QUOTES AND APHORISMS ON WAR 1

If the frontline people do count, you couldn't prove it by examining the reward systems in most organizations.

Karl Albrecht (American management consultant, speaker, and author of business books)

War on nations changes maps. War on poverty maps change.

Muhammad Ali (1942-, American boxer)

The most important wars in history were the result of trivial causes. Those who know when they have had enough are wealthy.

Fred Van Amburgh

A coward is one who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.

Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914, American author, editor, journalist, "The Devil's Dictionary")

O can't you see, brother -- Death's a congested road for fighters now, and hero a cheap label.

C. D. Andrews (1913-1992, British poet, scholar)

The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.

Hannah Arendt (1906-1975, German-born American political philosopher)

In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action.

Aristotle (BC 384-322, Greek philosopher)

From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war.

Margot Asquith (1864-1945, British socialite)

A skillful leech is better far, than half a hundred men of war.

Samuel Butler (1612-1680, British poet, satirist)

War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.

Walter Bagehot (1826-1977, British economist, critic)

Necessity can set me helpless on my back, but she cannot keep me there; nor can four walls limit my vision.

Margaret Fairless Barber

The cannon thunders... limbs fly in all directions... one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice... it's humanity in search of happiness.

Charles Baudelaire (1821-1867, French poet)

It takes twenty years or more of peace to make a man; it takes only twenty seconds of war to destroy him.

Baudouin I (1930-1993, King of the Belgians)

A wage hike is very hard to take away, but bonuses and profit-sharing can disappear very quickly in hard times...More people are realizing that bonuses look like raises, but really aren't.

Al Bauman (Economist with the American Bureau of Labor Statistics)

If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.

Ruth Benedict (1887-1948, American anthropologist)

To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.

Walter Benjamin (1982-1940, German critic, philosopher)

All war represents a failure of diplomacy.

Tony Benn (1925-, British politician)

The inevitableness, the idealism, and the blessing of war, as an indispensable and stimulating law of development, must be repeatedly emphasized.

Friedrich Von Bernhardi (1849-1930, German general)

If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for, but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia.

Hans A. Bethe (1906-, German physicist, winner of the 1967 Nobel Prize in physics)

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

Otto Von Bismarck (1815-1898, Russian statesman, Prime Minister)

Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!

Alexander Blok (1880-1922, Russian poet)

Neither situations nor people can be altered by the interference of an outsider. If they are to be altered, that alteration must come from within.

Phyllis Bottome (1884-1963, American writer)

For cowards the road of desertion should be left open; they will carry over to the enemy nothing, but their fears.

John Christian Bovee (1820-1904, American author, lawyer)

Wars can be prevented just as surely as they can be provoked, and we who fail to prevent them must share in the guilt for the dead.

Omar Nelson Bradley (1893-1981, American general)

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956, German dramatist, poet)

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize, there stands myself. And what I do not recognize, I shall continue not to recognize.

Andre Breton (1989-1966, French surrealist)

You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.

Buddha (568-488 BC, Indian born, founder of Buddhism)

How many feasible projects have miscarried through despondency, and been strangled in their birth by a cowardly imagination.

Jeremy Collier (1650-1726, British clergyman, conjuror)

Faint heart never won fair lady.

Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616, Spanish novelist, dramatist, poet)

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.

Winston Churchill (1874-1965, British statesman, Prime Minister)

The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money.

Marcus T. Cicero (c. 106-43 BC, Roman orator, politician)

In war, more than anywhere else in the world, things happen differently from what we had expected, and look differently when near from what they did at a distance.

Karl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831, Russian general)

War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of politics by other means.

Karl Von Clausewitz (1780-1831, Russian general)

It is far easier to make war than to make peace.

Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929, French statesman)

A 'just war' is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.

Alexander Cockburn (1941-, Anglo-Irish journalist)

That cowardice is incorrigible which the love of power cannot overcome.

Charles Caleb Colton (1780-1832, British sportsman writer)

He who wishes to secure the good of others has already secured his own.

Confucius (BC 551-479, Chinese ethical teacher, philosopher)

To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.

Confucius (BC 551-479, Chinese ethical teacher, philosopher)

Blessings ever wait on virtuous deeds, and though a late, a sure reward succeeds.

William Congreve (1670-1729, British dramatist)

I would often be a coward, but for the shame of it.

Ralph Connor

Perhaps the reward of the spirit who tries is not the goal but the exercise.

E. V. Cooke

The giving of blood is imbued with the psychology of peace, for it leaves its humanitarian mark in the hearts of those who give for their fellowman.

Red Cross Courier

That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together.

Noel Coward (1899-1973, British writer)

Life is a compromise of what your ego wants to do, what experience tells you to do, and what your nerves let you do.

Bruce Crampton

Vice is its own reward. It is virtue which, if it is to be marketed with consumer appeal, must carry Green Shield stamps.

Quentin Crisp (1908-1999, British author)

The idea of thanking staff should mean giving them something that they would never buy for themselves.

Jayne Crook (American business executive)

No country has suffered so much from the ruins of war while being at peace as the American.

Edward Dahlberg (1900-1977, American author, critic)

Our young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which not only adds to the national honor but uplifts a nation and develops patriotism and courage. That is all true. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul a people.

Rebecca Harding Davis (1831-1910, American author)

A new kind of award has been added -- the deathbed award. It is not an award of any kind. Either the recipient has not acted at all, or was not nominated, or did not win the award the last few times around. It is intended to relieve the guilty conscience of the Academy members and save face in front of the public. The Academy has the horrible taste to have a star, choking with emotion, present this deathbed award so that there can be no doubt in anybody's mind why the award is so hurriedly given. Lucky is the actor who is too sick to watch the proceedings on television.

Marlene Dietrich (1904-1992, German-born American film actor)

A new kind of award has been added -- the deathbed award. It is not an award of any kind. Either the recipient has not acted at all, or was not nominated, or did not win the award the last few times around. It is intended to relieve the guilty conscience of the Academy members and save face in front of the public. The Academy has the horrible taste to have a star, choking with emotion, present this deathbed award so that there can be no doubt in anybody's mind why the award is so hurriedly given. Lucky is the actor who is too sick to watch the proceedings on television.

Marlene Dietrich (1904-1992, German-born American film actor)

War is the trade of Kings.

John Dryden (1631-1700, British poet, dramatist, critic)

War, he sang, is toil and trouble; Honor but an empty bubble.

John Dryden (1631-1700, British poet, dramatist, critic)

Everyone in our culture wants to win a prize. Perhaps that is the grand lesson we have taken with us from kindergarten in the age of perversions of Dewey-style education: everyone gets a ribbon, and praise becomes a meaningless narcotic to soothe egoistic distemper.

Gerald Early (1952-, American author)

America is addicted to wars of distraction.

Barbara Ehrenreich (1941-, American author, columnist)

Covetousness like jealousy, when it has taken root, never leaves a person but with their life. Cowardice is the dread of what will happen.

Epictetus (50-138, Phrygian philosopher)

I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)

Keep on sowing your seed, for you never know which will grow -- perhaps it all will.

Albert Einstein (1879-1955, German-born American physicist)

Every gun that is fired, 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. The 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.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969, American President (34th))

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 (1890-1969, American President (34th))

The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969, American President (34th))

The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.

Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969, American President (34th))

War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.

T. S. Eliot (1888-1965, American-born British poet, critic)

I feel sure that coups d'etat would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.

Edmond and Jules De Goncourt (1822-1896, French writers)

The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)

The triumphs of peace have been in some proximity to war. Whilst the hand was still familiar with the sword-hilt, whilst the habits of the camp were still visible in the port and complexion of the gentleman, his intellectual power culminated; the compression and tension of these stern conditions is a training for the finest and softest arts, and can rarely be compensated in tranquil times, except by some analogous vigor drawn from occupations as hardy as war.

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882, American poet, essayist)

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.

Desiderius Erasmus (c.1466-1536, Dutch humanist)

A coward turns away, but a brave man's choice is danger.

Euripides (BC 480-406, Greek tragic poet)

Those who actually set out to see the fall of a city or those who choose to go to a front line, are obviously asking themselves to what extent they are cowards. But the tests they set themselves -- there is a dead body, can you bear to look at it? -- are nothing in comparison with the tests that are sprung on them. It is not the obvious tests that matter (do you go to pieces in a mortar attack?) but the unexpected ones (here is a man on the run, seeking your help -- can you face him honestly?).

James Fenton (1949-, British poet, critic)

Moderation in war is imbecility.

Admiral John Fisher

I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone, are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen; otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged. Everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.

Anne Frank (1929-1945, German Jewish refugee, diarist)

What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790, American scientist, publisher, diplomat)

We would be cowards, if we had courage enough.

Thomas Fuller (1608-1661, British clergyman, author)

Cowards can never be moral.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian political, spiritual leader)

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian political, spiritual leader)

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.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian political, spiritual leader)

Morality is contraband in war.

Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948, Indian political, spiritual leader)

Cowards are cruel, but the brave love mercy and delight to save.

John Gay (1688-1732, British playwright, poet)

Unless they are immediate victims, the majority of mankind behaves as if war was an act of God which could not be prevented; or they behave as if war elsewhere was none of their business. It would be a bitter cosmic joke if we destroy ourselves due to atrophy of the imagination.

Martha Gellhorn (1908-1998, American journalist, author)

How many joys are crushed under foot because people look up at the sky and disregard what is at their feet?

Catharina Elisabetha Goethe

The coward threatens when he is safe.

Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749-1832, German poet, dramatist, novelist)

The thorns which I have reaped are of the tree I planted.

George Noel Gordon

War is the great scavenger of thought. It is the sovereign disinfectant, and its red stream of blood is the Condy's Fluid that cleans out the stagnant pools and clotted channels of the intellect. We have awakened from an opium-dream of comfort, of ease, of that miserable poltroonery of "the sheltered life." Our wish for indulgence of every sort, our laxity of manners, our wretched sensitiveness to personal inconvenience, these are suddenly lifted before us in their true guise as the specters of national decay; and we have risen from the lethargy of our dilettantism to lay them, before it is too late, by the flashing of the unsheathed sword.

Sir Edmund Gosse

A reward cannot be valued if it is not understood.

Phillip C. Grant (American academic)

The award of a pure gold medal for poetry would flatter the recipient unduly: no poem ever attains such carat purity.

Robert Graves (1895-1985, British poet, novelist)

War has been the most convenient pseudo-solution for the problems of twentieth-century capitalism. It provides the incentives to modernization and technological revolution which the market and the pursuit of profit do only fitfully and by accident, it makes the unthinkable (such as votes for women and the abolition of unemployment) not merely thinkable but practicable. What is equally important, it can re-create communities of men and give a temporary sense to their lives by uniting them against foreigners and outsiders. This is an achievement beyond the power of the private enterprise economy when left to itself.

E. J. Hobsbawm (1917-, British historian)

War is hell and all that, but it has a good deal to recommend it. It wipes out all the small nuisances of peace time.

Ian Hay

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.

William Hazlitt (1778-1830, British essayist)

Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.

Joseph Heller (1923-, American author)

Like Olympic medals and tennis trophies, all they signified was that the owner had done something of no benefit to anyone more capably than everyone else.

Joseph Heller (1923-, American author)

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961, American writer)

I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.

Ernest Hemingway (1898-1961, American writer)

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow men.

Napoleon Hill (1883-1970, American speaker, author, "Think And Grow Rich")

Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679, British philosopher)

When cowardice is made respectable, its followers are without number both from among the weak and the strong; it easily becomes a fashion.

Eric Hoffer (1902-1983, American author, philosopher)

I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.

Abbie Hoffman (1936-1989, American radical activist, author)

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.

Herbert Clark Hoover (1874-1964, American President (31st))

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