quotations about war
War makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those values.
CESARE PAVESE
This Business of Living, September 9, 1939
In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible. It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us.
WILLIAM JAMES
The Moral Equivalent of War
There would be an end of war and preparations for war if the cost were borne by those responsible for war. There would be an end of armaments and preparedness if incomes and inheritances and the landed estates of the feudal classes paid for the protection which their privileges enjoy. War and preparations for war are possible only because the ruling classes are able to shift a great part of the cost onto the poor by indirect taxation and loans. War expenditures are tolerated only because the burdens are concealed in the increased cost of the things people consume. "The art of plucking the goose without making it cry out" has been developed to a high state of perfection at the hands of the war makers.
FREDERIC CLEMSON HOWE
Why War
War should be carried on like a monsoon; one changeless determination of every particle towards the one unalterable aim.
HERMAN MELVILLE
Israel Potter
War can only be abolished through war ... in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.
MAO ZEDONG
"Problems of War and Strategy"
All these things have a cost. There's genocide for every generation, there's conflict for every generation. You have to keep it contained.
WILLIAM SKUBY
"Can we handle another war? Vets weigh in", Asbury Park Press, April 17, 2017
War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.
LEWIS MUMFORD
Technics and Civilization
War is the most readily available form of chaos.
FRANK HERBERT
God Emperor of Dune
The English have discovered pacific war. We may not be able to kill people as well as the French, or fit out and feed distant armaments as neatly as they do; but we are unrivalled at a quiet armament here at home which never kills anybody, and never wants to be sent anywhere.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Literary Studies
Only people who haven't lived through a war advocate it so eagerly.
DAVID GERROLD
Under the Eye of God
What small account
The All-living seems to take of this thin flame
Which we call life. He sends a moment's blast
Out of war's nostrils, and a myriad
Of these our puny tapers are blown out
Forever.
DINAH CRAIK
"Looking Death in the Face"
A preventive war, to my mind, is an impossibility today. How could you have one if one of its features would be several cities lying in ruins, several cities where many, many thousands of people would be dead and injured and mangled, the transportation systems destroyed, sanitation implements and systems all gone? That isn't preventive war; that is war.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
news conference, August 11, 1954
There comes a terrible moment to many souls when the great movements of the world, the larger destinies of mankind, which have lain aloof in newspapers and other neglected reading, enter like an earthquake into their own lives--when the slow urgency of growing generations turns into the tread of an invading army or the dire clash of civil war, and grey fathers know nothing to seek for but the corpses of their blooming sons, and girls forget all vanity to make lint and bandages which may serve for the shattered limbs of their betrothed husbands.
GEORGE ELIOT
Daniel Deronda
War is an environmental issue and a health issue that affects us all. Our entire planet is saturated by toxins due to these bombings in the long term because we share the same atmosphere.
SEELAI POPAL
"After MOAB, More Afghans Unite to Resist US War and Occupation", Truth-Out, April 20, 2017
One of the many, many things I hate about war is how it trivializes the personal. The big themes, the broad sweep, the emergency measures, the national identity, all the things that a particular kind of man with a particular kind of power urge adores, these are the things that become important. War gives the lie to the personal, drowns it in meetings, alarms, sacrifices. The personal is only allowed to return as death.
JEANETTE WINTERSON
The Stone Gods
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
ALBERT EINSTEIN
Atlantic Monthly, November 1945
As a U.S. taxpayer and a retired banker, I look for a good return on investment. I want my tax dollars used wisely, thank you very much -- and I've identified some smarter investments than war.
LORI DRAPER
"Conflict resolution is a much better investment than war", Alaska Dispatch News, January 6, 2016
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
C. E. MONTAGUE
Disenchantment
War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
The Second World War, Volume III: The Grand Alliance
Let me be clear: the use of starvation as a weapon of war is a war crime.
BAN KI-MOON
"Starvation 'as a weapon' is a war crime, UN chief warns parties to conflict in Syria", UN News Centre, January 14, 2016