Great War Quotes - Page 5

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

  Alfred von Tirpitz

  War, White, Race

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Children, War, Military

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

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• In the mind of all the English soldiers there is absolutely no hate for the Germans, but a kind of brotherly though slightly comtemptuous kindness - as to men who are going through a bad time as well as ourselves.

  Ivor Gurney

  Kindness, War, Hate

  Ivor Gurney, Robert Kelsey Rought Thornton (1991). “Ivor Gurney: collected letters”, Carcanet Pr

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• However the world pretends to divide itself, there are only two divisions in the world today - human beings and Germans.

  Rudyard Kipling

  War, Two, World

  Rudyard Kipling (2008). “Rudyard Kipling's Uncollected Speeches: A Second Book of Words : with a Checklist of His Speeches”, Elt Press

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• I didn't get much peace, but I heard in Norway that Russia might well become a huge market for tractors soon.

  Henry Ford

  War, Russia, Might

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• Against the vast majority of my countrymen, even at this moment, in the name of humanity and civilization, I protest against our share in the destruction of Germany. A month ago Europe was a peaceful comity of nations; if an Englishman killed a German, he was hanged. Now, if an Englishman kills a German, or if a German kills an Englishman, he is a patriot, who has deserved well of his country.

  Bertrand Russell

  Country, War, Europe

  Bertrand Russell (1994). “Prophecy and Dissent, 1914-16”, p.7, Psychology Press

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• 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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• I look upon the People and the Nation as handed on to me as an responsibility conferred upon me by God, and I believe, as it is written in the Bible, that it is my duty to increase this heritage for which one day I shall be called upon to give an account. Whoever tries to interfere with my task I shall crush.

  Wilhelm II

  Crush, War, Believe

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• In the account book of the Great War the page recording the Russian losses has been ripped out. The figures are unknown. Five millions, or eight? We ourselves know not. All we know is that, at times, fighting the Russians, we had to remove the piles of enemy bodies from before our trenches, so as to get a clear field of fire against new waves of assault.

  Paul von Hindenburg

  War, Book, Fighting

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• Over grown military establishments are under any form of government inauspicious to liberty, and are to be regarded as particularly hostile to republican liberty.

  George Washington

  Military, War, 4th Of July

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• Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other.

  Thomas Jefferson

  Peace, War, Lying

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• Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat for it is momentary.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  War, Sunset, Victory And Defeat

  Mahatma Gandhi (1965). “Collected Works”

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