War Quotes

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.

Jean - Jacques Rousseau

Thanksgiving is a typically American holiday... The lavish meal is a symbol of the fact that abundant consumption is the result and reward of production.

Ayn Rand

History is philosophy teaching by example, and also warning its two eyes are geography and chronology.

James A. Garfield

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

James Thurbe

The beauty of a statue is in its outward form of a man in his conduct.

Demophilus

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired in the final analysis, is a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, who are cold and not clothed.

Dwight D. Eisenhowe

There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that is your own self. So you have to begin there, not outside, not on other people. That comes afterwards, when you have worked on your own corner.

Aldous Huxley

A learned man is an idler who kills time with study. Beware of his false knowledge: it is more dangerous than ignorance.

George Bernard Shaw, Man and Superman, 1903

A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.

Hal Borland

There are two ways of constructing a software design One way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies, and the other way is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. The first method is far more difficult.

C. A. R. Hoare

This is an age in which one cannot find common sense without a search warrant.

George Will

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. Eisenhowe

What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.

Simone Weil, The Need for Roots (1949)

Our achievements speak for themselves. What we have to keep track of are our failures, discouragements and doubts. We tend to forget the past difficulties, the many false starts, and the painful groping. We see our past achievements as the end results of a clean forward thrust, and our present difficulties as signs of decline and decay.

Eric Hoffe

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Kurt Vonnegut

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

Leonard Bernstein

It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodelling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the directions of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.

Thomas Huxley

And yesterday he would have killed me to get to his foe. But now we serve each other. Only a fool walks into the future backward.

Terry Goodkind, "Stone of Tears".

The greatest giver of alms is cowardice.

F. Nietzsche, The Wanderer and His Shadow

Life is not advancement. It is growth. It does not move upward, but expands outward, in all directions.

Russell G. Alexande

When men take up arms to set other men free, there is something sacred and holy in the warfare.

Woodrow Wilson

The difficult child is the child who is unhappy. He is at war with himself; and in consequence, he is at war with the world.

A. S. Neill, Summerhill

Not being tense but ready. Not thinking but not dreaming. Not being set but flexible. Liberation from the uneasy sense of confinement. It is being wholly and quietly alive, aware and alert, ready for whatever may come.

Bruce Lee

Ronald Reagan is the most ignorant president since Warren Harding.

Ralph Nader, The Pacific Sun, March 21, 1981

Beware of sentimental alliances where the consciousness of good deeds is the only compensation for noble sacrifices.

Otto von Bismarck, Bismarck and the German Empire by Erich Eyck

This was love at first sight, love everlasting a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected - - In so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.

Thomas Mann

Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike.

Oscar Wilde

We succeed only as we identify in life, or in war, or in anything else, a single overriding objective, and make all other considerations bend to that one objective.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, April 2, 1957

War is like love it always finds a way.

Bertolt Brecht

Probably the most distinctive characteristic of the successful politician is selective cowardice.

Richard Harris

All serious conversations gravitate towards philosophy.

Ernest Dimnet

Aim for success, not perfection. Never give up your right to be wrong, because then you will lose the ability to learn new things and move forward with your life. Remember that fear always lurks behind perfectionism. Confronting your fears and allowing yourself the right to be human can, paradoxically, make yourself a happier and more productive person.

Dr. David M. Burns

Support the strong, give courage to the timid, remind the indifferent, and warn the opposed.

Whitney M. Young Jr.

It is better to sleep on things beforehand than lie awake about them afterward.

Baltasar Gracian

If people become ecstatic the whole society will have to change, because this society is based on misery. If people are blissful you cannot lead them to war - - To Vietnam, or to Egypt, or to Israel. No. Someone who is blissful will just laugh and say: This is nonsense!

Osho, My Way: The Way of The White Clouds

Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.

John Fitzgerald Kennedy

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

General George Patton