War and Peace

War is not nice.

Barbara Bush, in War and Peace

A pint of sweat saves a gallon of blood.

George Patton, in War and Peace and Work and Recreation

The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his.

George Patton, in War and Peace

Another victory like that and we are done for.

Pyrrhus, in War and Peace

I once played a sheriff who thought he could do the job without a gun. I was dead in twenty-seven minutes of a thirty minute show.

Ronald Reagan, in War and Peace

War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men.

Cardinal Richelieu, in War and Peace

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded... I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed... I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, (Chautauqua, New York, August 14, 1936), in War and Peace

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

Close the book and open your heart.

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

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Bertrand Russell, in War and Peace

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ambrose Bierce, in Vice and Virtue and War and Peace

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

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

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

War hath no fury like a non-combatant.

Charles Edward Montague, in War and Peace

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

Benito Mussolini, in War and Peace

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