Aphorisms Galore!

War and Peace

74 aphorisms  ·  one comment

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/phdwhmxt  ·   Fair (632 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

I prefer the most unjust peace to the most righteous war.

Cicero, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/owyunzte  ·   Fair (354 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.

Winston Churchill, (on formal declarations of war), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/pfpxawj8  ·   Fair (339 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

To jaw-jaw is better than to war-war.

Winston Churchill, (on Korean War negotiations), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/ymliwjpf  ·   Fair (483 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

War is not nice.

Barbara Bush, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/ircejxuc  ·   Fair (494 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

You can get more of what you want with a kind word and a gun than you can with just a kind word.

Al Capone, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/dgf0pdxo  ·   Fair (344 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject.

Winston Churchill, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/tldrjftc  ·   Fair (1115 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Riot: A popular entertainment given to the military by innocent bystanders.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/sxpzikiy  ·   Fair (810 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

W. H. Auden, "Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier", in War and Peace

tiny.ag/zl0ikbnv  ·   Fair (427 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Coward: one who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

Ambrose Bierce, in Vice and Virtue and War and Peace

tiny.ag/fiog0z7u  ·   Fair (1221 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics and War and Peace

tiny.ag/ghcdyyrg  ·   Fair (973 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Cannon: An instrument used in the rectification of national boundaries.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/2cctxyhg  ·   Fair (610 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

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, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/2flecxec  ·   Fair (344 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.

John F. Kennedy, (inaugural speech, 1961), in Law and Politics and War and Peace

tiny.ag/la65dtiv  ·   Fair (1022 ratings)  ·  submitted 1998

It was involuntary. They sank my boat.

John F. Kennedy, (comment when asked about his heroism), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/kxyqnliw  ·   Fair (318 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.

John F. Kennedy, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/aolzpl1x  ·   Fair (158 ratings)  ·  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/l9ib3pad  ·   Fair (323 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

Groucho Marx, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/5i2ylath  ·   Fair (313 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

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

Groucho Marx, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/r3davdhl  ·   Fair (427 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

In war, there is no substitute for victory.

Douglas MacArthur, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/4kgkvwyo  ·   Fair (170 ratings)  ·  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