— Julius Caesar
Quotes About War
Atatürk draws a bright line around war: when a nation's life faces peril, it may be justified, but outside that, it is murder. Lao Tzu holds that the slaying of multitudes should be mourned with sorrow, and that a victory should be celebrated with the funeral rite. King warns that a nation which spends more on military defense than on social uplift year after year approaches spiritual doom. Stalin observes, bluntly, that death is the solution to all problems. Churchill notes that in war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times. Caesar boasts that he came, saw, and conquered, while Virgil surrenders to love, which conquers all. The conqueror's pride and the poet's grief stand side by side, and neither cancels the other out. Augustine adds a higher glory: to stay war itself with a word rather than to slay men with the sword.
Let your peace be a victory!
— Thus Spoke Zarathustra
This idea struck me: the army is the body: I am the brain. Thinking is my fighting. (15 May 1940)
— The Diary of Virginia Woolf, Volume Five: 1936-1941
Let us show that, if the people abandon the republicans, the republicans do not abandon the people.
— Les Misérables
It is a great deal to fight while despising war, to accept losing everything while still preferring happiness, to face destruction while cherishing the idea of a higher civilization.
— Resistance, Rebellion and Death: Essays
Her maternal instinct told her Natasha had too much of something, and because of this she would not be happy
— War and Peace
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.
— 1984
Peace is not merely the absence of war but the presence of justice, of law, of order —in short, of government.
— On Peace
Courage will now be your best defence against the storm that is at hand-—that and such hope as I bring.
— The Return of the King
You never kill anyone you want to kill in a war, he said to himself.
— For Whom The Bell Tolls
War grows out of ordinary human nature.
— Why Men Fight
At one time I had given much thought to why men were so very rarely capable of living for an ideal. Now I saw that many, no, all men were capable of dying for one.
— Demian. Die Geschichte von Emil Sinclairs Jugend
It is love and reason,' I said,'fleeing from all the madness of war.
— A Dream of Armageddon
Make no mistake: peaceful madmen are ahead of the future.
— Memories of My Melancholy Whores
When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.
— Le diable et le bon dieu
No honest journalist should be willing to describe himself or herself as 'embedded.' To say, 'I'm an embedded journalist' is to say, 'I'm a government Propagandist.
— Imperial Ambitions: Conversations on the Post-9/11 World
They use the pretext of avoiding war, to make you swallow any kind of peace, said Paul. They use the pretext of a revolution to involve us in any kind of war, said Jardinet.
— The Blood of Others
it is a higher glory... to stay war itself with a word, than to slay men with the sword, and to procure or maintain peace by peace, not by war.
— The Political Writings of St. Augustine
Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.
— The Art of War
A prince must not have any other object nor any other thought… but war, its institutions, and its discipline; because that is the only art befitting one who commands.
— The Prince
Let me ask you one question / Is your money that goodWill it buy you forgiveness / Do you think that it couldI think you will find / When your death takes its toll / All the money you made / Will never buy back your soul
— The Bob Dylan Scrapbook: 1956-1966
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
— This I Believe: The Personal Philosophies of One Hundred Thoughtful Men and Women
Love conquers all. Let Love then smile at our defeat.
— The Eclogues
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children.
— The Nobel Peace Prize Lecture