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War Quotes

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.
– Henry David Thoreau
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All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.
– Alexis de Tocqueville
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No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.
– Alexis de Tocqueville
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In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.
– Leo Tolstoy
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War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.
– Leo Tolstoy
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War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.
– Leo Tolstoy
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There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.
– Leon Trotsky
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Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.
– Harry S. Truman
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We shall never be able to remove suspicion and fear as potential causes of war until communication is permitted to flow, free and open, across international boundaries.
– Harry S. Truman
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Sports is like a war without the killing.
– Ted Turner
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War has been good to me from a financial standpoint but I don't want to make money that way. I don't want blood money.
– Ted Turner
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All war is based on deception.
– Sun Tzu
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All war is deception.
– Sun Tzu
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Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move.
– Sun Tzu
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There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.
– Sun Tzu
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Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.
– Sun Tzu
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Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.
– Sun Tzu
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Criticism in a time of war is essential to the maintenance of any kind of democratic government.
– Robert Taft
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The war we have to wage today has only one goal and that is to make the world safe for diversity.
– U. Thant
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During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.
– Howard Thurman
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War is the unfolding of miscalculations.
– Barbara Tuchman
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Vice stirs up war, virtue fights.
– Marquis de Vauvenargues
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In time of peace prepare for war.
– Flavius Renatus Vegetius
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Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
– Flavius Renatus Vegetius
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Our strategy is one of preventing war by making it self-evident to our enemies that they're going to get their clocks cleaned if they start one.
– John W. Vessey, Jr.
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To hold a pen is to be at war.
– Voltaire
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All this happened, more or less. The war parts, anyway, are pretty much true.
– Kurt Vonnegut
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If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War.
– George Washington
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My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.
– George Washington
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The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.
– George Washington
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To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.
– George Washington
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War - An act of violence whose object is to constrain the enemy, to accomplish our will.
– George Washington
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This nation has always struggled with how it was going to deal with poor people and people of color. Every few years you will see some great change in the way that they approach this. We've had the war on poverty that never really got into waging a real war on poverty.
– Maxine Waters
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A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
– Simone Weil
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A time will come when a politician who has willfully made war and promoted international dissension will be as sure of the dock and much surer of the noose than a private homicide. It is not reasonable that those who gamble with men's lives should not stake their own.
– H. G. Wells
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Once the command of the air is obtained by one of the contending armies, the war becomes a conflict between a seeing host and one that is blind.
– H. G. Wells
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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.
– Oscar Wilde
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World War II was the last government program that really worked.
– George F. Will
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If we help an educated man's daughter to go to Cambridge are we not forcing her to think not about education but about war? - not how she can learn, but how she can fight in order that she might win the same advantages as her brothers?
– Virginia Woolf
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The connection between dress and war is not far to seek; your finest clothes are those you wear as soldiers.
– Virginia Woolf
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We can best help you to prevent war not by repeating your words and following your methods but by finding new words and creating new methods.
– Virginia Woolf
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All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible.
– Noah Webster
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All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life, is to endeavour to find out what you don't know by what you do; that's what I called 'guess what was at the other side of the hill'.
– Duke of Wellington
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War is fear cloaked in courage.
– William Westmoreland
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It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way to rid the human race of unneeded trash.
– Fred Woodworth
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One to destroy, is murder by the law; and gibbets keep the lifted hand in awe; to murder thousands, takes a specious name, 'War's glorious art', and gives immortal fame.
– Edward Young
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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
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One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression.
– Howard Zinn
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We need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against children.
– Howard Zinn
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Love does not begin and end the way we seem to think it does. Love is a battle, love is a war; love is a growing up.
– James Baldwin
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In the sex-war thoughtlessness is the weapon of the male,vindictiveness of the female.
– Cyril Connolly
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A boy doesn't have to go to war to be a hero; he can say he doesn't like pie when he sees there isn't enough to go around.
– Edward W. Howe
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I have not yet begun to fight!
– John Paul Jones
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One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society ... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
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The Establishment center ... has led us into the stupidest and cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster -- a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation.
– George McGovern
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What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?
– Benjamin Spock
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The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.
– Omar Bradley
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War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
– Jimmy Carter
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War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
– John Stuart Mill
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Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.
– Jawaharlal Nehru
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Let him who desires peace prepare for war.
– Flavius Vegetius Renatus
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Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come.
– Carl Sandburg
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When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.
– Jean-Paul Sartre
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Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
– Sun-tzu
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Before a war military science seems a real science, like astronomy; but after a war it seems more like astrology.
– Rebecca West
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You should be careful what you wish for, as the reasons for war get confused. One person can be very clear in their motives, but others can have different agendas.
– Dougray Scott
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You might hold an ethical position that it's wrong to lie, but if you have plans for a war in Iraq, and you want to keep them secret for practical reasons - to reduce casualties, perhaps - and someone asks you about those plans, you may need to lie for a 'good' outcome.
– Peter Singer
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You don't attack the grunts of Vietnam you blame the theory behind the war. Nobody who fought in that war was at fault. It was the war itself that was at fault. It's the same thing with psychotherapy.
– James Hillman
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You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will.
– William Tecumseh Sherman
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You cannot be politically correct in a war.
– Rupert Everett
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You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
– Jeannette Rankin
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You can easily die racing to cover a bank robbery as you can in a war zone.
– Jessica Savitch
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Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.
– Franklin D. Roosevelt
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World War II has always been of great interest to me. I've known for decades that it was just one more war the politicians suckered us into.
– Harry Browne
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World War II, the atomic bomb, the Cold War, made it hard for Americans to continue their optimism.
– Stephen Ambrose
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World War I broke out largely because of an arms race, and World War II because of the lack of an arms race.
– Herman Kahn
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With Vietnam, the Iraq War, so many American films about war are almost always from the American point of view. You almost never have a Middle Eastern character by name with a story.
– Mira Nair
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With the end of the cold war, all the 'isms' of the 20th century - Fascism, Nazism, Communism and the evil of apartheid-ism - have failed. Except one. Only democracy has shown itself true the help of all mankind.
– Jack Kemp
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With all the negativity going on in the world right now, people need an escape. When you give them a hit record or a great record, it allows them to escape for at least three to four minutes. They're not thinking bills or economy or immigration or war when you create that kind of ambiance.
– Pitbull
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With acting, you wanna see if you can get into trouble without knowing how you're gonna get out of it. It's like the exact opposite of war, where you need an exit strategy. When you're acting, you should get all the way into trouble with no exit strategy, and have the cameras rolling.
– John Cusack
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Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.
– Al Gore
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When you go to war, both sides lose totally.
– Yoko Ono
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When you get billions in aid and your weapons resupplied and your ammunition stock resupplied, you don't learn the lesson that war is bad and nobody wins.
– King Abdullah II
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When war comes, two things happen - profits go way, way up and all perishables go way, way down. There becomes a market for them.
– Steven Spielberg
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When there's a war, people get married.
– Doris Lessing
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When the question arose whether I, as a member of the royal family, should take part in active combat in the Falklands, there was no question in her mind, and it only took her two days to sort the issue.
– Prince Andrew
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When my grandfather died, I started adopting some of his accents, to sort of remind myself of him. A homage. He was a war hero, and he was really great with his hands.
– Gavin DeGraw
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When I was in the war, I was lucky that I was in a plane and never saw the carnage close-up.
– George McGovern
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When I was in Pulp, I actively did more TV stuff because that was during the Great Britpop Wars, and it seemed important to prove that indie people could speak. That war doesn't exist anymore.
– Jarvis Cocker
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When I was growing up, it was 'Communists'. Now it's 'Terrorists'. So you always have to have somebody to fight and be afraid of, so the war machine can build more bombs, guns, and bullets and everything.
– Cindy Sheehan
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When I was a youngster growing up in South Dakota, we never referred to the national debt, it was always referred to as the war debt because it stemmed from World War I.
– George McGovern
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When human beings live together, conflict is inevitable. War is not.
– Daisaku Ikeda
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What we want to do is reform the welfare system in the way that Tony Blair talked about 13 years ago but never achieved - a system that was created for the days after the Second World War. That prize is now I think achievable.
– Iain Duncan Smith
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What President Bush did in his doctrine of preemptive strike and in his war in Afghanistan and in Iraq was to turn even his allies in Europe negatively toward America.
– Louis Farrakhan
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What is not conservative about saying, 'Don't go to war unless we go to war properly with a full declaration of war and no other way?'
– Ron Paul
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What is more immoral than war?
– Marquis de Sade
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What happened in America in the 1860s was a war of secession, a war of independence, no different in principle from what happened in America in the 1770s and 1780s.
– L. Neil Smith
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Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one it is man and not materials that counts.
– Mao Zedong
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We've got to keep an eye on the battle that we face - a war on workers. And you see it everywhere. It is the Tea Party. And there's only one way to beat and win that war - the one thing about working people is, we like a good fight.
– James P. Hoffa
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We've finally given liberals a war against fundamentalism, and they don't want to fight it. They would except that it would put them on the same side as the United States.
– Ann Coulter
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