QUOTES ON WAR No battle is ever won.... They are not even fought. The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools. WILLIAM FAULKNER, The Sound and the Fury The God of War will see fair play--hes often slain that wants to slay! HOMER, The Iliad There is a great inertia about all military operations of any size. But once this inertia has been overcome and underway they are almost as hard to arrest as to initiate. ERNEST HEMINGWAY, For Whom the Bell Tolls War ... a reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can. JOHN STEINBECK, East of Eden Zeus it seems has given us from youth to old age a nice ball of wool to wind-nothing but wars upon wars until we shall perish every one. HOMER, The Iliad A mind at peace does not engender wars. SOPHOCLES, Oedipus Rex Says a writer whom few know, Forty years after a battle it is easy for a non-combatant to reason about how it ought to have been fought. It is another thing personally and under fire to direct the fighting while involved in the obscuring smoke of it. Much so with respect to other emergencies involving considerations both practical and moral, and when it is imperative promptly to act. HERMAN MELVILLE, Billy Budd It doesnt make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone whos dead. JOSEPH HELLER, Catch-22 In war, one cannot say what one feels. ERNEST HEMINGWAY, For Whom the Bell Tolls War ... it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents. JOSEPH HELLER, Catch-22 Is Man any the less destroying himself for all this boasted brain of his? Have you walked up and down upon the earth lately? I have; and I have examined Mans wonderful inventions. And I tell you that in the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence and famine. The peasant I tempt to-day eats and drinks what was eaten and drunk by the peasants of ten thousand years ago; and the house he lives in has not altered as much in a thousand centuries as the fashion of a ladys bonnet in a score of weeks. But when he goes out to slay, he carries a marvel of mechanism that lets loose at the touch of his finger all the hidden molecular energies, and leaves the javelin, the arrow, the blowpipe of his fathers far behind. GEORGE BERNARD SHAW, Man and Superman One believes war is inevitable, if one does not loathe it sufficiently. THOMAS MANN, The Magic Mountain Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil war, that brutal ferocious thing. HOMER, The Iliad There is a destiny in war, to which a brave man knows how to submit with the same courage that he faces his foes. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, The Last of the Mohicans War, my dear sir, has on occasion been forced to serve progress. THOMAS MANN, The Magic Mountain Men soon grow sick of battle; when Zeus the steward of warfare tilts the scales, and cold steel reaps the fields, the grain is very little but the straw is very much. The belly is a bad mourner, and fasting will not bury the dead. Too many are falling, man after man and day after day; how could one ever have a moments rest from privations? No, we must harden our hearts, and bury the man who dies and shed our tears that day. But those who survive the horrors of war should not forget to eat and drink, and then we shall be better able to wear our armour, which never grows weary, and to fight our enemies for ever and ever. HOMER, The Iliad How many wars have been put to rest in a princes bed? Few. A bride can bring a little peace, make spears silent for a time, but not long. Beowulf A soldier is a Yahoo hired to kill in cold blood as many of his own species, who have never offended him, as possibly he can. JONATHAN SWIFT, Gullivers Travels War is like a game of chess ... but with this little difference, that in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies of troops can never be known to anyone.... Success never depends, and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or even on numbers, and least of all on position. LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace Alas!... what is it, valiant knight, save an offering of sacrifice to a demon of vain glory, and a passing through the fire of Moloch? What remains to you as a prize of all the blood you have spilled, of all the travail and pain you have endured, of all the tears which your deeds have caused, when death hath broken the strong mans spear, and overtaken the speed of his war-horse? SIR WALTER SCOTT, Ivanhoe War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war. We ought to accept it sternly and solemnly as a fearful necessity. LEO TOLSTOY, War and Peace Neither are any wars so furious and bloody, or of so long continuance as those occasioned by difference in opinion, especially if it be in things indifferent. JONATHAN SWIFT, Gullivers Travels Heaven, the seat of bliss, Brooks not the works of violence and war. JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost I cant see no great difference atween givin up territory afore a war, out of a dread of war, and givin it up after a war, because we cant help it--unless it be that the last is the most manful and honourable. JAMES FENIMORE COOPER, The Deerslayer Do men regret when they kill in war? Does the personality of a soldier coming at you over the top of a trench matter? RICHARD WRIGHT, Native Son Men ... must have corrupted nature a little, for they were not born wolves, and they have become wolves. God did not give them twenty-four-pounder cannons or bayonets, and they have made bayonets and cannons to destroy each other. VOLTAIRE, Candide It makes no difference what men think of war.... War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 13:05:32 +0000
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