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Quotations about war

Winston ChurchillWe shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

 - Winston Churchill

Tags:   Britain  fighting  surrender  war  

Douglas MacArthurIn war, you win or lose, live or die, and the difference is just an eyelash.

 - Douglas MacArthur

Tags:   survival  war  

History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

 - Ronald Reagan

Tags:   aggression  government  history  war  

John AdamsAs to the history of the revolution, my ideas may be peculiar, perhaps singular. What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people.

 - John Adams

Tags:   revolution  war  

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

 - Otto von Bismark

Tags:   battlefield  death  eyes  soldier  war  

Douglas MacArthurI know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes... But once war is forced upon us, there is no other alternative than to apply every available means to bring it to a swift end.

 - Douglas MacArthur

Tags:   destruction  disputes  war  

Sun TzuBravery without forethought, causes a man to fight blindly and desperately like a mad bull. Such an opponent, must not be encountered with brute force, but may be lured into an ambush and slain.

 - Sun Tzu

Tags:   ambush  bravery  fighting  force  war  

Douglas MacArthurIt is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear. While such an economy may produce a sense of seeming prosperity for the moment, it rests on an illusionary foundation of complete unreliability and renders among our political leaders almost a greater fear of peace than is their fear of war.

 - Douglas MacArthur

Tags:   arms  economy  fear  propaganda  war  

Douglas MacArthurToday the guns are silent. A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain with death -- the seas bear only commerce -- men everywhere walk upright in the sunlight. The entire world lies quietly at peace. The holy mission has been completed. And in reporting this to you, the people, I speak for the thousands of silent lips, forever stilled among the jungles and the beaches and in the deep waters of the Pacific which marked the way.

 - Douglas MacArthur

Tags:   Pacific  peace  tragedy  war  

Douglas MacArthurWar's very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.

 - Douglas MacArthur

Tags:   indecision  victory  war  

Ray BradburyWe must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves.

 - Ray Bradbury

Tags:   exploration  politics  universe  war  

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

 - Sun Tzu

Tags:   fighting  war  

Dwight EisenhowerEvery 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.

 - Dwight Eisenhower

Tags:   poverty  war  weapons  

A conquering army on the border will not be stopped by eloquence.

 - Otto von Bismark

Tags:   army  eloquence  war  

George KennanWar has a momentum of its own and it carries you away from all thoughtful intentions when you get into it. Today, if we went into Iraq, like the president would like us to do, you know where you begin. You never know where you are going to end.

 - George Frost Kennan

Tags:   intentions  momentum  uncertainty  war  

Winston ChurchillYou ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.

 - Winston Churchill

Tags:   survival  victory  war  

Winston ChurchillLet us therefore brace ourselves to our duty, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Commonwealth and its Empire lasts for a thousand years, men will still say, "This was their finest hour."

 - Winston Churchill

Tags:   Britain  duty  empire  war  

Winston ChurchillWe shall not fail or falter; we shall not weaken or tire. Neither the sudden shock of battle, nor the long-drawn trials of vigilance and exertion will wear us down. Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.

 - Winston Churchill

Tags:   determination  resilience  strength  war  

Winston ChurchillThe people of London with one voice would say to Hitler: "You have committed every crime under the sun. . . . We will have no truce or parley with you, or the grisly gang who work your wicked will. You do your worst--and we will do our best."

 - Winston Churchill

Tags:   crime  truce  war  wickedness  

Since they whose duty it was to wield the sword of France have let it fall shattered to the ground, I have taken up the broken blade.

 - Charles de Gaulle

Tags:   battle  France  war  

Bernard BaruchAs the Soviets thwarted an atomic agreement, lowered their iron Curtain in Eastern Europe, and broke one promise after the other in those early postwar years, it became clear that they were waging war against us. It was a new kind of war, to be sure, in which the guns were silent; but our survival was at stake nonetheless. It was a situation that soon came to be known as the "cold war," a phrase I introduced in a speech before the South Carolina legislature in April, 1947.

 - Bernard Baruch

Tags:   Europe  Soviet  USSR  war  

Winston ChurchillNothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature.

 - Winston Churchill

Tags:   polls  war  

Niccolo MachiavelliHe who makes war his profession cannot be otherwise than vicious. War makes thieves, and peace brings them to the gallows.

 - Niccolò Machiavelli

Tags:   peace  profession  vicious  war  

Niccolo MachiavelliThough fraud in all other actions be odious, yet in matters of war it is laudable and glorious, and he who overcomes his enemies by stratagem is as much to be praised as he who overcomes them by force.

 - Niccolò Machiavelli

Tags:   enemies  fraud  victory  war  

Michel de MontaigneExamples teach us that in military affairs, and all others of a like nature, study is apt to enervate and relax the courage of man, rather than to give strength and energy to the mind.

 - Michel de Montaigne

Tags:   strength  study  war  

Implements of war and subjugation are the last arguments to which kings resort.

 - Patrick Henry

Tags:   kings  war  

Jame MattisMy belief is that we have to stay focused on the military that is so lethal that on the battlefield, it is the enemy's longest day and worst day when they run into that force.

 - Jame Mattis

Tags:   lethality  military  war  

Jame MattisA lot of crises and even wars, have started from miscalculation. So while it's important we make clear what we stand for … it's also important that our adversaries know what we absolutely will not tolerate. And by making that clear, you're less apt to have somebody stumble into a situation where now we're forced to take action.

 - Jame Mattis

Tags:   crises  miscalculation  war  

Jame MattisNo war is over until the enemy says it's over. We may think it over, we may declare it over, but in fact, the enemy gets a vote.

 - Jame Mattis

Tags:   enemies  war  

Bernard BaruchMy fellow citizens of the world, we are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead. . .

Behind the black portent of the new atomic age lies a hope which, seized upon with faith, can work our salvation. . .We must elect world peace or world destruction.

 - Bernard Baruch

Tags:   destruction  peace  war  

Bernard BaruchLet us not be deceived -- we are today in the midst of a cold war. Our enemies are to befound abroad and at home. Let us never forget this: Our unrest is the heart of their success. The peace of the world is the hope and the goal of our political system; it is the despair and defeat of those who stand against us.

 - Bernard Baruch

Tags:   enemies  peace  war  

Anne FrankIs discord going to show itself while we are still fighting, is the Jew once again worth less than another? Oh, it is sad, very sad, that once more, for the umpteenth time, the old truth is confirmed: "What one Christian does is his own responsibility, what one Jew does is thrown back at all Jews."

 - Anne Frank

Tags:   blame  discord  responsibility  war  

Winston ChurchillThe gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the World War by their prowess and their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few

 - Winston Churchill

Tags:   danger  devotion  gratitude  military  war  

Dwight EisenhowerI doubt whether any of these people [pacifists],with their academic or dogmatic hatred of war, detest it as much as I do. They probably have not seen bodies rotting on the ground and smelled the stench of decaying human flesh. . . .what separates me from the pacifists is that I hate the Nazis more than I hate war.

 - Dwight Eisenhower

Tags:   hate  nazis  peace  suffering  war  

Leo TolstoyNot only does a good army commander not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence of the highest and best human attributes -- love, poetry, tenderness, and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity, or think of what is just and unjust.

 - Leo Tolstoy

Tags:   leadership  military  personality  war  

Harry S. TrumanSixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima. . . . It is a harnessing of the basic powers of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its powers has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East.

 - Harry Truman

Tags:   Japan  nuclear  war  

Mikhail GorbachevPresident Reagan suddenly said to me, 'What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space? Would you help us?' I said, 'No doubt about it.'

 - Mikhail Gorbachev

Tags:   space  war