War Quotes: Reflecting on the Consequences of Conflict and the Quest for Peace
Contemplating the Nature of War
War is a devastating and destructive force that has shaped the course of history and impacted countless lives. It represents the darkest aspects of humanity, marked by violence, loss, and suffering. In this article, we delve into the realm of war and present a collection of poignant quotes that encourage us to reflect on its consequences, advocate for peace, and strive for a world free from the ravages of conflict.
War arises from a myriad of complex factors, including political disputes, ideological differences, and the struggle for power. It tears apart communities, fractures societies, and inflicts immeasurable pain on individuals and families. It is a stark reminder of the urgent need for dialogue, diplomacy, and compassionate understanding.
Words of Reflection: Quotes that Advocate for Peace
Throughout history, philosophers, activists, and individuals who have experienced the horrors of war have shared their insights and reflections on the futility and tragedy of armed conflict. Their words serve as a reminder of the profound cost of war and inspire us to work tirelessly towards building a world where peace prevails. Below, we present a collection of thought-provoking war quotes that invite contemplation, compassion, and a renewed commitment to pursuing peaceful solutions.
Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‘War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.’
I was born into Sudan’s civil war, and before I could read or write, I was using an AK47 in the conflict between the Muslim north and Animist/Christian south over the land and natural resources.
Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It’s the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else’s pain is as meaningful as your own.
Being over seventy is like being engaged in a war. All our friends are going or gone and we survive amongst the dead and the dying as on a battlefield.
We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.
Nothing binds a people to their leader like a common enemy. Voters don’t change governments during war.
The Muslims are, as a group, attacking people because under the Quran, there is the house of Islam, and outside of it, there’s the house of war.
One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society… shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.
What is more immoral than war?
More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars – yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.
World War II was the last government program that really worked.
Music is a weapon in the war against unhappiness.
Everybody has forgotten that Russia helped start the Second World War.
Let us not be deceived we are today in the midst of a cold war.
The next war… may well bury Western civilization forever.
There are two ways to fight the United States military: asymmetrically and stupid. Asymmetrically means you’re going to try to avoid our strengths. In the 1991 Gulf War, it’s like we called Saddam’s army out into the schoolyard and beat up that army.
I was not an anthropology student prior to the war. I took it up as part of a personal readjustment following some bewildering experiences as an infantryman and later as a prisoner of war in Dresden, Germany. The science of the Study of Man has been extremely satisfactory from that personal standpoint.
I used to think that the Civil War was our country’s greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate.
Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.
This union has been divided in like a civil war – brother against brother – sister against sister. And I’m pulling it together. We’ve already seen evidence of that in New York, in Pennsylvania, in California. The first thing is we have to get on the same page. We have to be united in one cause.
I worked night and day for twelve years to prevent the war, but I could not. The North was mad and blind, would not let us govern ourselves, and so the war came.
Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.
God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice.
War is wrong. Conscription for war is inconsistent with freedom of conscience, which is not merely the right to believe but to act on the degree of truth that one receives, to follow a vocation which is God-inspired and God-directed.
I find by my calculations, which are according to revealed inspiration, that the sword of death is now approaching us, in the shape of pestilence, war more horrible than has been known in three lifetimes, and famine.
One may know how to gain a victory, and know not how to use it.
How do we prevent Iran developing an atomic bomb, when, on the American side, dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not recognised as a war crime?
Basketball is like war in that offensive weapons are developed first, and it always takes a while for the defense to catch up.
It’s a near miracle that nuclear war has so far been avoided.
Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.
Rock ‘n’ roll was two pegs below being a prisoner of war back then.
War hath no fury like a non-combatant.
War is something of man’s own fostering, and if all mankind renounces it, then it is no longer there.
I was a soldier in WWII. The last couple of months of the war I was actually in combat.
I think NATO is a Cold War product. I think NATO historically should have shut up shop in 1990 along with the Warsaw Pact; unfortunately, it didn’t.
We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the postive affirmation of peace.
It takes a few to make war, but it takes a village and a nation to build peace.
I have my cousin’s jacket from when he was at war in Iraq. He never came home. It’s incredible to have something that is so personal but that I also feel relatively comfortable wearing.
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.
War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.
That most unfortunate war, which I deeply deplore.
Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.
Serious sport is war minus the shooting.
Brainy folks were also present in Lyndon Johnson’s administration, especially in the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s brilliant ‘whiz kids’ tried to micro-manage the Vietnam war, with disastrous results.
‘Turn to Stone’ was written about the Nixon administration and the Vietnam War and the protesting that was going on and all of that. It’s a song about frustration. Also, I attended Kent State.
Winning is overrated. The only time it is really important is in surgery and war.
The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.
War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.
I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
Making peace, I have found, is much harder than making war.
The Sandinista government became consumed with fighting a war of survival. They were up against the biggest superpower in the world.
Up until the First World War, when people turned anti-German, Germany had been described by American political scientists as the model of democracy.
The Berlin Wall wasn’t the only barrier to fall after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War. Traditional barriers to the flow of money, trade, people and ideas also fell.
War is tragedy. The great war stories are tragedies. It’s the failure of diplomacy. ‘War and Peace,’ ‘A Farewell to Arms,’ ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls.’ Those are some of the greatest tragedies.
There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It’s mostly about random pointless death and misery.
The military people don’t like it; the government probably doesn’t like it, but the people should know what they’re sending their young people into when they permit their governments to declare war and engage in war.
The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts.
War is like love; it always finds a way.
The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line.
