Great War Quotes - Page 8

• It is entirely clear that there is only one way in which great wars can be permanently prevented, and that is the establishment of an international government with a monopoly of serious armed force.

  Bertrand Russell

  War, Government, Serious

  David Herbert Lawrence, Bertrand Russell (1948). “Letters to Bertrand Russell”

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• The great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, and which has swept up within its flame so great a part of thecivilized world, has affected us very profoundly.... With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst we are not interested to search for or explore.

  Woodrow Wilson

  War, Flames, Years

  4 Copy quote

• There is no field of activity for great men without the coming of great wars, great struggles and great revolutions.

  Arthur Desmond

  War, Struggle, Men

  "Rival Caesars". Book by Arthur Desmond, 1903.

  9 Copy quote

  Show source

• There is scarcely a town or school in Russia from which boys have not run away to the war. Hundreds of girls have gone off in boys' clothes and tried to pass themselves off as boys and enlist as volunteers, and several have got through, since the medical examination is only a negligible formality required in one place, forgotten in another.

  Stephen Graham

  Girl, Running, War

  Stephen Graham (1915). “Russia in 1916”

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Great warriors, like great earthquakes, are principally remembered for the mischief they have done.

  Christian Nestell Bovee

  Warrior, Greatness, Earthquakes

  10 Copy quote

• Woodrow Wilson is reported to have told a Princeton colleague, shortly after the 1912 election, "It would be an irony of fate if my administration had to deal chiefly with foreign problems, for all my preparation has been in domestic matters." In the event, Wilson's early months were marked by substantial domestic legislative accomplishment. Unfortunately, after Europe plunged into the Great War in August 1914, Wilson's leadership was uncertain.

  James M Strock

  War, Fate, Accomplishment

  4 Copy quote

• What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that two stickout above all others. One is his curious and apparently incurable incompetence--his congenital inability to do any difficult thing easily and well, whether it be isolating a bacillus or writing a sonata. The other is his astounding susceptibility to fears and alarms--in short, his hereditary cowardice.... There is no record in history of any Anglo-Saxon nation entering upon any great war without allies.

  H. L. Mencken

  War, Writing, Character

  H.L. Mencken (2012). “Mencken Chrestomathy”, p.173, Vintage

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• I do occasionally wonder, if you were to bring to life one of those young men who sacrificed themselves in what was advertised to them as the Great War, and the war to end all war, and show them that we're still engaged in armed conflict in the same area, I'm not sure that they would be pleased about what their sacrifices amounted to.

  Russell Crowe

  War, Sacrifice, Men

  "THE WATER DIVINER: Russell Crowe Talks Directing, Story Selection, and His Career". Interview with Christina Radish, collider.com. April 22, 2015.

  21 Copy quote

  Show source

• The loss of sex polarity is part and parcel of the larger disintegration, the reflex of the soul's death, and coincident with the disappearance of great men, great deeds, great causes, great wars, etc.

  Henry Miller

  Death, Sex, War

  Henry Miller (1961). “The Cosmological Eye”, p.120, New Directions Publishing

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Until the last great war, a general expectation of material improvement was an idea peculiar to Western man. Now war and its aftermath have made economic and social progress a political imperative in every quarter of the globe.

  Lester B. Pearson

  War, Men, Ideas

  Lester B. Pearson (1964). “The Four Faces of Peace and the International Outlook: Statements”, McClelland and Stewart

  10 Copy quote

  Show source

• The great wars of the present age are the effects of the study of history.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  War, History, Age

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Maudemarie Clark, Brian Leiter (1997). “Nietzsche: Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality”, p.108, Cambridge University Press

  5 Copy quote

  Show source

• Before we become too arrogant with the most deadly of the seven deadly sins, the sin of pride, let us remember that the two great wars of this century, wars which cost twenty million dead, were fought between Christian nations praying to the same God.

  Richard M. Nixon

  Christian, War, Pride

  Nixon, Richard M. (1974). “Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Richard M. Nixon, 1972”, p.126, Best Books on

  18 Copy quote

  Show source

• I am proud of my children. They will make great warriors. And I will watch over them forever. I promise.

  Erin Hunter

  Children, War, Forever

  8 Copy quote

• Betsy. The great war is on but I hope ours is over. Please come home. Joe.

  Maud Hart Lovelace

  War, Home, Please

  5 Copy quote

• He was tall as a young tree, lithe, immensely strong, able swiftly to draw a great war-bow and shoot down a Nazgûl, endowed with the tremendous vitality of Elvish bodies, so hard and resistant to hurt that he went only in light shoes over rock or through snow, the most tireless of all the Fellowship.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Strong, Hurt, War

  J.R.R. Tolkien (2012). “The Book of Lost Tales, Part Two: Part Two”, p.329, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  13 Copy quote

  Show source

• And so he [the Jew] advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer. Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent.

  Adolf Hitler

  War, Struggle, Ideas

  8 Copy quote

• I've been immersed in it too long. My spirit is wobbly and my mind is confused. The hurt has become too great.

  Ernie Pyle

  Peace, Hurt, Confused

  Ernie Pyle, David Nichols (1987). “Ernie's war: the best of Ernie Pyle's World War II dispatches”, Touchstone

  22 Copy quote

  Show source

• Some men of the line regiment who had appeared on our right started running back. I shouted out to them to halt, but they took no notice. I pulled out my revolver and very nearly shot at them, but I thought it wouldn't do any good, as they all had their backs to me so would have thought that anyone hit was hit by a German bullet. If I ran after them my men might think I was running away. So I took my men on!

  William St Leger

  Running, War, Men

  4 Copy quote

• I always wondered why the makers leave housekeeping and cooking out of their tales. Isn't it what all the great wars and battles are fought for -- so that at day's end a family may eat together in a peaceful house?

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  War, House, Cooking

  4 Copy quote

• Until the dead are buried they change somewhat in appearance each day. The color change in Caucasian races is from white to yellow, to yellow-green, to black. If left long enough in the heat the flesh comes to resemble coal-tar, especially where it has been broken or torn, and it has quite a visible tarlike iridescence. The dead grow larger each day until sometimes they become quite too big for their uniforms, filling these until they seem blown tight enough to burst. The individual members may increase in girth to an unbelievable extent and faces fill as taut and globular as balloons.

  Ernest Hemingway

  War, Yellow, White

  Ernest Hemingway (2002). “Death in the Afternoon”, p.112, Simon and Schuster

  8 Copy quote

  Show source

• The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of splinters whips forth the childlike cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life groans painfully into silence. Our hands are earth, our bodies clay and our eyes pools of rain. We do not know whether we are still alive.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  War, Rain, Eye

  Erich Maria Remarque (2013). “All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel”, p.209, Random House

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

  Theodore Roosevelt

  War, Cancer, Cutting

  Theodore Roosevelt, Eugene Thwing (1919). “Newer Roosevelt messages: speeches, letters and magazine articles dealing with the war, before and after, and other vital topics”

  11 Copy quote

  Show source

• So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations, that every war must appear to be a war of defence against a menacing, murderous aggressor. There must be no ambiguity about whom the public is to hate. Guilt and guilelessness must be assessed geographically and all the guilt must be on the other side of the frontier.

  Harold Lasswell

  War, Hate, Guilt

  25 Copy quote

• She told me that all the girls in Annezin prayed every night for the war to end and for the English to go away as soon as their money was spent. She said that the clause about the money was always repeated in case God should miss it.

  Robert Graves

  Girl, War, Night

  "Goodbye to all that: and other great war writings".

  12 Copy quote

  Show source

• War can so easily be gilt with romance and heroism and solemn national duty and patriotism and the like by persons whose superficial literary and oratorical talent covers an abyss of Godforsaken folly.

  George Bernard Shaw

  War, Romance, Heroism

  George Bernard Shaw (2015). “The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more”, p.4113, e-artnow

  4 Copy quote

  Show source