The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.

George Orwell (1903 - 1950), Polemic, May 1946, "Second Thoughts on James Burnham"

One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War'.

Sir Winston Churchill (1874 - 1965)

All warfare is based on deception.
Sun Tzu
The Art of War

An eye for an eye only makes the whole world blind.
Mahatma Gandhi

An unjust peace is better than a just war.
Cicero

Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would indicate?
Gregory Clark

As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure.
Jacques Chirac

As soon as war is looked upon as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Oscar Wilde

Britain and France had to choose between war and dishonor. They chose dishonor. They will have war.
Winston Churchill

Come you masters of war
You that build all the guns
You that build the death planes
You that build the big bombs
You that hide behind walls
You that hide behind desks
I just want you to know I can see through your masks.
Bob Dylan

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Either war is obsolete or men are.
R. Buckminster Fuller

England has been offered a choice between war and shame. She has chosen shame and will get war.
Winston Churchill

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

God is not on the side of the big battalions, but on the side of those who shoot best.
Voltaire

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
Ronald Reagan

History teaches us that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
Ronald Reagan

I ain't got no quarrel with the Vietcong.
Muhammad Ali (Cassius Clay)

I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.
John Wayne

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.
Thomas Jefferson

I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein

I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.
Apocalypse Now, movie

I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
Edmund Burke

If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other.
Mother Teresa

I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
George McGovern

In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace, what did they produce? The cuckoo clock.
Orson Welles

In war there is no prize for the runner-up.
General Omar Bradley

In war, resolution; in defeat, defiance; in victory, magnanimity.
Winston Churchill

It is fatal to enter any war without the will to win it.
General Douglas MacArthur

It is only the dead who have seen the end of war.
Plato

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.
Robert E. Lee

Kings had always been involving and impoverishing their people in wars, pretending generally, if not always, that the good of the people was the object.
Abraham Lincoln

"Let someone else get killed!"
"Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?"
"Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?"
"Englishmen are dying for England, American's are dying for America, Germans are dying for Germany, Russians are dying for Russia. There are now fifty or sixty countries fighting in this war. Surely so many countries can all be worth dying for?"
"Anything worth living for," said Nately, "is worth dying for."
"And anything worth dying for," answered the old man, "is certainly worth living for."
Joseph Heller
Catch 22

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.'
Winston Churchill

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel . . . And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his mouth.
Mark Twain

Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.
John F. Kennedy

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.
Winston Churchill

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead.
Ernest Hemingway

No one ever goes into battle thinking God is on the other side.
Terry Goodkind

Of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally, the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship . . . Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. (at the Nuremberg Trials, shortly before being sentenced to death)
Hermann Goering

Older men declare war. But it's the youth who must fight and die!
Herbert Hoover

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the wall up with our English dead! In peace there's nothing so becomes a man As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood.
William Shakespeare

Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Plato

Politics is war without bloodshed, while war is politics with bloodshed.
Mao Zedong

Put your trust in God; but be sure to keep your powder dry.
Oliver Cromwell

Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima . . . The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. (First announcement of the atomic bomb, August 6, 1945)
Harry S Truman

The art of war is simple enough. Find out where your enemy is. Get at him as soon as you can. Strike him as hard as you can, and keep moving.
Ulysses S Grant

The battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton.
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington

The death of one man is a tragedy. The death of millions is a statistic.
Josef Stalin


The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.
George S. Patton, Jr.

The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky.
Solomon Short

The purple testament of bleeding war.
William Shakespeare

The victor will never be asked if he told the truth.
Adolf Hitler


The words of his mouth were smoother than butter, but war was in his heart: his words were softer than oil, yet were they drawn swords.
Bible, Psalms

Their sword will become our plow, and from the tears of war the daily bread of future generations will grow.
Adolf Hitler

There never was a good war or a bad peace.
Benjamin Franklin

They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.
Ernest Hemmingway

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.
George Washington

To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.
Winston Churchill

Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They were wrong.
Ronald Reagan

Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.
Winston Churchill

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Isaac Asimov

War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.
Mao Zedong

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
Bertrand Russell

War is a bloody, killing business. You've got to spill their blood, or they will spill yours. Rip them up the belly. Shoot them in the guts.
George S. Patton, Jr.

War is hell.
William Tecumseh Sherman

"War is Peace" "Freedom is Slavery" "Ignorance is Strength."
George Orwell
Nineteen Eighty-Four

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.
Georges Clemenceau

 

Benjamin Franklin:
There never was a good war or a bad peace.

He who strikes the first blow admits he's lost the argument.
Chinese Proverb

Bobby Jagdev
For peace, we must prepare for war.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt:

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed. I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

Slade Whitfield
On the path to the greatest nemesis, two enemies will walk together.

Will Rogers:
You can't say civilization don't advance -- for in every war, they kill you in a new way.

George Washington:

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.

Unknown
Prejudice begins with ignorance and ends with understanding.

Jetli
A mob is a group of persons with heads but no brains.

John F. Kennedy:

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

E. F. Schumacher
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage—to move in the opposite direction.


Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.
Salvor Hardin

The War That Will End War.
H. G. Wells

The whole art of war consists of guessing at what is on the other side of the hill.
Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington