Great War Quotes

• This is the end and the beginning of an age. This is something far greater than the French Revolution or the Reformation and we live in it.

  H. G. Wells

  War, Age, Revolution

  H. G. Wells (2015). “Delphi Complete Works of H. G. Wells”, p.5437, Delphi Classics

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• I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Inspirational, Peace, War

  Mahatma Gandhi, Dennis Dalton (1996). “Gandhi: Selected Political Writings”, p.43, Hackett Publishing

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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. 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. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Children, Military

  Speech in Washington, 16 Apr. 1953, in Public Papers of Presidents 1953 (1960) p. 182

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• It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Love, Peace, War

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “A Time to Break Silence: The Essential Works of Martin Luther King, Jr., for Students”, p.68, Beacon Press

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• History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

  Ronald Reagan

  Veterans Day, Money, Peace

  United States. President (1981-1989 : Reagan), Ronald Reagan (1984). “Ronald Reagan”

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• The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.

  Franklin D. Roosevelt

  Inspirational, Leadership, Bullying

  First Inaugural Address, 4 Mar. 1933 See Francis Bacon 7; Montaigne 4; Thoreau 16; Wellington 3

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• When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die.

  Jean-Paul Sartre

  Peace, War, Politics

  Le Diable et le bon Dieu (The Devil and the Good Lord, 1951) act 1, first tableau

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• Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, 'This was their finest hour.'

  Winston Churchill

  War, Men, Years

  Speech in House of Commons, 18 June 1940

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• When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Peace, Hate, War

  "The Quotable Dwight D. Eisenhower". Book edited by Elsie Gollagher, p. 219, 1967.

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• Peace is not merely a distant goal that we seek, but a means by which we arrive at that goal.

  Martin Luther King, Jr.

  Peace, War, Mean

  Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (2013). “A Time to Break Silence: The Essential Works of Martin Luther King, Jr., for Students”, p.67, Beacon Press

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• These Are Not The Droids You Are Looking For.

  George Lucas

  War, Jedi Knights, Books And Movies

  George Lucas, Sally Kline (1999). “George Lucas: Interviews”, p.208, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones. In my opinion, there never was a good war or a bad peace. When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

  Benjamin Franklin

  War, Arbitration, Opinion

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• The only thing we have to fear is fear itself-and possibly teh bogey man.

  Pat Paulsen

  Fear, Breast Cancer, Men

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• Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron.

  Dwight D. Eisenhower

  Military, War, Clouds

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• Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.

  Mahatma Gandhi

  Peace, War, Blood

  Mahatma Gandhi (2007). “Gandhi on Non-Violence”, p.70, New Directions Publishing

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• My first wish is, to see this plague of mankind banished from the earth, and the sons and daughters of this world employed in more pleasing and innocent amusements, than in preparing implements, and exercising them, for the destruction of mankind.

  George Washington

  Peace, War, 4th Of July

  "Maxims of Washington: Political, Social, Moral, and Religious".

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• At 8 o'clock in the morning a dense throng of workers - almost 10,000 - assembled in the square, which the police had already occupied well ahead of time. Karl Liebknecht's voice then rang out: 'Down with the War! Down with the Government!' The police immediately rushed at him. For the first time since the beginning of the war open resistance to it had appeared on the streets of the capital. The ice was broken.

  Paul Frolich

  Morning, War, Squares

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• There was no really good true war book during the entire four years of the war. The only true writing that came through during the war was in poetry. One reason for this is that poets are not arrested as quickly as prose writers.

  Ernest Hemingway

  War, Book, Writing

  Ernest Hemingway, William Kozlenko (1942). “Men at War: The Best War Stories of All Time”, New York : Crown Publishers

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• I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on, no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case of musterd gas - the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great musterd coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying their throats are closing and they know they will choke.

  Vera Brittain

  War, Eye, Writing

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• After lunch we went into the garden for coffee and I turned on the Surgeon-General with his graphics, percentages etc. of sick and wounded to entertain the Premier.

  Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig

  War, Coffee, Garden

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• The cries of the wounded had much diminished now, and as we staggered down the road, the reason was only too apparent, for the water was right over the tops of the shell-holes.

  Edwin Campion Vaughan

  War, Water, Shells

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• In any case, the bayonet isn't as important as it used to be. It's more usual now to go into the attack with hand-grenades and your entrenching tool. The sharpened spade is a lighter and more versatile weapon - not only can you get a man under the chin, but more to the point, you can strike a blow with a lot more force behind it. That's especially true if you can bring it down diagonally between the neck and the shoulder, because then you can split down as far as the chest. When you put a bayonet in, it can stick, and you have to give the other man a hefty kick in the guts to get it out.

  Erich Maria Remarque

  War, Blow, Men

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• We were preparing not Peace only, but Eternal Peace. There was about us the halo of some divine mission. We must be alert, stern, righteous and ascetic. For we were bent on doing great, permanent and noble things.

  Harold Nicolson

  War, Remembrance, Noble

  "Peacemaking, 1919".

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• Every war, when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

  George Orwell

  Peace, War, Ubuntu

  George Orwell's review of the book "The Men I Killed" by Brigadier-General F. P. Crozier in "New Statesman and Nation", August 28, 1937.

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• All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

  George Orwell

  Peace, War, Lying

  George Orwell (2016). “Homage to Catalonia / Down and Out in Paris and London”, p.69, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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