Second World War Quotes - Page 2

• Before the Second World War I believed in the perfectibility of social man; that a correct structure of society would produce goodwill; and that therefore you could remove all social ills by a reorganisation of society. .... but after the war I did not because I was unable to. I had discovered what one man could do to another... I must say that anyone who moved through those years without understanding that man produces evil as a bee produces honey, must have been blind or wrong in the head...

  William Golding

  War, Men, Years

  "The Hot Gates". Book by William Golding, 1965.

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• I think that perhaps the classic propagandists of the - in the Second World War was Winston Churchill. He was extremely skilled and adept at it.

  Alexander Haig

  War, Thinking, World

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• What we want to do is reform the welfare system in the way that Tony Blair talked about 13 years ago but never achieved - a system that was created for the days after the Second World War. That prize is now I think achievable.

  Iain Duncan Smith

  War, Thinking, Years

  "Work or lose your benefits: Iain Duncan Smith heralds biggest shake-up of welfare state since the war". Interview with James Chapman, www.dailymail.co.uk. May 28, 2010.

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• Under the ominous shadow which the second World War and its attendant circumstances have cast on the world, peace has become as essential to civilized existence as the air we breathe is to life itself.

  Cordell Hull

  War, Air, Shadow

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• Vietnam was the first time that Americans of different races had to depend on each other. In the Second World War, they were segregated; it was in Vietnam that American integration happened in the military - and it wasn't easy.

  Karl Marlantes

  Military, War, Race

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• Is it not tragic, for example, that while in the last World War almost everyone believed it was the war to end all wars and wanted to make it so, now in this Second World War almost no writer that I have read dares even suggest that this is the war to end all wars, or act on that belief? We have lost the courage to hope.

  Lin Yutang

  War, Example, World

  Lin Yutang, (2013). “Between Tears and Laughter”, p.10, Read Books Ltd

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• The achievements of Labour in the years after the Second World War should never be underestimated, but they are now history.

  Bob Crow

  War, Years, Achievement

  "Durham Miners' Gala: Bob Crow dismisses Labour as "history" in explosive speech" by Karen Rockett, www.mirror.co.uk. July 13, 2013.

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• Even more ominous ... is the fact that since the Second World War a new kind of intellectual has emerged in large numbers. ... he is only minimally interested in the proper intellectual significance of images and objects. Such people are not really intellectuals, but visuals ... A visual is more interested in style than in content ... A visual does not feel a rioting crowd being machine-gunned by the police, he simply sees a brilliant news photograph.

  John Fowles

  War, Numbers, People

  "The Aristos: A Self-Portrait in Ideas". Book by John Fowles, 1964.

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• In the period after the Second World War, there were still leaders in Europe who represented weak countries, but possessed a sense of global foreign policy. Nowadays, on the other hand, there are politicians who represent pretty powerful countries, but whose citizens are not prepared to sacrifice themselves for the state.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Country, Powerful, War

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• For all the chatter that Britain has moved beyond class, recent studies have found that it determines the life chances of British people more today than at any point since the Second World War... A child born into a rich family in Britain will almost certainly live and die rich, while a child born into a poor family will almost certainly live and die poor.

  Johann Hari

  Children, War, Class

  "Britain - a caste society?". JohannHari.com, January 29, 2006.

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• I think I governed effectively. I don't have any doubts about that. I had the benefit, when I was in office, of having an excellent relationship with the Republican Party. We had superb bipartisan support and we had the highest batting average of any president since the Second World War, except Lyndon Johnson. He had a little better average than I did.

  Jimmy Carter

  War, Party, Thinking

  "39th U.S. President President Jimmy Carter". "The Tavis Smiley show" with Tavis Smiley, www.pbs.org. October 25, 2010.

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• When the Second World War finished, I was 23 and already I had seen enough horror to last me a lifetime. I'd seen dreadful, dreadful things, without saying a word. Seeing horror depicted on film doesn't affect me much.

  Christopher Lee

  Inspirational, War, World

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• So many of the new nations which were established as democracies after the second world war, during the decolonizing process, have now changed their system to state-socialism. Small elites run them, and they aren't sharing societies. They aren't even socialist. The power of the state has been merged with business property and you have the greatest concentration of power that's possible.

  Daniel Patrick Moynihan

  Running, War, Democracy

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• My books are a subject of much discussion. They pour from shelves onto tables, chairs and the floor, and Chaz observes that I haven't read many of them and I never will. You just never know. One day I may - need is the word I use - to read Finnegans Wake, the Icelandic sagas, Churchill's history of the Second World War, the complete Tintin in French, 47 novels by Simenon, and By Love Possessed.

  Roger Ebert

  War, Book, One Day

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• When you write a two thousand page history of the Second World War, the deportations and the concentration camps will take up five pages, and the gas chambers perhaps 20 lines.

  Jean-Marie Le Pen

  War, Writing, Two

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• I was born in the middle of the Second World War when the United States dropped their atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when millions of people were dying in concentration camps, when half the planet were colonies that belonged to empires. The word feminism didn't exist. And in my lifetime I have seen all these things improved, changed. We are more connected, more informed. We can fight against stuff together in ways we couldn't before.

  Isabel Allende

  War, Fighting, Hiroshima And Nagasaki

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• I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself. When Anne Sexton admonished me, "We are all writing God's poem," I took it to mean there should be no competition between writers because we are all involved in a common project, a common prayer. But to Gore's and Norman's generation, particularly those male writers who served in the second world war, the prizefighter paradigm remains.

  Erica Jong

  Prayer, War, Hate

  "Into the Lion's Den". www.theguardian.com. October 26, 2000.

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• I myself was terrified during the Second World War. The war started when I was six, and I was so sure that we were going to be bombed and killed. My imagination is my biggest plus and my worst minus.

  Patricia Reilly Giff

  War, Imagination, World

  Source: www.hbook.com

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• Actually, the phrase "national security" is barely used until the 1930s. And there's a reason. By then, the United States was beginning to become global. Before that the United States had been mostly a regional power - Britain was the biggest global power. After the Second World War, national security is everywhere, because we basically owned the world, so our security is threatened everywhere. Not just on our borders, but everywhere - so you have to have a thousand military bases around the world for "defense."

  Noam Chomsky

  Military, War, Borders

  Source: www.commonwealmagazine.org

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• After the Second World War, facilitating the establishment of the UN and aiding the reconstruction of Europe, the United States was widely viewed, at least in the West, as a benevolent hegemon. In the non-West, the US was often perceived as a supporter of the colonial powers in their struggle to maintain control over their colonial possessions, and was viewed far more critically, especially by emerging elites that were more inclined to socialist development paradigms than to the capitalist ethos favoured by Washington.

  Richard A. Falk

  War, Struggle, Ethos

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• A war film can be propaganda and they're very valuable as propaganda, as we realized in Britain in the Second World War. Film as propaganda is a very valuable tool. It can also demonize, which is the dangerous side of a war film as propaganda. But there are war films that are not propaganda. It's just saying 'This is what it's like.' For 99 percent of us we don't know what it's like. We have no idea. So to reveal that to the audience is powerful.

  Helen Mirren

  Powerful, War, World

  Source: www.elle.com

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• Tell the British people if the Iraqis are subjected to aggression or humiliation they would fight bravely. Just as the British people did in the Second World War and we will defend our country as they defended their country each in its own way. The Iraqis don't wish war but if war is imposed upon them - if they are attacked and insulted - they will defend themselves. They will defend their country, their sovereignty and their security.

  Saddam Hussein

  Country, War, Fighting

  Source: www.washingtontimes.com

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• The First World War created the Second World War because that was a war between three grandsons of Queen Victoria: The King of England, the Kaiser and the Tsar married Queen Victoria's granddaughter. And that triggered Communism in Russia and Fascism in Germany and led to the Second World War.

  Tony Benn

  War, Granddaughter, World

  Source: mattkennard.tumblr.com

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• The Russians and the Chinese have been making enormous investments in the military. We have the smallest Navy since 1916. We have the lowest number of troops since the end of the Second World War. We've got to work with Congress, and Donald Trump will, to rebuild our military and project American strength in the world.

  Mike Pence

  Military, War, Chinese

  "Expanding the Debate: Green Ajamu Baraka “Debates” Pence & Kaine in Democracy Now! Special–Part 1", www.democracynow.org. October 5, 2016.

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• Today people can see and protest all the different interests that want war to happen, the people it financially benefits. The First World War wasn't fought for that reason. The Second World War wasn't fought for that reason. Your entire country and way of life could be overtaken.

  John Boyne

  Country, War, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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