War and Peace

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

Bertrand Russell, 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

I am become death, shatterer of worlds.

Robert J. Oppenheimer, (quoting the Bhagavadgita after witnessing the first nuclear explosion), in War and Peace

Isn't the best defense always a good attack?

Ovid, in War and Peace

Every soldier is an enemy.

Erno Paasilinna, 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

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

Steve Martin, in War and Peace

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

Groucho Marx, in War and Peace

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

Groucho Marx, in War and Peace

In war, there is no substitute for victory.

Douglas MacArthur, in 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

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

War is not nice.

Barbara Bush, in War and Peace