War Quotes

All diplomacy is a continuation of war by other means. 1954.

Enlai Zhou

War has become a luxury that only small nations can afford.

Hannah Arendt

Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.

Rebecca West

A man who is good enough to shed his blood for his country is good enough to be given a square deal afterwards.

Theodore Roosevelt

Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.

Will Rogers

The outcome of the war is in our hands the outcome of words is in the council.

Home

Those who flee temptation generally leave a forwarding address.

Lane Olinghouse

War does not determine who is right - Only who is left.

Bertrand Russell

The art of leading, in operations large or small, is the art of dealing with humanity, of working diligently on behalf of men, of being sympathetic with them, but equally, of insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems.

S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire, 1947

No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave.

Calvin Coolidge

Modern war has decimated many a country; but it has always spawned millions of bureaucrats. They fatten on shortages and thrive on trouble. Peace can never offer such opportunities for exercising petty tyrannies, using red tape to regiment the individual and making life generally unpleasant.

Paul Tabori, _The Natural Science of Stupidity_. (New York: ChiltonCompany, 1960), p. 104.

History is one war after another with a bunch of murders and natural disasters in between.

Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation (p. 208)

Love and war are the same thing, and stratagems and policy are as allowable in the one as in the others.

Miguel Cerbantes

Happiness is an attitude of mind, born of the simple determination to be happy under all outward circumstances.

J. Donald Wlters

My final merit I refuse you, I refuse putting from me what I really am, Encompass worlds but never try to encompass me, I crowd your sleekest and best by simply looking toward you. Writing and talk do not prove me, I carry the plenum of proof in my face, With the hush of my lips I wholly confound the skeptic.

Walt Whitman

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life - - Learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Robert

War is just to those to whom war is necessary.

Titus Livius

Trying is the first step towards failure.

Homer Simpson, The Simpsons

There never was a good war, or a bad peace.

Benjamin Franklin

The future does not belong to those who are content with today, apathetic toward common problems and their fellow man alike, timid and fearful in the face of bold projects and new ideas. Rather, it will belong to those who can blend passion, reason and courage in a personal commitment to the ideals of American society.

Robert Francis Kennedy

Vietnam is a jungle. You had jungle warfare. Kuwait, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, you have sand. There is no need to worry about a protracted war because from a historical basis, Middle East conflicts do not last a long time.

Dan Quayle, 10/2/90 (reported in Esquire, 8/92)

Before a war, military science seems a real science, like astronomy. After a war it seems more like astrology.

Dame Rebecca West

Beware of over - Great pleasure in being popular or even beloved.

Margaret Fulle

Johnson himself turned out to be so many different characters he could have populated all of War and Peace and still had a few people left over.

Herbert Mitgang

The superior man acts before he speaks, and afterwards speaks according to his actions.

Confucius

Literature is my Utopia. Here I am not disenfranchised. No barrier of the senses shuts me out from the sweet, gracious discourses of my book friends. They talk to me without embarrassment or awkwardness.

Helen Kelle

Virtue herself is her own fairest reward.

Silius Italicus

It is only necessary to make war with five things; with the maladies of the body, the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city and the discords of families.

Pythagoras

The best an American can look forward to is the lonely pleasure of one who stands at long last on a chilly and inhospitable mountaintop where few have been before, where few can follow and where few will consent to believe he has been.

George Frost Kennan

There is no sudden leap into the stratosphere... There is only advancing step by step, slowly and tortuously, up the pyramid towards your goals....

Ben Stein

Beware lest you lose the substance by grasping at the shadow.

Aesop, The Dog and the Shadow

An act of goodness is of itself an act of happiness. No reward coming after the event can compare with the sweet reward that went with it.

Maurice Masterlinck

One should never direct people towards happiness, because happiness too is an idol of the market - Place. One should direct them towards mutual affection. A beast gnawing at its prey can be happy too, but only human beings can feel affection for each other, and this is the highest achievement they can aspire to.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.

Peggy Noonan

Each time you are honest and conduct yourself with honesty, a success force will drive you toward greater success. Each time you lie, even with a little white lie, there are strong forces pushing you toward failure.

Joseph Sugarman

There are very few monsters who warrant the fear we have of them.

Andr Gide

Progress lies not in enhancing what is, but in advancing toward what will be.

Kahlil Gibran