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War Quotes and Quotations
 A conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if it does not lose.  Above all, Vietnam was a war that asked everything of a few and nothing of most in America. All wars are popular for the first 30 days. Do not let us speak of darker days; let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days: these are great days - the greatest days our country has ever lived. Good things, when short, are twice as good. I have never understood disliking for war. It panders to instincts already catered for within the scope of any respectable domestic establishment. If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. - Bible In time of war the devil makes more room in hell. In war the will is directed at an animate object that reacts. Let us not be deceived - we are today in the midst of a cold war. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say: "This was their finest hour." Morality is contraband in war. Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled, Scots, wham Bruce has aften led, Welcome to your gory bed Or to victorie. So long as the anti-militarists propose no substitute for war's disciplinary function, no moral equivalent of war, analogous, as one might say, to the mechanical equivalent of hate, so long they fail to realize the full equities of the situation. Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of U.S.A. - not on the battlefields of Vietnam. The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. There never was a good war or a bad peace. They will conquer, but they will not convince. We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; For he today that sheds his blood with me; Shall be my brother. Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee Agreed to have a battle; For Tweedle Dum said Tweedle Dee Had spoiled his nice new rattle. We shall not flag or fail. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we 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. When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die. We only win at war because we fight another government. If we fought private industry we would not last until noontime. War is much too important a matter to be left to the generals. War is mainly a catalogue of blunders. War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory. It would indeed be a tragedy if the history of the human race proved to be nothing more than the story of an ape playing with a box of matches on a petrol dump. Either war is obsolete, or men are. War appeals to young men because it is fundamentally auto-eroticism. Wars are not fought for territory, but for words. Man's deadliest weapon is language. He is as susceptible to being hypnotized by slogans as he is to infectious diseases. And where there is an epidemic, the group-mind takes over. A war regarded as inevitable or even probable, and therefore much prepared for, has a very good chance of eventually being fought. War is the unfolding of miscalculations. If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles. - Sun Tzu Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it. As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. What the hell difference does it make, left or right? There were good men lost on both sides. The supreme excellence is not to win a hundred victories in a hundred battles. The supreme excellence is to subdue the armies of your enemies without even having to fight them. - Sun Tzu Frankly I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry. War is the national industry of Prussia. - Mirabeau It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to be in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts - for democracy. Sweet is war to those who have never experienced it. The possibility of war increases in direct proportion to the effectiveness of the instruments of war. I don't know what effect these men will have on the enemy, but by God, they frighten me. Boys are the cash of war. Whoever said: we're not free spenders- doesn't know our like. In time of war the first casualty is truth. World War II was the last government program that really worked. It's one of the most serious things that can possibly happen to one in a battle - to get one's head cut off. No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it. There is no such thing as inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom. The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. War would end if the dead could return. If they want peace, nations should avoid the pinpricks that precede cannon shots. Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come. A man who experiences no genuine satisfaction in life does not want peace. People court war to escape meaninglessness and boredom, to be relieved of fear and frustration. The object of war is to survive it. So far war has been the only force that can discipline a whole community, and until an equivalent discipline is organized, I believe that war must have its way. Men love war because it allows them to look serious; because it is the only thing that stops women laughing at them. War hath no fury like a non-combatant. Most sorts of diversion in men, children and other animals, are in imitation of fighting. Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. Human war has been the most successful of all our cultural traditions. War is the trade of kings. The whole art of war consists of guessing at what is on the other side of the hill. It is well that war is so terrible - we would grow too fond of it. Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war. - Homer Most people coming out of war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself, your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort, at the least, and death at the other end, ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes for a time others seem alien and frivolous. Vice stirs up war; virtue fights. In peace, sons bury their fathers; in war, fathers bury their sons. War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today. The weak against the strong, Is always in the wrong. But, in case signals can neither be seen or perfectly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside the enemy. Something must be left to chance; nothing is sure in a sea fight beyond all others. War is like love, it always finds a way. The guerilla must live amongst the people as the fish lives in the water. It simply is not true that war never settles anything. War does not determine who is right - only who is left. There are no atheists in the foxholes. There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. There will be no veterans of World War III. War is the science of destruction. The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of development, must be repeatedly emphasized. Great Britain was going to make war on a kindred nation who desired nothing better than to be friends with her. Better pointed bullets than pointed speeches. War never leaves, where it found a nation. Veni, vidi, vici. (I came, I saw, I conquered.) (The great questions of the day) are not decided by speeches and majority votes, but by blood and iron. What millions died - that Caesar might be great! What distinguishes war is, not that man is slain, but that he is slain, spoiled, crushed by the cruelty, the injustice, the treachery, the murderous hand of man. General Taylor never surrenders. We give up the fort when there's not a man left to defend it. War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honour but an empty bubble. By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April's breeze unfurl'd; Here once the embattl'd farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world. There never was a good war or a bad peace. Hang yourself, brave Crillon. We fought at Arques, and you were not there. - Henry IV It is not right to exult over slain men. - Homer War is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored: He hath loosed the fateful lightning of his terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on. We don't want to fight, but by jingo if we do, We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too. We've fought the Bear before and while we're Britons true, The Russians shall not have Constantinople. I have prayed in her fields of poppies, I have laughed with the men who died - But in all my ways and through all my days Like a friend He walked beside. I have seen a sight under Heaven That only God understands, In the battle's glare I have seen Christ there With the Sword of God in His hand. Modern warfare is an intricate business about which no one knows everything and few know very much. There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom. 0 God assist our side: at least, avoid assisting the enemy and leave the rest to me. The ballot is stronger than the bullet. To arms! to arms! ye brave! The avenging sword unsheathe, March on! march on! all hearts resolved On victory or death! Ez for war, I call it murder, - There you hev it plain and flat; I don't want to go no furder Than my Testyment for that. War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it. Take up our quarrel with the foe! To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders' fields. War hath no fury like a noncombatant. Wars and rumours of wars. - Matthew And this I hate - not men, nor flag nor race, But only War with its wild, grinning face. When after many battles past, Both tir'd with blows, make peace at last, What is it, after all, the people get? Why! taxes, widows, wooden legs, and debt. The brazen throat of war. God how the dead men Grin by the wall, Watching the fun Of the Victory Ball. O war! thou son of Hell! A bad peace is even worse than war. - Tacitus As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular. 
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