was okay to be desperate, to be tender, to sit all alone or share the company of others. There was a great warmth and tolerance in this destitute setting.

And all this madness, all this rage, all this flaming death of our civilization and our hopes, has been brought about because a set of official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart, have chosen that it should occur rather than that any one of them should suffer some infinitesimal rebuff to his country`s pride.

How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business.

All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.

Do not ever say that the desire to ‘do good’ by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. In my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

The Great War proved how confused the world is. Depression is proving it again.

It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

There is no field of activity for great men without the coming of great wars, great struggles and great revolutions.

It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.

Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.