War and Peace

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

In war, there is no substitute for victory.

Douglas MacArthur, 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

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

I wish to have no connection with any ship that does not sail fast; for I intend to go in harms way.

John Paul Jones, in War and Peace

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

Aldous Huxley, in Science and Religion and War and Peace

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

Henrik Ibsen, 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

Always remember your weapons system was made by the lowest bidder

Unknown, in War and Peace