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1
"If the gods sent you to fight here, then the gods are fools."
Janet Morris
War, Faith, Danger, Duty, Destiny
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2
"Mercy is not in favor in my heavens today,” says Vashanka, unforgiving and combative, folding vast arms and spearing Harmony with lightning that crackles from his gaze.
Janet Morris
Heaven, War, Mercy, theomachy
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3
"Strife brings all things into being on her battlefield. This I know. I have been there many times,” says Vashanka, lord of sack and pillage. “I have died before.”
Janet Morris
Death, War, Anger, Battle, Vengeance, theomachy
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4
"War's balance will prevail."
Janet Morris, Chris Morris
War, Mercy, Destiny
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5
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
Aldous Huxley
War
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6
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
Simone Weil
War
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7
America is addicted to wars of distraction.
Barbara Ehrenreich
War
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8
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
Otto von Bismarck
War
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9
Are wars... anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated -- there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
War
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10
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it's fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Oscar Wilde
War
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11
Cry havoc! and let loose the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.
William Shakespeare
War
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12
Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
War
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13
Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Thomas Hobbes
War
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14
Gods colliding, ethos and mythos trying to combine. The Sacred Band caught up in a whirlwind not of any god's devising: he and Niko had wanted to save twenty-three pairs of fated Theban fighters. Now everything feels fated and fighting oversweeps its boundaries of time and place and plane.
Janet Morris, Chris Morris
War, Mercy, Destiny, Struggle, theomachy
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15
Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
Sun Tzu
War
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16
How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
Karl Kraus
War
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17
I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.
Albert Einstein
War
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18
I don't believe that the big men, the politicians and the capitalists alone are guilty of the war. Oh, no, the little man is just as keen, otherwise the people of the world would have risen in revolt long ago! There is an urge and rage in people to destroy, to kill, to murder, and until all mankind, without exception, undergoes a great change, wars will be waged, everything that has been built up, cultivated and grown, will be destroyed and disfigured, after which mankind will have to begin all over again.
Anne Frank
War
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19
I feel sure that coups d'état would go much better if there were seats, boxes, and stalls so that one could see what was happening and not miss anything.
War
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20
I had supposed until that time that it was quite common for parents to love their children, but the war persuaded me that it is a rare exception. I had supposed that most people liked money better than almost anything else, but I discovered that they liked destruction even better. I had supposed that intellectuals frequently loved truth, but I found here again that not ten per cent of them prefer truth to popularity.
Bertrand Russell
War
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21
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
War
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22
I have a deep sympathy with war, it so apes the gait and bearing of the soul.
Henry David Thoreau
War
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23
I have known war as few men now living know it. It's very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a means of settling international disputes.
Douglas MacArthur
War
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24
I regard almost all quarrels of princes on the same footing, and I see nothing that marks man's unreason so positively as war. Indeed, what folly to kill one another for interests often imaginary, and always for the pleasure of persons who do not think themselves even obliged to those who sacrifice themselves for them!
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
War
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25
I see that old flagpole still stands. Have your troops hoist the colors to its peak, and let no enemy ever haul them down.
Douglas MacArthur
War
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26
I think it better that in times like these a poet's mouth be silent, for in truth we have no gift to set a statesman right.
William Butler Yeats
War
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27
I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious and sacrifice and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the things that were glorious had no glory and the sacrifices were like the stockyards at Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.
Ernest Hemingway
War
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28
If any question why we died, tell them, because our fathers lied.
Rudyard Kipling
War
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29
If you insist upon fighting to protect me, or our country, let it be understood soberly and rationally between us that you are fighting to gratify a sex instinct which I cannot share; to procure benefits which I have not shared and probably will not share.
Virginia Woolf
War
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30
In the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter of plague, pestilence, and famine.
George Bernard Shaw
War
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31
In war there is no substitute for victory.
Douglas MacArthur
War
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32
It was the dawn of the third age of mankind…
J. Michael Straczynski
War, Peace, Babylon 5
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33
Look to the souls of Your own soldiers, God, who labor in Thine awful cause.
Janet Morris, Chris Morris
God, Courage, War, Faith, Honour, Destiny, Divine Intervention
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34
Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind. War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
John F. Kennedy
War
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35
Morality is contraband in war.
Mahatma Gandhi
War
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36
More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
War
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37
O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief... for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
Mark Twain
War
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38
Of the four wars in my lifetime, none came about because the U.S. was too strong.
Ronald Reagan
War
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39
Oh, the brave Music of a distant drum!
Omar Khayyám
War
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40
Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.
Herbert Hoover
War
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41
That strange feeling we had in the war. Have you found anything in your lives since to equal it in strength? A sort of splendid carelessness it was, holding us together.
Noël Coward
War
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42
The cannon thunders... limbs fly in all directions... one can hear the groans of victims and the howling of those performing the sacrifice... it's Humanity in search of happiness.
Charles Baudelaire
War
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43
The chief reason warfare is still with us is neither a secret death-wish of the human species, nor an irrepressible instinct of aggression, nor, finally and more plausibly, the serious economic and social dangers inherent in disarmament, but the simple fact that no substitute for this final arbiter in international affairs has yet appeared on the political scene.
Hannah Arendt
War
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44
The more prosperous and settled a nation, the more readily it tends to think of war as a regrettable accident; to nations less fortunate the chance of war presents itself as a possible bountiful friend.
Lewis Lapham
War
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45
The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.
Arthur Koestler
War
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46
The most terrible job in warfare is to be a second lieutenant leading a platoon when you are on the battlefield.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
War
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47
The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be effected by stratagem.
Washington Irving
War
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48
The pioneers of a warless world are the young men and women who refuse military service.
Albert Einstein
War
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49
The problem in defense is how far you can go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
War
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50
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.
George Orwell
War
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51
The real trouble with war (modern war) is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people.
Ezra Pound
War
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52
The savage in man is never quite eradicated.
Henry David Thoreau
War
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53
The sinews of war, a limitless supply of money.
Cicero
War
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54
The sky was full of stars, and every star an exploding ship.
J. Michael Straczynski
War, Battle of the Line, Survivor guilt
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55
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.
Sun Tzu
War
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56
The war is dreadful. It is the business of the artist to follow it home to the heart of the individual fighters -- not to talk in armies and nations and numbers -- but to track it home.
D. H. Lawrence
War
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57
There are two things which will always be very difficult for a democratic nation: to start a war and to end it.
Alexis de Tocqueville
War
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58
There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.
George Orwell
War
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59
There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.
Niccolò Machiavelli
War
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60
There is no calamity greater than lightly engaging in war.
Laozi
War
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61
Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
William Hazlitt
War
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62
To call war the soil of courage and virtue is like calling debauchery the soil of love.
War
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63
To delight in war is a merit in the soldier, a dangerous quality in the captain, and a positive crime in the statesman.
George Santayana
War
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64
To establish any mode to abolish war, however advantageous it might be to Nations, would be to take from such Government the most lucrative of its branches.
Thomas Paine
War
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65
To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.
John Updike
War
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66
War -- what a waist of time. It's all about great achievements for the very few but hideous losses for the very many.
War
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67
War begets quiet, quiet idleness, idleness disorder, disorder ruin; likewise ruin order, order virtue, virtue glory, and good fortune.
Walter Raleigh
War
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68
War both needs and generates certain virtues; not the highest, but what may be called the preliminary virtues, as valor, veracity, the spirit of obedience, the habit of discipline. Any of these, and of others like them, when possessed by a nation, and no matter how generated, will give them a military advantage, and make them more likely to stay in the race of nations.
Walter Bagehot
War
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69
War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.
Friedrich Nietzsche
War
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70
War is a contagion.
Franklin D. Roosevelt
War
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71
War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can't smile, grin. If you can't grin, keep out of the way till you can.
Winston Churchill
War
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72
War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
War
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73
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice -- is often the means of their regeneration.
John Stuart Mill
War
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74
War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.
Desiderius Erasmus
War
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75
War is like love, it always finds a way.
Bertolt Brecht
War
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76
War is not a life: it is a situation, one which may neither be ignored nor accepted.
T. S. Eliot
War
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77
War is the father of all things. But who is the mother?
Gerhard Kocher
War
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78
War is the statesman's game, the priest's delight, The lawyer's jest, the hired assassin's trade.
Percy Bysshe Shelley
War
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79
War is the supreme drama of a completely mechanized society.
Lewis Mumford
War
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80
War is the trade of Kings.
John Dryden
War
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81
War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.
Joseph de Maistre
War
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82
War seems to be one of the most salutary phenomena for the culture of human nature; and it is not without regret that I see it disappearing more and more from the scene.
Wilhelm von Humboldt
War
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83
War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands.
H. L. Mencken
War
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84
War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view realistically; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent -- war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive.
Susan Sontag
War
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85
War: first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.
Karl Kraus
War
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86
Wars are made to make debt.
Ezra Pound
War
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87
War, he sung, is toil and trouble; Honor but an empty bubble.
John Dryden
War
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88
We go to gain a little patch of ground that hath in it no profit but the name.
William Shakespeare
War
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89
What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict.
Simone Weil
War
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90
What vast additions to the conveniences and comforts of living might mankind have acquired, if the money spent in wars had been employed in works of public utility; what an extension of agriculture even to the tops of our mountains; what rivers rendered navigable, or joined by canals; what bridges, aqueducts, new roads, and other public works, edifices, and improvements might not have been obtained by spending those millions in doing good, which in the last war have been spent in doing mischief.
Benjamin Franklin
War
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91
What war has always been is a puberty ceremony. It's a very rough one, but you went away a boy and came back a man, maybe with an eye missing or whatever but godammit you were a man and people had to call you a man thereafter.
Kurt Vonnegut
War
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92
Whatsoever is thine, is Mine. And you, arrogant servant, best not forget it. For I am always with thee, wheresoever thou art. Have faith in Me, rely on Me, and only Me, in the battles yet to come. Forever and ever.
Janet Morris, Chris Morris
War, Worship, Loyalty, theomachy, Gods
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