quotations about war
War ... should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits.
JAMES MADISON
"Universal Peace"
If each man were to lay down his weapon, and say,
With a click of his heels, "I wish you Good-day,"
Now what, may I ask, could the Emperor do?
A king and his minions are really so few.
AMY LOWELL
Men, Women and Ghosts
War is not clean, but it is a lot cleaner than it used to be. Today's wars look drastically different than yesterday's. Gone are the days when uniformed armies opposed each other in the open, using armor and aircraft to expose weakness and overpower. Gone are the days when it was acceptable to launch thousands of bombers against cities in Europe and the Pacific, attacks that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Today, the battlefield has changed, and the United States finds itself immersed in a new type of war, one best described as dynamically confusing, where the enemy plays by a different set of rules -- rules that, among other things, include hiding among civilians, making differentiating between civilian versus combatant and friend versus foe extremely difficult.
ROBERT MAKROS
"'Clean war' is the unicorn of armed conflict", The Hill, March 31, 2017
Wars grew and mutated, finding ways to stay alive; they hung on with the grim tenacity of a weed growing in a crack in a wall, feeding on whatever nutrients their roots and tendrils could find.
K. J. PARKER
Evil for Evil
When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man by victory or death.
THOMAS HOBBES
Leviathan
The breed of ancient times was impaired for war by trade and luxury, but the modern breed is not so impaired.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics
Against war one might say that it makes the victor stupid and the vanquished malicious. In its favor, that in producing these two effects it barbarizes, and so makes the combatants more natural. For culture it is a sleep or a wintertime, and man emerges from it stronger for good and for evil.
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE
Human, All Too Human
War is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations, states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the emergence of private property and of classes.
MAO ZEDONG
"Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War", December 1936
War ... it paid well and liberated children from the pernicious influence of their parents.
JOSEPH HELLER
Catch-22
War is such an indefeasible and unescapable Real that the good realist must accept it rather comprehensively. To keep out of it is pure quietism, an acute moral failure to adjust. At the same time, there is an inexorability about war. It is a little unbridled for the realist's rather nice sense of purposive social control. And nothing is so disagreeable to the pragmatic mind as any kind of an absolute. The realist pragmatist could not recognize war as inexorable--though to the common mind it would seem as near an absolute, coercive social situation as it is possible to fall into. For the inexorable abolishes choices, and it is the essence of the realist's creed to have, in every situation, alternatives before him.
RANDOLPH SILLIMAN BOURNE
War and the Intellectuals
A "just war" is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
ALEXANDER COCKBURN
New Statesman, February 8, 1991
Ez fer war, I call it murder--
There you hev it plain an' flat;
I don't want to go no furder
Than my Testyment fer that.
JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL
The Biglow Papers
Why is it that all wars are won by bankers?
CARLOS RUIZ ZAFON
The Prisoner of Heaven
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
fifth annual address to Congress, December 13, 1793
The changes and vicissitude in wars are many; but chiefly in three things; in the seats or stages of the war; in the weapons; and in the manner of the conduct. Wars, in ancient time, seemed more to move from east to west; for the Persians, Assyrians, Arabians, Tartars (which were the invaders) were all eastern people. It is true, the Gauls were western; but we read but of two incursions of theirs: the one to Gallo-Grecia, the other to Rome. But east and west have no certain points of heaven; and no more have the wars, either from the east or west, any certainty of observation. But north and south are fixed; and it hath seldom or never been seen that the far southern people have invaded the northern, but contrariwise. Whereby it is manifest that the northern tract of the world, is in nature the more martial region: be it in respect of the stars of that hemisphere; or of the great continents that are upon the north, whereas the south part, for aught that is known, is almost all sea; or (which is most apparent) of the cold of the northern parts, which is that which, without aid of discipline, doth make the bodies hardest, and the courages warmest.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Vicissitude Of Things", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
For the conduct of the war: at the first, men rested extremely upon number: they did put the wars likewise upon main force and valor; pointing days for pitched fields, and so trying it out upon an even match and they were more ignorant in ranging and arraying their battles. After, they grew to rest upon number rather competent, than vast; they grew to advantages of place, cunning diversions, and the like: and they grew more skilful in the ordering of their battles.
FRANCIS BACON
"Of Vicissitude Of Things", The Essays or Counsels, Civil and Moral
I have seen the unknown dead, those little men of the Republic. It was they who woke me up. If a stranger, an enemy, becomes a thing like that when he dies, if one stops short and is afraid to walk over him, it means that even beaten our enemy is someone, that after having shed his blood, one must placate it, give this blood a voice, justify the man who shed it. Looking at certain dead is humiliating. One has the impression that the same fate that threw these bodies to the ground holds us nailed to the spot to see them, to fill our eyes with the sight. It's not fear, not our usual cowardice. One feels humiliated because one understands--touching it with one's eyes--that we might be in their place ourselves: there would be no difference, and if we live we owe it to this dirtied corpse. That is why every war is a civil war; every fallen man resembles one who remains and calls him to account.
CESARE PAVESE
The House on the Hill
However just the cause, we should mourn for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us.
JOHN MCCAIN
speech, August 30, 2004
What they could use around here is a good war. What else can you expect with peace running wild all over the place? You know what the trouble with peace is? No organization. And when do you get organization? In a war. Peace is one big waste of equipment. Anything goes, no one gives a damn. See the way they eat? Cheese on pumpernickel, bacon on the cheese? Disgusting! How many horses have they got in this town? How many young men? Nobody knows! They haven't bothered to count 'em! That's peace for you! I've been in places where they haven't had a war for seventy years and you know what? The people haven't even been given names! They don't know who they are! It takes a war to fix that. In a war, everyone registers, everyone's name's on a list. Their shoes are stacked, their corn's in the bag, you count it all up -- cattle, men, et cetera -- and you take it away! That's the story: no organization, no war!
BERTOLT BRECHT
Mother Courage
(1) Acknowledge war as an addiction. (2) Call upon a "higher power" to form a "coalition of the willing" to renounce war and promote human rights. (3) Admit the error of using war as a tool of foreign policy that has harmed millions, and make amends to those who have suffered. (4) Learn new ways of dealing with nations that abuse human rights, such as committing to a new code of international conduct, and working through the UN and International Court, rather than acting unilaterally to advance our own interests. (6) Halt the sale and stockpiling of weapons while finding new avenues for economic growth that promote life and do not destroy our planet.
CURT TORELL
letter to the Editor, Smoky Mountain News, February 3, 2016