1,023 Quotes Regarding War


In war there is no prize for runner-up.
Omar Bradley

A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.
Winston Churchill

War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory.
Sarah Cleghorn

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.
Guy de Maupassant

You can do anything with bayonets except sit on them.
Camillo di Cavour

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
Desiderius Erasmus

For a war to be just three conditions are necessary - public authority, just cause, right motive.
St. Thomas Aquinas

Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat if met where any bar is, Or help to half-a-crown.
Thomas Hardy

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.
Ernest Hemingway

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.
Thomas Jefferson

War I abhor, and yet how sweet The sound along the marching street Of drum and fife, and I forget Wet eyes of widows, and forget Broken old mothers, and the whole Dark butchery without a soul.
Le Gallienne

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.
Douglas MacArthur

I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.
Douglas MacArthur

In war, when a commander becomes so bereft of reason and perspective that he fails to understand the dependence of arms on Divine guidance, he no longer deserves victory.
Douglas MacArthur

The sinews of war are five - men, money, materials, maintenance (food) and morale.
Bernard Mannes Baruch

A war for a great principle ennobles a nation. A war for commercial supremacy, upon some shallow pretext, is despicable, and more than aught else demonstrates to what immeasurable depths of baseness men and nations can descend.
Albert Pike

It is only necessary to make war with five things: with the maladies of the body, with the ignorances of the mind, with the passions of the body, with the seditions of the city, with the discords of families.
Pythagoras

Give the enemy not only a road for flight, but also a means of defending it.
Rabelais

He that fights and runs away, May turn and fight another day; But he that is in battle slain, Will never rise to fight again.
James Ray

A bad peace is even worse than war.
Tacitus