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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• 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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• 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 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• In The Care and Management of Lies the wonderfully talented Winspear writes irresistibly about the First World War, both in the trenches of France and the fields of England. Her richly complex characters walk right off the page and into our imaginations, as we fight with them, farm with them, cook with them. I devoured this dazzling novel.

  Margot Livesey

  Lying, War, Character

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• The word crap is actually another word that's very, very old. It was taken over from 17th century England by the pilgrim fathers and Americans were talking about things being crap in the 17th and 18th centuries. What Sir Thomas Crapper – complete coincidence – does is not invent the flushing toilet, as many, many people believe, but was a great promoter for it. He ran a business marketing other people's products and that's why his name was on them. When the American soldiers came over in the First World War, they all thought it was hilarious that it said 'crapper' on them.

  Lucy Worsley

  Father, War, Believe

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• American strategists have calculated the proportion of civilians killed in this century's major wars. In the First World War, 5 percent of those killed were civilians, in the Second World War 48 percent, while in a Third World War 90-95 percent would be civilians.

  Colin Ward

  War, America, Would Be

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• The European wars of religion were more deadly than the First World War, proportionally speaking, and in the range of the Second World War in Europe. The Inquisition, the persecution of heretics and infidels and witches, they racked up pretty high death tolls.

  Steven Pinker

  War, Europe, Tolls

  "Is Human Violence On The Wane?". "Science Friday" with Ira Flatow, www.npr.org. October 7, 2011.

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• Louis B. Mayer is one of those with a claim to posessing the equation... he began to buy up nickelodeon arcades in the years before the First World War in and around Boston. He had noticed that people liked going into the dark to see the light... the appeal of the movies is beyond the sensible, rational or the hard-working. Going into the dark, afte centuries of progress in which mankind has staggered toward artificial light, smacks of delicious perversity.

  Edward Jay Epstein

  War, Hard Work, Dark

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• You can inherit male-pattern baldness from your mother's father, but not a tendency to fight in the First World War.

  Jeremy Hardy

  Mother, War, Father

  "The News Quiz". BBC Radio 4, October 1998.

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• Ten thousand officers and men named Smith died in the First World War. One thousand four hundred Campbells died, six thousand Joneses, and one thousand Murphys. Smith, Campbell, Jones and Murphy: the names of the United Kingdom, whose presence in regiments from all four countries speaks of the ebb and flow of peoples within these islands, of a common sacrifice, and a shared agony that burned in so many million hearts down the decades.

  Kevin Myers

  Country, Peace, War

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• Psychiatrists the dominant lay priesthood since the First World War.

  J. G. Ballard

  War, World, Firsts

  "The Lure of the Madding Crowd". The Independent on Sunday, 1991.

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• Today people can see and protest all the different interests that want war to happen, the people it financially benefits. The First World War wasn't fought for that reason. The Second World War wasn't fought for that reason. Your entire country and way of life could be overtaken.

  John Boyne

  Country, War, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• We Germans carried our hatred from the First World War to the Second World War, and now you are about to carry the hatred about the murder of 5 million people on to another World War.

  Hans Fritzsche

  War, People, Hatred

  "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately, 2004.

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• We're living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  War, Fighting, Reality

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• What can I say about the First World War, a war in which I served as an infantryman, a war I hated at the start and to which I never warmed as it proceeded?

  George Grosz

  War, World, Firsts

  George Grosz (1982). “The autobiography of George Grosz: a small yes and a big no”

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• In the first World War British propaganda had to invent the stories of German soldiers bayoneting Belgian babies, because there were too few real atrocities to feed the hatred against the enemy.

  Erich Fromm

  Baby, Real, War

  Erich Fromm (2013). “The Anatomy of Human Destructiveness”, p.56, Open Road Media

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• My entire life has really revolved around music that was written about the time that I was born, 1908, to just before the First World War and shortly after it. This music I've always known, and it is that music that's most important to me.

  Elliott Carter

  War, Important, World

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