quotations about war
Hollywood blockbusters, like The Hurt Locker, American Sniper, and Lone Survivor, have popularized a narrative rooted more in tropes than truth: a combination of the PTSD-riddled warfighter, the morally ambiguous killer, and the gallant, altruistic hero. However, this narrative is a Frankenstein summation of extremes, arbitrarily splicing and simplifying the truth into digestible and marketable bits. They are stories of exceptionality designed for an audience who has come to expect and want a narrow, unrealistic narrative of war and its combatants. The truth of the war is complex and paradoxical, equal parts nightmarish terror, jaw-dropping inspiration, mind numbing boredom, and incongruous humor. But most of all, the story of the war is as numerous and diverse as those who fought and endured them.
THOMAS E. RICKS
"Writing today's war literature: Figuring out our story, not Hollywood's or D.C.'s", Foreign Policy, February 4, 2016
War has been the most convenient pseudo-solution for the problems of twentieth-century capitalism. It provides the incentives to modernisation and technological revolution which the market and the pursuit of profit do only fitfully and by accident, it makes the unthinkable (such as votes for women and the abolition of unemployment) not merely thinkable but practicable.... What is equally important, it can re-create communities of men and give a temporary sense to their lives by uniting them against foreigners and outsiders. This is an achievement beyond the power of the private enterprise economy ... when left to itself.
ERIC J. HOBSBAWM
London Observer, May 26, 1968
Weakness and ambivalence lead to war.
GEORGE H. W. BUSH
RNC acceptance speech, August 18, 1988
A long war like this makes you realise the society you really prefer, the home, goats chickens and dogs and casual acquaintances. I find myself not caring at all for gardens flowers or vegetables cats cows and rabbits, one gets tired of trees vines and hills, but houses, goats chickens dogs and casual acquaintances never pall.
GERTRUDE STEIN
Wars I Have Seen
Fifteen millions of soldiers with popguns and horses
All bent upon killing, because their "of courses"
Are not quite the same.
AMY LOWELL
"A Ballad of Footmen"
The nation having the strongest war footing can easily find an excuse for going to war.
LEWIS F. KORNS
Thoughts
NIXON: The only place where you and I disagree ... is with regard to the bombing. You're so goddamned concerned about civilians and I don't give a damn. I don't care. KISSINGER: I'm concerned about the civilians because I don't want the world to be mobilized against you as a butcher.
RICHARD NIXON & HENRY KISSINGER
attributed, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers
When a war breaks out, people say: "It's too stupid; it can't last long." But though the war may well be "too stupid," that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.
ALBERT CAMUS
The Plague
While Congress cuts programs for basic human needs, our costs of post-9/11 wars -- including future veteran care -- stand at $4.4 trillion. We've spent $7.6 trillion on defense and homeland security. Yet spending those same dollars on peaceful industry -- education, health care, infrastructure, and renewable energy -- could produce many more and better paying jobs.
DOUG WINGEIER
letter to the Editor, Smoky Mountain News, February 3, 2016
Beware the toils of war ... the mesh of the huge dragnet sweeping up the world.
HOMER
The Iliad
War is hell and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace-time.
IAN HAY
The First Hundred Thousand
We are now in the midst of our first television war ... the television environment [is] total and therefore invisible. Along with the computer, it has altered every phase of the American vision and identity. The television war has meant the end of the dichotomy between civilian and military. The public is now a participant in every phase of the war, and the main actions of the war are now being fought in the American home itself.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
War and Peace in the Global Village
Eventually, you hope. Obviously, we're not in a position at the moment for the eradication of war to seem like anything but a far-off dream. But at one time, the eradication of slave markets in the United States seemed very far off. I mean, people have to begin somewhere. We can change. We can evolve as a species. It's not simple, and it's a very long and drawn-out process, but you can hope.
SUZANNE COLLINS
interview, Hogwarts Professor, August 15, 2010
All we've ever done is fight. Fight for freedom. Fight for justice. All we have to do is forgive.
ASHLYN RYAN
"War is bad -- why not talk out our problems?", The Altamont Enterprise, February 4, 2016
All wars of interference, arising from an officious intrusion into the concerns of other states; all wars of ambition, carried on for the purposes of aggrandizement; and all wars of aggression, undertaken for the purpose of forcing an assent to this or that set of religious opinions; all such wars are criminal in their very outset, and have hypocrisy for their common base.
CHARLES CALEB COLTON
Lacon
War settles nothing.
DWIGHT D. EISENHOWER
Quote Magazine, April 4, 1965
War seldom enters but where wealth allures.
JOHN DRYDEN
The Hind and the Panther
History shows that wars are divided into two kinds, just and unjust. All wars that are progressive are just, and all wars that impede progress are unjust. We Communists oppose all unjust wars that impede progress, but we do not oppose progressive, just wars. Not only do we Communists not oppose just wars; we actively participate in them.
MAO ZEDONG
"On Protracted War", May 1938
The chain reaction of evil--hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars--must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
Christmas sermon delivered at Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, 1957
No one should be surprised at the prominence given to war. We are dealing with early ages: nation-making is the occupation of man in these ages, and it is war that makes nations.
WALTER BAGEHOT
Physics and Politics