Aphorisms Galore!

War and Peace

74 aphorisms  ·  one comment

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/crui0h1u  ·  submitted 1997

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, (inaugural speech, 1944), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/v6pxskz7  ·  submitted 1999 by Dr Nathan Rozenfarb

Close the book and open your heart.

Nathan Rozenfarb, (on religious conflicts), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/qk0rnn17  ·  submitted 1997

When the rich make war it's the poor that die.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in War and Peace and Wealth and Poverty

tiny.ag/db2sazsg  ·  submitted 1997

Today the real test of power is not the capacity to make war but the capacity to prevent it.

Anne O'Hare McCormick, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/9pd1qmsc  ·  submitted 1999

One moment on the battlefield is worth a thousand years of peace.

Benito Mussolini, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/jaishdmt  ·  submitted 1997

War hath no fury like a non-combatant.

Charles Edward Montague, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/ucs9vnd3  ·  submitted 1997

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.

John Stuart Mill, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/dnj7czjw  ·  submitted 1998

Mankind must give up war in the Atomic Era. What is at stake is the life or death of humanity.

Albert Einstein, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/5i2ylath  ·  submitted 1997

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

Groucho Marx, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/l9ib3pad  ·  submitted 1997

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

Groucho Marx, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/4kgkvwyo  ·  submitted 1997

I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was... an arctic wilderness.

Steve Martin, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/r3davdhl  ·  submitted 1997

In war, there is no substitute for victory.

Douglas MacArthur, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/aolzpl1x  ·  submitted 1997

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency, foresight and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, even two blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

Henry Kissinger, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/ry32bjva  ·  submitted 1997

Catch-22 (paperback)

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/rkg7iuvl  ·  submitted 1997

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Charles de Gaulle, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/5mrm7cdg  ·  submitted 1997

The Greek Way (paperback)

It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country. The Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies.

Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way, in Life and Death and War and Peace

tiny.ag/qgj3ivvu  ·  submitted 1997

You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.

Henrik Ibsen, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/ognqp9t4  ·  submitted 1997

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

Aldous Huxley, in Science and Religion and War and Peace

tiny.ag/piklxjab  ·  submitted 1997

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo, in Success and Failure and War and Peace

tiny.ag/ldizacqu  ·  submitted 1997

Foundation (paperback)

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Isaac Asimov, Foundation (Salvor Hardin), in War and Peace and Wisdom and Ignorance