War Quotes

The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

E. B. White

The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life and the procedure, the process is its own reward.

Robyn Davidson

People who matter are most aware that everyone else does too.

Malcolm Stevenson Forbes

You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.

Albert Einstein, (attributed)

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat - Oppressed brain.

William Shakespeare

The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

John Stuart Mill, On Liberty

There are many ways of going forward, but only one way of standing still.

Franklin D. Roosevelt

She is not fair to outward view As many maidens be Her loveliness I never knew Until she smiled on me Oh then I saw her eye was bright, A well of love, a spring of light.

Hartley Coleridge

A human action becomes genuinely important when it springs from the soil of a clear - Sighted awareness of the temporality and the ephemerality of everything human. It is only this awareness that can breathe any greatness into an action.

Vaclav Havel

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination. Learning to suspend your imagination and live completely in the very second of the present with no before and no after is the greatest gift a soldier can acquire.

Ernest Hemingway

Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first then seek to win.

Sun Tzu

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

Ralph Waldo Emerson

For there is no question but a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause of war.

Sir Francis Bacon, Of Empire

Any coward can sit in his home and criticize a pilot for flying into a mountain in a fog. But I would rather, by far, die on a mountainside than in bed. What kind of man would live where there is no daring And is life so dear that we should blame men for dying in adventure Is there a better way to die.

Charles Augustus Lindbergh, Jr.

In the modern world, in which thousands of people are dying every hour as a consequence of politics, no writing anywhere can begin to be credible unless it is informed by political awareness and principles. Writers who have neither product utopian trash.

John Berge

The art of leading, in operations large or small, is the art of dealing with humanity, of working diligently on behalf of men, of being sympathetic with them, but equally, of insisting that they make a square facing toward their own problems.

S. L. A. Marshall, Men Against Fire, 1947

Love is like war easy to begin but very hard to stop.

Henry Louis Mencken

May there always be work for your hands to do, May your purse always hold a coin or two. May the sun always shine warm on your windowpane, May a rainbow be certain to follow each rain. May the hand of a friend always be near you, And may God fill your heart with gladness to cheer you.

Blessing Irish

Love is a fire. But whether it is going to warm your hearth or burn down your house, you can never tell.

Joan Crawford

Cowardice asks the question - Is it safe? Vanity asks the question - Is it popular? Expediency asks the question - Is it political? But conscience asks the question - Is it right? There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, popular, or political; but because it is right.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Aristotle

If your house is on fire, warm yourself by it.

Danish prove

A woodland in full color is awesome as a forest fire, in magnitude at least, but a single tree is like a dancing tongue of flame to warm the heart.

Hal Borland

The object of government in peace and in war is not the glory of rulers or of races, but the happiness of the common man.

Lord William Beveridge

Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering pot and the pruning knife.

Margaret Fulle

To look backward for a while is to refresh the eye, to restore it, and to render it the more fit for its prime function of looking forward.

Margaret Fairless Barbe

Make no mistake about it: Operation Desert Storm truly was a victory of good over evil, of freedom over tyranny, of peace over war.

Dan Quayle, remarks at Arlington National Cemetery

There are now two great nations in the world, which starting from different points, seem to be advancing toward the same goal: the Russians and the Anglo - Americans... Each seems called by some secret design of Providence one day to hold in its hands the destinies of half the world.

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America 1835

I look upon the whole world as my fatherland, and every war has to me the horror of a family fued.

Helen Kelle

The avoidance of taxes is the only intellectual pursuit that still carries any reward.

John Maynard Keynes

What seest thou else In the dark backward and abysm of time?

William Shakespeare, "The Tempest", Act 1 scene 2

The good devout man first makes inner preparation for the actions he has later to perform. His outward actions do not draw him into lust and vice; rather it is he who bends them into the shape of reason and right judgement. Who has a stiffer battle to fight than the man who is striving to conquer himself.

Thomas a Kempis

A slight touch of friendly malice and amusement towards those we love keeps our affections for them from turning flat.

Logan Pearsall Smith

If you define cowardice as running away at the first sign of danger, screaming and tripping and begging for mercy, then yes, Mister Brave Man, I guess I am a coward.

Jack Handey Deep Thoughts

Of all the preposterous assumptions of humanity over humanity, nothing exceeds most of the criticisms made on the habits of the poor by the well - Housed, well - warmed, and well - Fed.

Herman Melville

Be sure that it is not you that is mortal, but only your body. For that man whom your outward form reveals is not yourself the spirit is the true self, not that physical figure which and be pointed out by your finger.

Cicero

I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.

Jefferson Davis