Famously Said Random quote

Quotes about war and peace

540 quotes from 231 people

Most readBy personPage 27 of 36

It is not enough to fight. It is the spirit which we bring to the fight that decides the issue. It is morale that wins the victory.
George C. Marshall1880–1959Address at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut (June 1941)
- Motivation & Goals
We have to kill one another just to satisfy that accursed madman. I wish he could burn in Hell for as many years as he is costing lives.
Neville Chamberlain1869–1940Statement (15 October 1939), quoted in Keith Feiling, Neville Chamberlain (1946; 1970), p. 419
Fighting wars is not so much about killing people as it is about finding things out. The more you know, the more likely you are to win a battle.
Tom Clancy1947–2013Schafer interview (1995)
- Knowledge
The difference between us is that we’re using missile defense to protect our civilians and they’re using their civilians to protect their missiles.
Benjamin Netanyahuborn 1949Interview on CBS’ “Face the Nation” 12 July 2014 . Comparing Israeli forces to Hamas militants.
I yield to no man in sympathy for the gallant men under my command; but I am obliged to sweat them tonight, so that I may save their blood tomorrow.
Stonewall Jackson1824–1863To Col. Sam Fulkerson, who reported on the weariness of their troops and suggested that they should be given an hour or so to rest from a forced march in the night. (24 May 1862); as quoted in Mighty Stonewall (1957) by Frank E. Vandiver, p. 250
- Leadership
The refusal of the British and Russian peoples to accept what appeared to be inevitable defeat was the great factor in the salvage of our civilization.
George C. Marshall1880–1959Biennial Report of the Chief of Staff, US Army (1 September 1945)
None of us is in a position to eliminate war, but it is our obligation to denounce it and expose it in all its hideousness. War leaves no victors, only victims.
Elie Wiesel1928–2016Hope, Despair, and Memory (1986)
If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war. Not missiles, but microbes.
Bill Gatesborn 1955“The next outbreak? We’re not ready”, TED talk (3 April 2015)
- Health
Our peace and prosperity can never be taken for granted and must constantly be tended, so that never again do we have cause to build monuments to our fallen youth.
Elizabeth II1926–2022Speech during the commemorations of D-Day (6 June 2014).
Now the reason the enlightened prince and the wise general conquer the enemy whenever they move and their achievements surpass those of ordinary men is foreknowledge.
Sun Tzu544–496 BCThe Art of War, Chapter XIII · Intelligence and Espionage
- Knowledge
An army’s bravest men are its cowards. The death which they would not meet at the hands of the enemy they will meet at the hands of their officers, with never a flinching.
Ambrose Bierce1842–1914What I Saw At Shiloh (1881), V
- Courage
It is not that addresses at the opening of a battle make the soldiers brave. The old veterans scarcely hear them, and recruits forget them at the first boom of the cannon.
Napoleon1769–1821Napoleon: In His Own Words (1916)
- Courage
Patriotism, in the trenches, was too remote a sentiment, and at once rejected as fit only for civilians, or prisoners. A new arrival who talked patriotism would soon be told to cut it out.
Robert Graves1895–1985Goodbye to All That (1929), Ch. 17
- Patriotism
Never before has the idea that peace is indivisible been so true as it is now.
Peace is not unity in similarity but unity in diversity, in the comparison and conciliation of differences.
Mikhail Gorbachev1931–2022Nobel Address (1991)
In war, where both success and failure are repaid by death, hostile agents who penetrate into the rear are subject to execution. This is inhuman, but no one ever considered war a school of humanity.
Leon Trotsky1879–1940Terrorism and Communism (1920), Ch. 4: Terrorism