First World War Quotes

• The First World War killed fewer victims than the Second World War, destroyed fewer buildings, and uprooted millions instead of tens of millions - but in many ways it left even deeper scars both on the mind and on the map of Europe. The old world never recovered from the shock.

  Edmond Taylor

  War, Europe, Mind

  Edmond Taylor (2015). “The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922”, p.312, Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.

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• After the First World War the economic problem was no longer one of production. It was the problem of finding markets to get the output of industry and agriculture dispersed and consumed.

  John Boyd Orr

  War, Agriculture, World

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• I could not have the honour of being a German soldier because of my imprisonment in the First World War. And in this world war the Fuehrer refuses to allow me to serve as a soldier.

  Fritz Sauckel

  War, Soldier, World

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• In the First World War, there was the sudden passion of nationalism, and the killing took place because of these emotions. But the Soviet case is different, because you had systematic murder, like the Holocaust.

  Ryszard Kapuscinski

  War, Passion, Holocaust

  "An Interview with Ryszard Kapuscinski: Writing about Suffering". Interview With Thomas Wolfe, quod.lib.umich.edu. 1998.

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• I vividly remember the stories my grandfather told me about the carnage of the First World War, which people tend to forget was one of the worst massacres in human history.

  Antonio Tabucchi

  War, People, Grandfather

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• Lenin was the first to discover that capitalism 'inevitably' caused war; and he discovered this only when the First World War was already being fought. Of course he was right. Since every great state was capitalist in 1914.

  A. J. P. Taylor

  War, World, Firsts

  A.J.P. Taylor (1996). “Origin Of The Second World War”, p.104, Simon and Schuster

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• There is no consensus even today on the merits of Napoleon - and certainly no agreement on the rights and wrongs of the origins of the First World War.

  Douglas Hurd

  War, Rights, Agreement

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• When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War.

  Trevor Nunn

  War, Historical, Musical

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• I always found the extraordinary loss of life in the First World War very moving. I remember learning about it as a very young child, as an eight- or nine-year-old, asking my teachers what poppies were for. Every year the teachers would suddenly wear these red paper flowers in their lapels, and I would say 'What does that mean?'

  Tom Hiddleston

  Teacher, Children, War

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• It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary.

  Winston Churchill

  Strength, Success, Badass

  Winston Churchill, Robert Rhodes James (1980). “Churchill speaks: Winston S. Churchill in peace and war : collected speeches, 1897-1963”, Atheneum

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• I'm fascinated by the First World War because it was supposed to be the war to end all wars, and it was the biggest conflagration that this particular planet had seen. There was a lot of talk about utopia and how it was possible, and then, because of these events that for one reason or another couldn't be stopped, the idea of utopia went out the window.

  Glenn Close

  War, Ideas, Events

  "Mia Wasikowska". Interview with Glenn Close, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 3, 2014.

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• It is ... necessary to whip up the population in support of foreign adventures. Usually the population is pacifist, just like they were during the First World War. The public sees no reason to get involved in foreign adventures, killing, and torture. So you have to whip them up. And to whip them up you have to frighten them.

  Noam Chomsky

  War, Adventure, Media

  Noam Chomsky (2011). “Media Control: The Spectacular Achievements of Propaganda”, p.30, Seven Stories Press

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• As a privileged survivor of the First World War, I hope I may be allowed to interject here a deeply felt tribute to those who were not fortunate enough to succeed, but who shared the signal honor of trying to the last to salvage peace.

  Rene Cassin

  War, Honor, Trying

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• A preacher was operated on for a hernia. As this was about the time of the first world war he was given ether. As he was coming out of the anesthetic a fire broke out in the building next door. As the flames began to show through the hospital windows the nurse pulled the shades down. She didn't want the preacher to think his operation had been a failure.

  Art Linkletter

  Time, War, Failure

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• The First World War, and especially the latest one, largely swept away what was left in Europe of feudalism and of feudal landlords, especially in Poland, Hungary, and the South East generally.

  Emily Greene Balch

  War, Europe, East

  Emily Greene Balch (1972). “Beyond Nationalism: The Social Thought of Emily Greene Balch”, New York : Twayne Publishers

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• I think our support for the EEC has been very half-hearted. You really cannot join any group of nations and spend all your time criticising it. The EEC is free Europe getting together. Had we had some vision like that after the first world war , we might never had the second ... my son does not have to go and fight as his father had to fight. Surely that is the most valuable thing of all, the reason for keeping Europe together.

  Margaret Thatcher

  Father, War, Fighting

  "In her own words" by Julian Glover, www.theguardian.com. March 22, 2002.

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• It is often said that Americans have no sense of history. Ask a college student who Jimmy Carter was and they will likely reply that he was a general in the Civil War, which occurred in 1492, when Americans dumped tea into the Gulf of Tonkin, sparking the First World War, which ended with the invasion of Grenada and the development of the cotton press.

  J. Maarten Troost

  War, College, Tea

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• There is no doubt that the course and character of the feared 'European war'... will become the first world war in the full sense of the word.

  Ernst Haeckel

  War, Character, Doubt

  Indianapolis Star, 20 Sept. 1914.

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• Indeed, Russia and the U.S. were allies during the two tragic conflicts of the Second and the First World Wars, which allows us to think there's something objectively bringing us together in difficult times, and I think - I believe - it has to do with geopolitical interests and also has a moral component.

  Vladimir Putin

  War, Believe, Thinking

  "Putin Q&A". "TIME" Interview, content.time.com. 2007.

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• During the First World War, I told her, Hitler had been a runner, delivering messages between the German trenches, and he was disgusted by seeing his fellow soldiers visit French brothels. To keep the Aryan bloodlines pure,and prevent the spread of venereal disease, he commissioned an inflatable doll that Nazi troops could take into battle. Hitler himself designed the dolls to have blond hair and large breasts. The Allied firebombing of Dresden destroyed the factory before the dolls could ever go into wide distribution.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  War, Hair, Soldier

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• My father was in the First World War.

  Doris Lessing

  Father, War, World

  Doris Lessing (2003). “A Home for the Highland Cattle and the Antheap”, p.142, Broadview Press

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• Maybe I've just read too many novels. In novels, alcoholics are always attractive and fuuny and charming and complex, like Sebastian Flyte or ABe North in Tender in the Night, and they're drinking because of a deep, unquenchable sadness of the soul, or the terrible legacy of the First World War, whereas I just get drunk because I'm thirsty, and I like the taste of lager.

  David Nicholls

  War, Drinking, Sadness

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• The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power.

  Whittaker Chambers

  War, Fruit, Firsts

  Whittaker Chambers (2014). “Witness”, p.7, Regnery Publishing

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• I strongly believe that a small Jewish clique which has contempt for the mass of Jewish people worked with non-Jews to create the First World War, the Russian Revolution, and the Second World War. This Jewish/non-Jewish Elite used the First World War to secure the Balfour Declaration and the principle of the Jewish State of Israel.

  David Icke

  Business, War, Believe

  "And the Truth Shall Set You Free". Book by David Icke, 1995.

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• Before the first World War women were arrested for smoking cigarettes in public, for using profanity, for appearing on beaches without stockings, for driving automobiles without a man beside them, for wearing outlandish attire for example, shorts

  Geoffrey Perret

  Beach, War, Men

  Geoffrey Perret (1982). “America in the twenties: a history”, Simon & Schuster

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