War Quotes

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein, (attributed)

Fatigue makes cowards of us all.

Vince Lombardi, Lombardi Winning is the only thing (by Jerry Kramer)

Men are rewarded or punished not for what they do but for how their acts are defined. That is why men are more interested in better justifying themselves than in better behaving themselves.

Thomas S. Szasz

Some people imagine that nuclear war will mean instant and painless death. But for millions this will not be the case. The accounts of the injured at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and of the doctors who tried to tend them, witness to the horrors and torments which would be magnified thousands of times over in the kinds of attack we analyse here...

Stan Openshaw - Doomsday

A prince should therefore have no other aim or thought, nor take up any other thing for his study but war and it organization and discipline, for that is the only art that is necessary to one who commands.

Niccolo Machiavelli, The Prince

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers, for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.

Hebrews 13: 2

All successful people men and women are big dreamers. They imagine what their future could be, ideal in every respect, and then they work every day toward their distant vision, that goal or purpose.

Brian Tracy

Toward no crime have men shown themselves so cold - Bloodedly cruel as in punishing differences of belief.

James R. Lowell

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat - Oppressed brain?

William Shakespeare, "Macbeth", Act 2 scene 1

I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two - Thirds of the people of the Earth might be killed, but enough men capable of thinking, and enough books, would be left to start again, and civilization could be restored.

Albert Einstein

It is a curious fact that when we get sick we want an uncommon doctor... When we get into a war, we dreadfully want an uncommon admiral and an uncommon general. Only when we get into politics are we content with the common man.

Herbert Clark Hoove

One of the amusements of idleness is reading without the fatigue of attention, and the world, therefore, swarms with writers whose wish is not to be studied but to be read.

Johnson

Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot - Proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning.

Rich Cook

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.

Mere sorrow, which weeps and sits still, is not repentance. Repentance is sorrow converted into action; into a movement toward a new and better life.

M. R. Vincent

Idolatry is committed, not merely by setting up false gods, but also by setting up false devils; by making men afraid of war or alcohol, or economic law, when they should be afraid of spiritual corruption and cowardice.

Gilbert Chesterton

How is the world ruled and how do wars start? Diplomats tell lies to journalists and then believe what they read.

Karl Kraus

Very little is known about the War of 1812 because the Americans lost it.

Eric Nicol

Each problem that I solved became a rule, which served afterwards to solve other problems.

Rene Descartes

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

Calvin Coolidge

You progress not through improving what has been done, but reaching toward what has yet to be done.

Kahlil Gibran

The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.

Robert Lynd

In love, as in war, a fortress that parleys is half taken.

Margaret of Valois

I need no warrant for being, and no word of sanction upon my being. I am the warrant and the sanction.

Ayn Rand, Anthem, 1946

All governments eventually lean further and further towards aristocracy.

Frank Herbert, Dune

People fail forward to success.

Mary Kay Ash

War connot be avoided; it can only be postponed to the others advantage.

Niccolo Machiavelli

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

George Bernard Shaw

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

Never enter into dispute or argument with another. I never yet saw an instance of one of two disputants convincing the other by argument. I have seen many on their getting warm, becoming rude and shooting one another.

Thomas Jefferson

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

Confucius

I think there is choice possible to us at any moment, as long as we live. But there is no sacrifice. There is a choice, and the rest falls away. Second choice does not exist. Beware of those who talk about sacrifice.

Muriel Rukeyse

How is it possible to expect mankind to take advice when they will not so much as take warning.

Jonathan Swift

Let him who desires peace prepare for war.

Flavius Vegetius Renatus

My country owes me nothing. It gave me, as it gives every boy and girl, a chance. It gave me schooling, independence of action, opportunity for service and honor. In no other land could a boy from a country village, without inheritance or influential friends, look forward with unbounded hope.

Herbert Hoove

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

Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.

John Steinbeck, The Moon is Down