Great War Quotes - Page 6

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

  Herbert Hoover

  Death, Peace, War

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• Only the dead have seen the end of war.

  Plato

  Death, Memorial Day, Plato

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• There were many words that you could not stand to hear and finally only the names of places had dignity. Abstract words such as glory, honor, courage, or hallow were obscene.

  Ernest Hemingway

  War, Names, Honor

  Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities Harold Bloom, Ernest Hemingway (2009). “Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms”, p.49, Infobase Publishing

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• 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.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, War, Stupid

  Bertrand Russell, Ray Perkins (Jr.) (2002). “Yours Faithfully, Bertrand Russell: A Lifelong Fight for Peace, Justice, and Truth in Letters to the Editor”, p.35, Open Court Publishing

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• Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

  John Adams

  Peace, War, History

  John Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.474

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• 

  If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

  James Madison

  Inspirational, Freedom, Fear

  "The Last Enemy" by Rebecca Sato, www.pbs.org. November 11, 2010.

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• I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, War, Hate

  Speech in Ottawa on January 10, 1946. "Eisenhower Speaks: Dwight D. Eisenhower in His Messages and Speeches". Book edited by Rudolph L. Treuenfels, 1948.

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• 'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  War, Historical, Liberty

  "Law, Legislation and Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Volume 3: "The Political Order of a Free People". Chapter 17: "A Model Constitution", 1973.

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• 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.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Military, War

  Speech to American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, D.C., 16 Apr. 1953

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• Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

  Winston Churchill

  Memorial Day, Military, War

  Speech in House of Commons, 20 Aug. 1940

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• 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.

  Aldous Huxley

  Peace, War, Men

  Aldous Huxley (2001). “Complete Essays: 1936-1938”, Ivan R Dee

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

  Benjamin Franklin

  Money, War, Battle

  Benjamin Franklin, E. Sargent (1855). “The select works of Benjamin Franklin”, p.459

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• It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

  Robert Kennedy

  Change, Hope, Courage

  Robert F. Kennedy (1998). “Make Gentle the Life of the World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy”, Harcourt

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• There never was a good war or a bad revolution.

  Edward Abbey

  Veterans Day, Peace, War

  Edward Abbey (1998). “The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel”, p.140, Macmillan

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• Our generation has had no Great Depression, no Great War. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Depression, Spiritual, War

  "Bruise Control". www.theguardian.com. May 12, 2000.

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• Warned by the disaster of the last great war, the statesmen of all nations have been taking measures to prevent the return of another such calamity.

  Frank B. Kellogg

  War, Lasts, Return

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• Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, he began at the moment that it broke out, believing that it would be a great war, and more memorable than any that had preceded it.

  Thucydides

  War, Believe, Memorable

  Thucydides, Sir Richard Winn Livingstone (1960). “The History of the Peloponnesian War”, Oxford University Press, USA

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• The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Agency, Ruthlessness

  Winston Churchill (2012). “Churchill: The Power of Words”, p.199, Da Capo Press

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• That’s kind of where all my money goes. I’m going to be a very broke girl with a really great wardrobe.

  Phoebe Tonkin

  Girl, Kind, Broke

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• Wimsey stooped for an empty sardine-tin which lay, horribly battered, at his feet, and slung it idly into the quag. It struck the surface with a noice like a wet kiss, and vanished instantly. With that instinct which prompts one, when depressed, to wallow in every circumstance of gloom, Peter leaned sadly against the hurdles and abandoned himself to a variety of shallow considerations upon (1) The vanity of human wishes; (2) Mutability; (3) First love; (4) The decay of idealism; (5) The aftermath of the Great war; (6) Birth-control; and (7) The fallacy of free-will.

  Dorothy L. Sayers

  War, Kissing, First Love

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• More than 80 per cent of the British casualties of the Great War were English. More than 80 per cent of the taxation is paid by the English taxpayers. We are entitled to mention these facts, and to draw authority and courage from them.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Facts, Taxation

  Sir Winston S. Churchill (2013). “Never Give In!: Winston Churchill's Speeches”, p.84, A&C Black

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• What you people who weren't yet born can never know is what it meant to sleep in cities under silent falls of snow when all night long the only sounds you heard were dogs that parked at trains that passed so far away they took a short cut through your dreams and no one even woke. It was the war that changed that. It was. After the Great War for Civilization - sleep was different everywhere.

  Timothy Findley

  Dream, Dog, War

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• Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  War, Fighting, Able

  A.J.P. Taylor (1996). “Origin Of The Second World War”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  Anders Petersen

  People, Tolerance, Sincerity

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• You have only to play at Little Wars three or four times to realize just what a blundering thing Great War must be. Great War is at present, I am convinced, not only the most expensive game in the universe, but it is a game out of all proportion. Not only are the masses of men and material and suffering and inconvenience too monstrously big for reason, but-the available heads we have for it, are too small. That, I think, is the most pacific realization conceivable, and Little War brings you to it as nothing else but Great War can do.

  H. G. Wells

  War, Men, Thinking

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