Great War Quotes

• This war is really the greatest insanity in which white races have ever been engaged.

  Alfred von Tirpitz

  War, White, Race

  16 Copy quote

• This was not after all a conventional war, a struggle between equally predacious powers; it was a war to end all wars.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Ends

  "A Day of Dedication".

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• If the women in the factories stopped work for twenty minutes, the Allies would lose the war.

  Joseph Joffre

  War, Allies, Twenties

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• At all times, except when a monarch could enforce his will, war has been facilitated by the fact that vigorous males, confident of victory, enjoyed it, while their females admired them for their prowess.

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Victory, Facts

  Bertrand Russell (2004). “In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays”, p.99, Psychology Press

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• As we take stock on the morrow of victory, we shall find that nothing of real value to the human race has been destroyed. Our dead heroes will have won immortality. Civilisation will have gained new vitality. Humanity will have entered upon a richer heritage.

  Horatio Bottomley

  Real, War, Hero

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• Don't believe stories which you see in the papers about troops asking as a special privilege not to be relieved. We stick it, at all costs if necessary, as long as ordered, but everyone's glad to hand over to someone else. And anyone who says he enjoys this kind of thing is either a liar or a madman.

  Harry Yoxall

  War, Liars, Believe

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• Before an attack, the platoon pools all its available cash and the survivors divide it up afterwards. Those who are killed can't complain, the wounded would have given far more than that to escape as they have, and the unwounded regard the money as a consolation prize for still being here.

  Robert Graves

  War, Complaining, Survivor

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• No-man's land under snow is like the face of the moon: chaotic, crater ridden, uninhabitable, awful, the abode of madness.

  Wilfred Owen

  War, Moon, Men

  Wilfred Owen (1965). “The Collected poems of Wilfred Owen”, p.160, New Directions Publishing

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• Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Fighting, Men

  Woodrow Wilson (2015). “Wilson, Volume V: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916-1917”, p.399, Princeton University Press

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• Only the dead have seen the end of war.

  Plato

  Death, Memorial Day, Plato

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• It is from the numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

  Robert Kennedy

  Change, Hope, Courage

  Robert F. Kennedy (1998). “Make Gentle the Life of the World: The Vision of Robert F. Kennedy”, Harcourt

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• Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.

  Winston Churchill

  Memorial Day, Military, War

  Speech in House of Commons, 20 Aug. 1940

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• 

  If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

  James Madison

  Inspirational, Freedom, Fear

  "The Last Enemy" by Rebecca Sato, www.pbs.org. November 11, 2010.

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• What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

  Aldous Huxley

  Peace, War, Men

  Aldous Huxley (2001). “Complete Essays: 1936-1938”, Ivan R Dee

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• Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Military, War

  Speech to American Society of Newspaper Editors, Washington, D.C., 16 Apr. 1953

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• Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

  John Adams

  Peace, War, History

  John Adams (1856). “The Works of John Adams, Second President of the United States: With a Life of the Author, Notes and Illustrations”, p.474

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• All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Money, War, Battle

  Benjamin Franklin, E. Sargent (1855). “The select works of Benjamin Franklin”, p.459

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• Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die.

  Herbert Hoover

  Death, Peace, War

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• 'Emergencies' have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

  Friedrich August von Hayek

  War, Historical, Liberty

  "Law, Legislation and Liberty". Book by Friedrich Hayek. Volume 3: "The Political Order of a Free People". Chapter 17: "A Model Constitution", 1973.

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• I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, War, Hate

  Speech in Ottawa on January 10, 1946. "Eisenhower Speaks: Dwight D. Eisenhower in His Messages and Speeches". Book edited by Rudolph L. Treuenfels, 1948.

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• As a result of continuous work with these highly toxic substances, our minds were so numbed that we no longer had any scruples about the whole thing. Anyway, our enemies had by now adopted our methods and as they became increasingly successful in this mode of warfare we were no longer exclusively the aggressors, but found ourselves more and more at the receiving end.

  Otto Hahn

  War, Successful, Mind

  Otto Hahn (1970). “My life: the autobiography of a scientist”, MacDonald

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• Walking abroad, one is the admiration of all little boys, and meets an approving glance from every eye of elderly.

  Wilfred Owen

  War, Eye, Boys

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• I was called up in the war and sent to a hospital. I dressed wounds, applied iodine, gave enemas, did blood transfusions. If the doctor ordered: "Brecht, amputate a leg!", I would reply, "Certainly, Your Excellency!", and cut off the leg. If I was told, "Perform a trepanning!" I opened the man's skull and messed about with his brains. I saw how they patched fellows up, so as to cart them back to the Front as quickly as they could.

  Bertolt Brecht

  War, Cutting, Men

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• Independent thinking is not encouraged in a professional Army. It is a form of mutiny. Obedience is the supreme virtue.

  David Lloyd George

  War, Independent, Army

  David Lloyd George “War Memoirs of David Lloyd George: 1918”

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• We were not making war against Germany, we were being ordered about in the King's war with Germany.

  H. G. Wells

  Kings, War, Germany

  H. G. Wells (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells”, p.17075, Delphi Classics

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