 |
 | ""War," says Machiavelli, "ought to be the only study of a prince;"
and by a prince he means every sort of state, however constituted. "He
ought," says this great political doctor, "to consider peace only as a
breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes ability
to execute military plans. "A meditation on the conduct of political
societies made old Hobbes imagine that war was the state of nature." | |
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Edmund Burke
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| "A visitor from Mars could easily pick out the civilized nations.
They have the best implements of war." | |
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Herbert V. Prochnow
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| "Aggression unopposed becomes a contagious disease." | |
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Jimmy Carter
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| "All delays are dangerous in war." | |
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John Dryden
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| "All right, they"re on our left, they"re on our right, they"re in
front of us, they"re behind us....they can"t get away this time.
[USMC,when surrounded by 8 enemy divisions during the Korean War.]" | |
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General "Chesty" Puller
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| "All war is deception." | |
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Sun Tzu
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| "All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers." | |
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Francois Fenelon
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| "Are bombs the only way of setting fire to the spirit of a people? Is
the human will as inert as the past two world-wide wars would
indicate?" | |
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Gregory Clark
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| "As long as war is looked upon as wicked, it will always have its
fascination. When it is looked on as vulgar, it will cease to be
popular." | |
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Oscar Wilde
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| "Be at war with your vices; at peace with your neighbors, and let
every new year find you a better man." | |
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Benjamin Franklin
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| "Both parties deprecated war; but one of them would make war rather
than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than
let it perish. And the war came." | |
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Abraham Lincoln
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| "Either war is obsolete or men are." | |
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R. Buckminster Fuller
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| "Everyone"s a pacifist between wars. It"s like being a vegetarian
between meals." | |
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Colman McCarthy
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| "Ez fer war, I call it murder,? There you hev it plain an" flat; I
don"t want to go no furder Than my Testyment fer that. .... . An" you "ve
gut to git up airly Ef you want to take in God." | |
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James Russell Lowell
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| "For Americans war is almost all of the time a nuisance, and military
skill is a luxury like Mah-Jongg. But when the issue is brought home to
them, war becomes as important, for the necessary period, as business or
sport. And it is hard to decide which is likely to be the more ominous for
the Axis - an American decision that this is sport, or that it is
business." | |
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D. W. Brogan
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| "Genuine religion is not so much a matter of feeling as a matter of
principle." | |
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Alexander Pope
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| "Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every
man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud.
I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will
crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace." | |
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Charles Sumner
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| "Go, tell the Spartans, thou who passeth by, That here, obedient to
their laws, we lie." | |
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Siminides
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| "He who lives by the sword dies by the sword." | |
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Proverb
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| "Here dead lie we because we did not choose To live and shame the
land from which we sprung Life to be sure, is nothing much to lose; But
young men think it is, and we were young." | |
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Alfred Edward Housman
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| "How despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds
than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under
the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder." | |
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Albert Einstein
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| "I do not believe in God because I do not believe in Mother
Goose." | |
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Clarence Seward Darrow
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| "I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, "Mother, what was
war?"" | |
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Eve Merriam
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| "I have always said that a conference was held for one reason only,
to give everybody chance to get sore at everybody else. Sometimes it takes
two or three conferences to scare up a war, but generally one will do
it." | |
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Will Rogers
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| "I will ignore all ideas for new works on engines of war, the
invention of which has reached its limits and for whose improvements I see
no further hope." | |
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Sextus Julius Frontinus
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| "Ideas are the great warriors of the world, And a war that has no
idea behind it, is simply a brutality." | |
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James Garfield
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| "If it were proved to me that in making war, my ideal had a chance of
being realized, I would still say "no" to war. For one does not create a
human society on mounds of corpses." | |
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Louis Lecoin
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| "If the B2 is invisible, just announce you"ve built 100 of them and
don"t build them." | |
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John Kasich
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| "If there were no bad people there would be no good lawyers." | |
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Charles Dickens
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| "In executing an Artful Strategy: When ten times greater, surround
them; When five times greater, attack them; When two times greater,
scatter them. If the opponent is ready to challenge: When fewer in number,
be ready to evade them; When unequal to the match, be ready to avoid them.
Even when the smaller opponents have a strong position, the larger
opponent will capture them." | |
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Tzu Sun
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| "In his later reminiscences, Ulysses S. Grant roundly condemned the
Mexican War in which he had served, and even saw the Civil War as a sort
of karmic retribution for America"s sins against its southern neighbor:
"Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the
annexation [of Texas] was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For
myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the
war, which resulted, as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger
against a weaker nation. It was an instance of a republic following the
bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their
desire to acquire additional territory."" | |
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Ulysses S. Grant
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| "In the Western Hemisphere the adherence of the United States to the
Monroe Doctrine may force the United States, however reluctantly, in
flagrant cases of such wrong doing or impotence, to the exercise of an
international police power." | |
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Theodore Roosevelt
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| "In war, there are no unwounded soldiers." | |
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Jose Narosky
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| "It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and
wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is
more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere
spectator." | |
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Mahatma Gandhi
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| "It is well that war is so terrible, or we should get too fond of
it." | |
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Robert E. Lee
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| "It seems like such a terrible shame that innocent civilians have to
get hurt in wars, otherwise combat would be such a wonderfully healthy way
to rid the human race of unneeded trash." | |
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Fred Woodworth
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| "It simply is not true that war never settles anything." | |
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Felix Frankfurter
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| "John Dalton"s records, carefully preserved for a century, were
destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only
the living who are killed in war." | |
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Isaac Asimov
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| "Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities,
War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth
in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal
that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of
his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no
quarrel... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off
his hands and works for "the universal brotherhood of man" - with his
mouth." | |
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Mark Twain
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| "Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to
mankind." | |
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John Fitzgerald Kennedy
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| "Mankind will never win lasting peace so long as men use their full
resources only in tasks of war. While we are yet at peace, let us mobilize
the potentialities, particularly the moral and spiritual potentialities,
which we usually reserve for war." | |
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John Foster Dulles
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| "Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with
himself." | |
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Francis Meehan
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| "Men like war: they do not hold much sway over birth, so they make up
for it with death. Unlike women, men menstruate by shedding other people"s
blood." | |
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Lucy Ellman
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| "Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is
the one thing that stops women from laughing at them." | |
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John Fowles
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| "Men were made for war. Without it they wandered greyly about,
getting under the feet of the women, who were trying to organize the
really important things of life." | |
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Alice Thomas Ellis
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| "Military power wins battles, but spiritual power wins wars." | |
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General George Catlett Marshall
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| "More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars
? yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of
settling the differences between governments." | |
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Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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| "My views and feelings (are) in favor of the abolition of war ? and I
hope it is practicable, by improving the mind and morals of society,
to lessen the disposition to war; but of its abolition I despair." | |
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Thomas Jefferson
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| "Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation
has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough
to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot
have both." | |
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Abraham Flexner
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| "Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is
not a crime. Ask the infantry and ask the dead." | |
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Ernest Hemingway
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| "No gilded dome swells from the lowly roof to catch the morning or
evening beam; but the love and gratitude of united America settle upon it
in one eternal sunshine. From beneath that humble roof went forth the
intrepid and unselfish warrior, the magistrate who knew no glory but his
country"s good; to that he returned, happiest when his work was done.
There he lived in noble simplicity, there he died in glory and peace.
While it stands, the latest generations of the grateful children of
America will make this pilgrimage to it as to a shrine; and when it shall
fall, if fall it must, the memory and the name of Washington shall shed an
eternal glory on the spot." | |
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Edward Everett
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| "Nobody ever fergits where he buried a hatchet." | |
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Frank McKinney "Kin" Hubbard
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| "Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and
die." | |
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Herbert Clark Hoover
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| "Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more, Or close the
wall up with our English dead! In peace there"s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility; But when the blast of war blows in our
ears, Then imitate the action of the tiger: Stiffen the sinews, summon up
the blood. Disguise fair nature with hard-favour"d rage; Then lend the eye
a terrible aspect; .... Now set the teeth and stretch the nostril wide,
Hold hard the breath and bend up every spirit To his full height. On, on,
you noblest English." | |
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William Shakespeare
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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." | |
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Agatha Christie
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| "One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great
Society... shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam." | |
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Martin Luther King Jr.
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| "Only two great groups of animals, men and ants, indulge in highly
organized mass warfare." | |
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Charles H. Maskins
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| "Our chiefs are killed.... The little children are freezing to
death.... My people have no blankets, no food.... My heart is sick and
sad.... I will fight no more forever." | |
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Chief Joseph
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| "Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a
disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice." | |
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Baruch Spinoza
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| "Sometime they"ll give a war and nobody will come." | |
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Carl Sandburg
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| "Sometimes I think war is God"s way of teaching us geography." | |
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Paul Rodriguez
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| "The arms race can kill, though the weapons themselves may never be
used ... by their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to
starve." | |
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Unknown
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| "The bomb that fell on Hiroshima fell on America too. It fell on no
city, no munitions plants, no docks. It erased no church, vaporized no
public buildings, reduced no man to his atomic elements. But it fell, it
fell." | |
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Hermann Hagedorn
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| "The classic way to force other nations to do what they did not want
to used to be war. Today there is a much bigger payoff in "getting others
to want what you want," and that has to do with "cultural attraction,"
"ideology" and "agenda setting." Think of the U.S. as a gambler who, can
play simultaneously at every table that matters?and with more chips than
anybody else. It is the largest economy, the fastest-running job machine
and the world"s biggest exporter. Whichever heap you choose, America sits
on top of it." | |
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Josef Joffe
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| "The day when nobody comes back from a war it will be because the war
has at last been properly organized." | |
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Thomas Vian
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| "The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is
imbecility." | |
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John A. Fisher
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| "The essence of war is violence." | |
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Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay
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| "The Establishment center... has led us into the stupidest and
cruelest war in all history. That war is a moral and political disaster -
a terrible cancer eating away at the soul of our nation." | |
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George McGovern
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| "The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just
war." | |
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Gerard Didier Erasmus
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| "The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the
other bastard die for his." | |
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General George S. Patton
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| "The only winner in the War of 1812 was Tchaikovsky." | |
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Solomon Short
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| "The outcome of the war is in our hands; the outcome of words is in
the council." | |
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Homer
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| "The quickest way to end a war is to lose it." | |
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George Orwell
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| "The real war will never get in the books." | |
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Walt Whitman
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| "The surest way to prevent war is not to fear it." | |
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John Randolph of Roanoke
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| "The tragedy of war is that it uses man"s best to do man"s
worst." | |
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Harry Emerson Fosdick
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| "There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better
achieve without it." | |
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Henry Havelock Ellis
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| "There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or
force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that
even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict
torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever." | |
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Thomas A. Edison
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| "There would be no great ones if there were no little ones." | |
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George Herbert
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| "They"ve got us surrounded again, the poor bastards." | |
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Creighton W. Abrams, Jr.
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| "To the memory of the Man, first in war, first in peace, and first in
the hearts of his countrymen." | |
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Colonel Henry Lee
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| "Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but the
capacity to prevent it." | |
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| "Victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory
however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no
survival." | |
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Sir Winston Churchill
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| "War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts
the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to face
it." | |
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Benito Mussolini
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| "War does not determine who is right ? only who is left." | |
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Bertrand Russell
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| "War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at
the expense of his fellow man." | |
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Napoleon Hill
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| "War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow." | |
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Martin Luther King, Jr.
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| "War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory." | |
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Georges Clemenceau
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| "War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory." | |
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Sarah Cleghorn
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| "War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is
worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is
willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal
safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless
made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." | |
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John Stuart Mill
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| "War is hell." | |
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William Tecumseh Sherman
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| "War is like love, it always finds a way." | |
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Bertolt Brecht
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| "War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus." | |
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Antoine de Saint-Exupery
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| "War is not at all such a difficult art as people think.... In
reality it would seem that he is vanquished who is afraid of his adversary
and the the whole secret lies in that." | |
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Napoléon Bonaparte
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| "War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into
absolute damnation. It"s peace that"s wanted. Some better peace than the
one you started with." | |
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Lois McMaster Bujold
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| "War is not nice." | |
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Barbara Pierce Bush
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| "War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict
men." | |
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Cardinal Richelieu
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| "War is the science of destruction." | |
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John Abbott
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| "War is the unfolding of miscalculations." | |
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Barbara W. Tuchman
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| "War is, at first, the hope that one will be better off; next, the
expectation that the other fellow will be worse off; then, the
satisfaction that he isn"t any better off; and, finally, the surprise at
everyone"s being worse off." | |
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Karl Kraus
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| "War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad
principles and tyrants, and so saves societies." | |
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Charles Caleb Colton
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| "War therefore is an act of violence to compel our opponent to fulfil
our will." | |
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Carl von Clausewitz
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| "War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with
larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands." | |
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Henry Louis Mencken
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| "War would end if the dead could return." | |
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Stanley Baldwin
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| "War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though
they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant,
finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of
cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these
savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat
those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill?" | |
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Guy de Maupassant
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| "Wars are caused by undefended wealth." | |
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General Douglas MacArthur
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| "Wars are not acts of God. They are caused by man, by man-made
institutions, by the way in which man has organized his society. What man
has made, man can change." | |
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Frederick Moore Vinson
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| "Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the
spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the
victory." | |
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General George Smith Patton, Jr.
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| "Wars never hurt anybody except the people who die." | |
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Salvador Dali
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| "Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder....
the master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always
fought the battles." | |
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Eugene Victor Debs
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| "Wars, horrid wars. ? Bella horrida bella." | |
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Publius Vergilius Maro Virgil
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| "WASHINGTONIAN, n. A Potomac tribesman who exchanged the privilege of
governing himself for the advantage of good government. In justice to him
it should be said that he did not want to." | |
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Ambrose Gwinett Bierce
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| "We best avoid wars by taking even physical action to stop small
ones." | |
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Sir Anthony Eden
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| "We do nto want any more wars, but a man is a damn fool to think
there will not be any more of them." | |
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General Smedly Darlington Butler
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| "We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants
something more than it wants peace." | |
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Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
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| "We hear war called murder. It is not: It is suicide." | |
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Ramsay MacDonald
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| "We"re eye-ball to eye-ball and the other fellow just blinked." | |
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Dean Rusk
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| "What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of
God and nature take sides with one party." | |
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Henry David Thoreau
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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. War settles
nothing." | |
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General Dwight David Eisenhower
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| "When the rich wage war, it"s the poor who die." | |
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Jean-Paul Sartre
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| "When wars do come, they fall upon the many, the producing class, who
are the sufferers." | |
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Ulysses S Grant
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| "When women have a voice in national and international affairs, wars
will cease forever." | |
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Augusta Stowe-Gullen
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| "Whence comes war and fighting, and factions? Whence but from the
body and the lust of the body? Wars are occasioned by the love of money,
and money has to be acquired for the same and service of the body." | |
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Plato
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| "Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You"d treat
if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown." | |
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Thomas Hardy
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