Wartime Quotes

• One keeps healthy in wartime...by a vigorous assertion of values in which war has no part.

  Randolph Bourne

  Peace, War, Healthy

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• Despite the vision and farseeing wisdom of our wartime heads of state, the physicists have felt the peculiarly intimate responsibility for suggesting, for supporting, and in the end, in large measure, for achieving the realization of atomic weapons. Nor can we forget that these weapons as they were in fact used dramatized so mercilessly the inhumanity and evil of modern war. In some sort of crude sense which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Philosophy, War, Responsibility

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• A wartime Minister of Information is compelled, in the national interest, to such continuous acts of duplicity that even his natural hair must grow to resemble a wig.

  Claud Cockburn

  Hair, Duplicity, Wigs

  Claud Cockburn (1960). “Crossing the Line: Being the Second Volume of Autobiography”, Macgibbon & Kee

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• In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.

  Winston Churchill

  Time, Peace, Truth

  Discussion of Operation Overlord with Stalin at the Teheran Conference November 30, 1943; in Winston Churchill: The Second World War, Volume V : Closing the Ring (1952), Chapter 21 (Teheran: The Crux), p. 338.

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• 

  The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.

  Sun Tzu

  Art, Crazy, War

  Sun Tzu (2015). “The Art of War”, CreateSpace

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• Every vice was once a virtue, and may become respectable again, just as hatred becomes respectable in wartime.

  Will Durant

  Hatred, Vices, May

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• The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward.

  Jose Bergamin

  Men, Drunk, Coward

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• All defense secretaries in wartime have, needless to say, made misjudgments.

  William Kristol

  Defense, Made, Secretary

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• Wars are not paid for in wartime. The bill comes later.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Money, War, Bills

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• If we don't end war, war will end us.

  H. G. Wells

  Peace, War, Remembrance

  H. G. Wells (2016). “You Can't Be Too Careful”, p.9, Read Books Ltd

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• In some sort of crude sense, which no vulgarity, no humor, no overstatement can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  Humor, Vulgarity Is, Sin

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• The last thing I wanted to do was blow up another school.

  Rick Riordan

  School, Blow, Lasts

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• The physicists have known sin; and this is a knowledge which they cannot lose.

  J. Robert Oppenheimer

  War, Vulgarity Is, World

  Physics in the ContemporaryWorld (1947)

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• 'Feminist comedy,' practically an oxymoron, had a couple of good years after WWII. Chalk it up to the forced female autonomy that occurred during wartime, when Rosie the Riveter went to work in the factories, constructing the Allies' war machines while taking charge of the finances, the home, and the children.

  Grace Slick

  Children, Couple, War

  Grace Slick, Andrea Cagan (2008). “Somebody to Love?: A Rock-and-Roll Memoir”, p.11, Hachette UK

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• I feel that the constitution is workable, it is flexible and it is strong enough to hold the country together both in peacetime and in wartime. Indeed, if I may say so, if things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile.

  B. R. Ambedkar

  Country, Strong, Men

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• When I was a child - in wartime, pre-television - books were my life.

  A. S. Byatt

  Children, Book, Television

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• Maybe this was how you stayed sane in wartime: a handful of noble deeds amid the chaos.

  Scott Westerfeld

  Noble, Deeds, Chaos

  Scott Westerfeld, Keith Thompson (2009). “Leviathan”, p.261, Simon and Schuster

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• In wartime we identify ourselves with the nation, and its interests are the interests of our primal selves.

  George H. Mead

  Self, Interest, Primal

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• The moral certitude of the state in wartime is a kind of fundamentalism. And this dangerous messianic brand of religion, one where self-doubt is minimal, has come increasingly to color the modern world of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.

  Chris Hedges

  Self, Color, Doubt

  Chris Hedges (2014). “War Is a Force that Gives Us Meaning”, p.147, PublicAffairs

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• Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Leader, Feelings

  Sir Winston Churchill (1993). “The Churchill War Papers: The Ever-Widening War 1941”, William Heinemann

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• Truth is always the first war casualty. The emotional disturbances and distortions in historical writing are greatest in wartime.

  Harry Elmer Barnes

  War, Writing, Emotional

  Harry Elmer Barnes (1980). “Revisionism: A Key to Peace and Other Essays”

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• Surely no rational or realistic person will discount the possibility that [during wartime] the United States might suddenly resort to nuclear weapons. Those who retain the instinct for survival, not to speak of minimal concern for their fellow man, will seek ways to act before rather than after the event.

  Noam Chomsky

  Men, Survival, Church

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• I would say the special experience of American wartime policy in the last 40 years, from Vietnam on, is that the war itself became controversial in the country and that the most important thing we need in the current situation is, whatever disagreements there may be on tactics, that the legitimacy of the war itself does not become a subject of controversy. We have to start with the assumption, obviously, that whatever administration is conducting a war wants to end it.

  Henry A. Kissinger

  Country, War, Years

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• Sometimes animals may suffer more because of their more limited understanding. If, for instance, we are taking prisoners in wartime we can explain to them that although they must submit to capture, search, and confinement, they will not otherwise be harmed and will be set free at the conclusion of hostilities. If we capture wild animals, however, we cannot explain that we are not threatening their lives. A wild animal cannot distinguish an attempt to overpower and confine from an attempt to kill; the one causes as much terror as the other.

  Peter Singer

  Animal, Understanding, Suffering

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• One thing that does seem to me to be fairly consistent is that presidents who restrict civil liberties, even in wartime, are usually judged harshly for it. So most people agree that one of the worst stains on the reputation of FDR, who is widely considered a great president, is the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Likewise, Lincoln is judged harshly for the suspension of habeas corpus.

  David Greenberg

  War, People, President

  "Making Presidential History". The Washington Post Live Q&As, www.slate.com. August 9, 2007.

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