Second World War Quotes - Page 6

• I think one of the great disasters (in military history) is the way that the Second World War has become the defining reference point for every crisis and every conflict.

  Antony Beevor

  Military, War, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• Painters, especially American painters since the Second World War, have been much more troubled, beset by formal perplexity, than American writers. Theyve been a laboratory for everybody.

  Donald Barthelme

  War, World, Formal

  4 Copy quote

• My mother learned that she was carrying me at about the same time the Second World War was declared; with the family talent for magic realism, she once told me she had been to the doctor's on the very day.

  Angela Carter

  Mother, War, Magic Realism

  Angela Carter (1998). “Shaking a Leg: Collected Writings”, Penguin Group USA

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• When the Second World War broke out, I felt that everyone must do his share, and I began composing songs and marches for the front. But soon events assumed such gigantic and far-reaching scope as to demand larger canvasses.

  Sergei Prokofiev

  Song, War, Events

  48 Copy quote

• What have we achieved since the end of the Second World War? We have allowed petty, bourgeois regimes in which everything is average, mediocre.

  Tahar Ben Jelloun

  War, Average, World

  9 Copy quote

• The siesta provides a delightful detour from the working day and it also has a practical value as far as productivity is concerned. Winston Churchill had a good long siesta every day during the second world war and he said it was the thing that enabled him to cope with the pressure.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  War, Long, World

  "Idle thoughts" by Tom Hodgkinson, www.theguardian.com. July 28, 2006.

  7 Copy quote

  Show source

• I'm sure it is, I'm not for any kind of war, we've been engaged in several wars since the second world war and we lost in Korea, we lost in Vietnam, they are political wars, they have nothing to do with any real threat, nor does this one.

  Larry Hagman

  Real, War, Korea

  68 Copy quote

• I think I'm just someone that just tries to get by. I'm kind of - if it was during the Second World War, I'd be a black marketeer, I think.

  Craig Ferguson

  War, Thinking, Black

  4 Copy quote

• My own grandfathers were a submarine commander and a 'desert rats' tank operator in the Second World War.

  Benedict Cumberbatch

  War, Grandfather, Tanks

  4 Copy quote

• I had very good support from Democrats and Republicans all throughout my administration. I had a very high batting average. We added more jobs per year in my four years than any other president since the Second World War.

  Jimmy Carter

  Jobs, War, Average

  "Interview with Former President Jimmy Carter". "Piers Morgan Tonight", www.realclearpolitics.com. January 18, 2012.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the second world war.

  A. S. Byatt

  War, Dark, World

  "Happy ever after" by A. S. Byatt, www.theguardian.com. January 3, 2004.

  52 Copy quote

  Show source

• Suicidal violence is not the exclusive property of the Muslim world. Suicide bombings were a tactic of nationalist struggles in 19th-century Europe and Russia, the far east during the second world war and the Vietnam war, and in modern Sri Lanka.

  James Buchan

  Suicide, War, Struggle

  "A history of suicide killers" by James Buchan, www.theguardian.com. September 17, 2001.

  16 Copy quote

  Show source

• During the Second World War, evacuated to non-Jewish households, I encountered Christianity at home and in school.

  Lionel Blue

  War, Home, School

  4 Copy quote

• During the Second World War, the Germans took four years to build the Atlantic Wall. On four beaches it held up the Allies for about an hour; at Omaha it held up the U.S. for less than one day. The Atlantic Wall must therefore be regarded as one of the greatest blunders in military history.

  Stephen Ambrose

  Beach, Wall, Military

  10 Copy quote

• Americans are not intrinsically imperial, but we ended up dominant by default: Europe disappeared after the Second World War, the Soviet Union disappeared in 1991, so here we are.

  Charles Krauthammer

  War, Europe, World

  "Obama Is Average". Interview with Klaus Brinkbäumer and Gregor-Peter Schmitz, www.spiegel.de. October 26, 2009.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• Time and distance from the first and second world wars doesn't seem to lessen their horrors.

  Doris Lessing

  War, Distance, World

  7 Copy quote

• Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.

  Patrick Macnee

  War, World, Saws

  6 Copy quote

• For an event that was wholly created in the poisonous psychological warfare kitchens of the Second World War, run by the ministries of propaganda in many countries, not just by the British or the Americans, but also the Russians and undoubtedly the world Jewish organizations.

  Ernst Zundel

  Country, Running, War

  8 Copy quote

• The second world war claimed tens of millions of victims.

  Jean-Marie Le Pen

  War, World, Victim

  The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 21, 2002.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz.

  Harold Pinter

  War, World, London

  Interview with Ramona Koval, www.abc.net.au. December 22, 2002.

  17 Copy quote

  Show source

• 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.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• In the Second World War, I was a little girl. I was evacuated in my country.

  Yoko Ono

  Girl, Country, War

  4 Copy quote

• The other thing that really I regretted not being able to do was to push effectively for the reform of the Security Council. Because the world was changing, and is changing very fast, and I felt the UN was holding on to old arrangements. Most governments felt that it has such a narrow power base, based on the results of the second world war.

  Kofi Annan

  War, Government, Able

  4 Copy quote

• I don't quite understand how a generation and a half after the Second World War we've gotten where we are now.

  Zoe Leonard

  War, Generations, Half

  Interview with Molly Prentiss, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 13, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source

• After the First World War, it was, like, let's form the League of Nations, we have to learn to work together. It's the only way we're going to survive. And now it's like we're undoing these very fragile institutions that were built after the First and Second World Wars that were about nations working on a kind of global diplomacy for our mutual benefit. And we're undoing them at such rapid-fire pace.

  Zoe Leonard

  War, Mutual Benefit, Fire

  Interview with Molly Prentiss, www.interviewmagazine.com. September 13, 2016.

  4 Copy quote

  Show source