World War One Quotes

• 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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• One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

  Agatha Christie

  Peace, War, Winning

  Autobiography (1977) pt. 10

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• We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
  Loved and were loved, and now we lie
  In Flanders fields.

  John McCrae

  Lying, Sunset, Dawn

  John McCrae (2015). “In Flanders Fields and Other Poems”, p.20, Dundurn

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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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• In Flanders fields the poppies blow.

  John McCrae

  Blow, Fields, Poppies

  "In Flanders Fields" l. 1 (1915)

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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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• My prayer is that what we have gone through [World War One] will startle the world into some new realization of the sanctity of life, animal as well as human.

  Christopher Morley

  Life, Prayer, War

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• We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.

  Jeane Kirkpatrick

  Military, War, Party

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• In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place, and in the sky, The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard among the guns below.

  John McCrae

  Blow, Gun, Sky

  Punch 8 Dec. 1915 "In Flanders Fields"

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• I cannot but think we have much to be thankful for, and more still to hope for in the future.

  Winston Churchill

  Hope, Thinking, Being Thankful

  Winston Churchill (1957). “The world crisis”

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• This war proceeds along its terrible path by the slaughter of infantry...I say to myself every day. What is going on while we sit here, while we go away to dinner or home to bed? Nearly, 1000 - Englishmen, Britishers, and the other is America...Everything else is swept away.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Home, America

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• The larks, still bravely singing, fly
  Scarce heard amid the guns below

  John McCrae

  Gun, Singing, Poppies

  'In Flanders Fields' (1915)

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• At the beginning of this War megalomania was the only form of sanity.

  Winston Churchill

  War, World, Sanity

  Winston Churchill, Robert Rhodes James (1980). “Churchill speaks: Winston S. Churchill in peace and war : collected speeches, 1897-1963”, Atheneum

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• There is more blood than paint upon these hands. All those thousands of men killed. We thought it would be a little job, and so it might have been if it had begun in the right way.

  Winston Churchill

  Jobs, War, Men

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• My only consolation for the failure of the Dardanelles was that God wished things to be prolonged in order to sicken mankind of war, and that therefore He had interfered with a project that would have brought the war to a speedier conclusion.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Order, World

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• Grief is like a bomber circling round and dropping its bombs each time the circle brings it overhead; physical pain is like the steady barrage on a trench in World War One, hours if it with no let-up for a moment. Thought is never static pain often is... is it not yet enough?

  C. S. Lewis

  Pain, War, Grief

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• The old wars were decided by their episodes rather than by their tendencies. In this war, the tendencies are far more important than the episodes.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Important, World

  Winston Churchill (2005). “The World Crisis, 1911-1918”, p.533, Simon and Schuster

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• God for a month of power & a good shorthand writer.

  Winston Churchill

  War, World, Months

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• In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder.

  Jan Karon

  Veterans Day, Stress, War

  Jan Karon (2007). “Home to Holly Springs”, p.289, Penguin

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• It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray...We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian.

  Winston Churchill

  War, Fiction, World

  Sir Winston Churchill (1954). “Sir Winston Churchill: a self-portrait”

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• In the time of my parents, before World War One, most people who came to New Zealand from Europe were the more enterprising people; the people who were stronger mentally. It takes a certain amount of imagination to make a life on the other side of the world, the same imagination it takes to climb the tallest mountain.

  Maurice Wilkins

  War, Europe, Imagination

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• The most important thing I would learn in school was that almost everything I would learn in school would be utterly useless. When I was fifteen I knew the principal industries of the Ruhr Valley, the underlying causes of World War One and what Peig Sayers had for her dinner every day...What I wanted to know when I was fifteen was the best way to chat up girls. That is what I still want to know.

  Joseph O'Connor

  Girl, War, School

  Joseph O'Connor (1994). “The secret world of the Irish male”

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• The pioneer labor historian John Commons was not wrong when he wrote around World War One that exploiting and deepening such tensions as outpacing scientific management among U.S. innovations where bossing was concerned. Amidst the general miseries of proletarianization, workers also learned that one source of meager benefits and protections could lie in claiming a white skin.

  David Roediger

  War, Lying, White

  Source: www.counterpunch.org

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• Wars always evolve over time, don't they? Iraq/Afghanistan is different than Vietnam, and Vietnam was different than Korea, and Korea was different than World War One, and so on. Some things remain the same, of course - one side fighting another over ideology or a patch of ground - but there are some aspects of combat life which differ radically than their predecessors.

  Dave Abrams

  War, Fighting, Korea

  Source: therumpus.net

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• I wanted us to go to the Tories when we were strong...not in misfortune to be made an honest woman of.

  Winston Churchill

  Strong, War, Honest Woman

  Winston Churchill (1987). “The Irrepressible Churchill: Stories, Sayings and Impressions of Sir Winston Churchill”, London : Robson Books

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