American War Quotes

When you review the Central American wars or other Latin American wars, you find that there were dictators and there were insurgents. ~ Alvaro Uribe

Modern American war is as easy to script as a B movie. ~ David Hackworth

People didn't have the political guts to stand up against an American war. ~ George McGovern

A generation ago, American war planners made the mistake of believing that short-term Communist sympathies would unite China and Vietnam. We were wrong, and it tragically misshaped our policy in Vietnam. ~ Evan Osnos

I forgot to say - a merely curious detail - that in one of the first chapters of Sartor Resartus, when speaking about garments, Carlyle says that the simplest garment he knows of was used by the cavalry of Bolivar in the South American war. And here we have a description of the poncho as "a blanket with a hole in the middle," under which he imagines Bolivar's cavalry soldier, he imagines him - simplifying it a bit - "mother naked," as naked as when he came out of his mother's belly, covered by the poncho, with only his sword and his spear."25 ~ Jorge Luis Borges

It is always a fashion to advise disputants to sit round a table and solve disputes by dialogue and discussion, and not to resort to violent confrontation and wars. Whether in national disputes or in international conflicts parties are being constantly advised to avoid wars and to negotiate, while governments continue to oppress, persecute, and even commit genocide.

No doubt, it is a very salutary advice and a noble ideal, quite often well-meaning, too. Nobody fights a war for the pleasure of it. But the trouble is, it has never been pragmatic ideal, and never will be so long as governments being what they are and the tyranny of the majority and armed might being the ruling principle of democracy…The weaker is left to its own devices to shake off tyranny and oppression.

If the weaker side listened to this idealistic advice and waited till the end of time for a solution to its problems there would have been no wars of independence. If the American colonies of George III's England listened to such advice and continued to be governed by England and to pay taxes to England without representation in the Parliament at Westminster, there would have been no American War of Independence, no American Declaration of Independence, and there would be no United States of America today…" (pp.279-280) ~ V. Navaratnam

The carnival of carnage that takes place every day, month and year in the realm of industry; the thousands of useful lives that are annually sacrificed to the Moloch of greed; the blood tribute paid by labor to capitalism, brings forth no shout for vengeance and reparation; no tear, except from the family and friends of the victims. ~ D. Douglas Wilson

It takes a disciplined imagination to acknowledge that the less personal savageries of bombs, missiles, artillery and heavy weapons are, to those blown to smithereens, also barbaric. The main horror of what the coalition is doing is not a matter of the occasional soldier who, in the heat of battle, commits a war crime, but the steady destruction rained on cities, villages, the Iraqi people. This violence is wreaked calmly, from a distance, within the rules of engagement. The war itself is the American war crime. ~ James Carroll

Although most Americans believed in Manifest Destiny, few could agree on exactly which lands the United States was supposed to govern. ~ Charles W. Carey Jr.

The American war is over; but this far from being the case with the American revolution. On the contrary, nothing but the first act of the drama is closed. It remains yet to establish and perfect our new forms of government, and to prepare the principles, morals, and manners of our citizens for these forms of government after they are established and brought to perfection. ~ Benjamin Rush

The American war-writing tradition is a proud one and booming in this era of the Global War on Terror - at least in the nonfiction realm. Hundreds of memoirs and press accounts from Iraq and Afghanistan have been published since 9/11. ~ Matt Gallagher

I am weary of your quarrels,
Weary of your wars and bloodshed,
Weary of your prayers for vengeance,
Of your wranglings and dissensions ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Benedict Arnold was appointed to the rank of general in the Continental Army by George Washington during the American War of Independence. It was up to him to protect the fortifications at West Point, New York, which in 1802 became the U.S. Military Academy. Arnold however planned to surrender his command to the British forces. When his treasonous act was discovered Arnold fled down the Hudson River to the British sloop-of-war Vulture, avoiding capture by the forces of George Washington, who had previously been alerted to the plot. Arnold was hailed a hero by the British, who gave him a commission in the British Army as brigadier general. In the winter of 1782, after the war, he moved to London with his wife where he was received as a hero by King George III. In the United States his name "Benedict Arnold" became synonyms for the words "TRAITOR & TREASON."
Cohorting with a foreign power to overthrow the government or purposely aiding the enemy is an act of Treason! ~ Hank Bracker

We understand that Nixon's aggression against Vietnam is a racist aggression, that the American war in Vietnam is a racist war, a white man's war ... We deplore that you are being used as cannon fodder for U.S. imperialism. We've seen photographs of American bombs and antipersonnel weapons being dropped, wantonly, accidentally perhaps, on your heads, on the heads of your comrades. ~ Jane Fonda

If there was anyone ma-porma during the Fil-American War, it was Heneral Goyo. ~ Ambeth R. Ocampo

Justin Butterfield of Illinois, a Federalist-turned-Whig, said of the Mexican-American War, said, "I opposed one war and it ruined me. From now on I am for war, pestilence and famine. ~ Michael S. Green

I did not want 'Battleship' to be perceived as an American war film. I wanted to do everything I could to make the film accessible to a global audience. It felt like bringing an alien component to the film would help take the American jingoism out of it. ~ Peter Berg

What is being talked about now is the probability of the Sharon government launching an attack against Lebanon to eliminate the resistance of Hezbollah by using the American war against Iraq. But, of course, in this case, we will certainly fight with all our strength. ~ Hassan Nasrallah

And there were no signs whatever of the disagreements among capitalists - or of the Anglo-American war - that Stalin's ideological illusions had led him to expect. ~ John Lewis Gaddis

Here are centered the hopes and aspirations and faith of the entire human race. I do not stand here as advocate for any partisan cause, for the issues are fundamental and reach quite beyond the realm of partisan consideration. They must be resolved on the highest plane of national interest if our course is to prove sound and our future protected. I trust, therefore, that you will do me the justice of receiving that which I have to say as solely expressing the considered viewpoint of a fellow American. ~ Douglas MacArthur

Media censorship is a prohibition of words and pictures. The war on drugs is a complete failure, and so is the American war on words. When you forbid a word, you give it power. Self-proclaimed rebels will use words like shit or fuck, simply to shock and sound cool. ~ Oliver Markus

In America, it was decided to attempt the production of atomic bombs with an effort that would constitute a large part of the collective American war effort. In Germany, an effort one thousandth the scale of the American was applied to the problem of producing atomic energy that would drive engines. ~ Werner Heisenberg

U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt has been described as founder of the Bull Moose Party, the man who led his troops up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, a big game hunter, family man, civic servant and a host of other things. ~ Zig Ziglar

Roosevelt reasoned, "if the Vice-Presidency led to the Governor Generalship of the Philippines, then the question would be entirely altered." That post was the one he desired above all others, even a second gubernatorial term. From the moment the United States acquired the islands as a provision of the treaty in 1899 ending the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt had coveted the job of creating a new government in a Philippines free of Spanish tyranny. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Supporters of the war are constantly asking those who oppose it: Why don't you deplore the wrongs and atrocities committed by the other side? The answer, so far as I am concerned, is that I do deplore the wrongs and atrocities committed by the other side. But I am responsible for the wrongs and atrocities committed by our side. And I am no longer able to participate in the assumption that atrocities committed by remote control are less objectionable than those committed at arm's length. I am most concerned with American obstacles to peace because I am an American. ~ Wendell Berry

In those helter-skelter days of journalism between the Spanish-American War and World War I, the newsies shouting the headlines were as much a part of the urban street scene as the lampposts on every corner. ~ David Nasaw

The war, like all wars, was proving more expensive for the Bourbons than planned. Since the alliance, France had advanced to the Americans over 100 million livres, about $25 million, in loans, supplies and gifts, and before it was over the cost of the American war for France would amount, by some estimates, to 1.5 billion livres, a historic sum that was virtually to bankrupt the French national budget and require the summoning of the Estates General in 1789 that led to the arrest of the King and the sequence of eruptions that became the French Revolution. ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

We had to scramble for seats in the day coach, lugging one straw valise between us and a gallon jug of lemonade. And a thermos bottle of the kind the Spanish-American War soldiers carried, with our own well water for brushing our teeth. We'd heard that St. Louis water comes straight out of the Mississippi River, and there's enough silt in it to settle at the bottom of the glass. We'd go to their fair, but we weren't going to drink their water. ~ Richard Peck

If there is one principle more deeply rooted in the mind of every American, it is that we should have nothing to do with conquest. ~ Thomas Jefferson

They exchanged notes, like children. My grandfather made his out of newspaper clippings and dropped them in her woven baskets, into which he knew only she would dare stick a hand. Meet me under the wooden bridge and I will show you things you have never, ever seen. The "M" was taken from the army that would take his mother's life: GERMAN FRONT ADVANCES ON SOVIET BORDER; the "eet" from their approaching warships: NAZI FLEET DEFEATS FRENCH AT LESACS; the "me" from the peninsula they were blue-eyeing: GERMANS SURROUND CRIMEA; the "und" from too little, too late: AMERICAN WAR FUNDS REACH ENGLAND; the "er" from the dog of dogs: HITLER RENDERS NONAGGRESSION PACT INOPERATIVE ... and so on, and so on, each note a collage of love that could never be, and a war that could ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

All of a sudden, making a Spanish-American War joke. I think you sort of had to go to probably to an American high school to have remembered that. ~ David Mandel

It is one of the great ironies of the American war in Iraq - was that the guys who really got the most out of it were the Iranians. And they have us to thank for that. Yeah, I mean we basically put Maliki in power in 2006, but he has been - he's really not a friend of the United States. He's a friend of the Iranian regime. ~ Dexter Filkins

The American war is over, but this is far from being the case with the American Revolution. ~ Benjamin Rush

The American War of Independence is the expulsion of the intrusive elements, alien to the American essence. If American reality is the reinvention of itself, whatever is found in any way irreducible or unassimilable is not American. ~ Octavio Paz

As Roosevelt took his place in the open carriage leading the procession, an additional surprise lay in store for him: 150 members of his Rough Rider unit, whom he had led so brilliantly in the Spanish-American War, appeared on horseback to serve as his escort of honor. ~ Doris Kearns Goodwin

Consider the great Samuel Clemens. Huckleberry Finn is one of the few books that all American children are mandated to read: Jonathan Arac, in his brilliant new study of the teaching of Huck, is quite right to term it 'hyper-canonical.' And Twain is a figure in American history as well as in American letters. The only objectors to his presence in the schoolroom are mediocre or fanatical racial nationalists or 'inclusivists,' like Julius Lester or the Chicago-based Dr John Wallace, who object to Twain's use - in or out of 'context' - of the expression 'nigger.' An empty and formal 'debate' on this has dragged on for decades and flares up every now and again to bore us. But what if Twain were taught as a whole? He served briefly as a Confederate soldier, and wrote a hilarious and melancholy account, The Private History of a Campaign That Failed. He went on to make a fortune by publishing the memoirs of Ulysses Grant. He composed a caustic and brilliant report on the treatment of the Congolese by King Leopold of the Belgians. With William Dean Howells he led the Anti-Imperialist League, to oppose McKinley's and Roosevelt's pious and sanguinary war in the Philippines. Some of the pamphlets he wrote for the league can be set alongside those of Swift and Defoe for their sheer polemical artistry. In 1900 he had a public exchange with Winston Churchill in New York City, in which he attacked American support for the British war in South Africa and British support for the American war ~ Christopher Hitchens

women were considered instinctual nurses in this generation - the field had received exciting publicity during the Spanish-American War when an Army Nursing Corps had served overseas in the Philippines. Clara Weeks-Shaw, the author of a popular textbook on nursing, promoted the field as "a new activity for women - congenial, honorable and remunerative and with permanent value to them in the common experience of domestic life."3 In readable language, Weeks-Shaw presented nursing as an artful balance between self-reliance and submission. Overall its practices were an extension of maternity, requiring the classic female behaviors of cheerfulness (to the patients) and obedience (to the doctors). "Never leave a doctor alone with a gynecology patient except at his request," went one injunction. ~ Jean H. Baker

The mad, cruel, and accursed American war. ~ Lord George Gordon

I have been a gigantic Rolling Stones fan since approximately the Spanish-American War. ~ Dave Barry

The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan. Clearly, the American war planners misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces. ~ Peter Arnett

In retrospect, the political and cultural climate in the early '60s seems both a time of innocence and also like a sultry, still summer day in the Midwest: an unsettling calm before a ferocious storm over Vietnam, which was not yet an American war. ~ Tom Brokaw

Everyone fights an American war. ~ Omar El Akkad

There is no good war or bad peace ~ Benjamin Franklin

That's one problem I have. Jews when they get successful they will help their people and some of the African-Americans - maybe I'll get in trouble again - they don't want to help anybody, ~ Donald Sterling

The two greatest works of war mythology in the west ... are the Iliad and the Old Testament ... When we turn from the Iliad and Athens to Jerusalem and the Old Testament we find a single-minded single deity with his sympathies forever on one side. And the enemy, accordingly, no matter who it may be, is handled ... pretty much as though he were subhuman: not a "Thou" but an "It." ~ Joseph Campbell

We'll make a bunker hill of it. ~ George Pickett

There were strange noises in the room, great bellowing sobs that did not sound like anything human. They bounced off the wals, echoing in her ears. Stop! she wanted to cry at the person who was making the noise. Then she realised that it was her. ~ Kate Williams

It is not possible to erase racism just because African-Americans have reached a level of financial success and crossover appeal. ~ Farrah Gray

International football is the continuation of war by other means. ~ George Orwell

Capitalism needs war. ~ Paul Murray

We must not be surprised when we hear of murders, killings, of wars, or of hatred ... If a mother can kill her own child, what is left but for us to kill each other? ~ Mother Teresa

I was determined not to become an American citizen but I did it for completely cynical reasons: to avoid paying inheritance tax in the U.S. ~ Emily Mortimer

I never knew what to do with a paper except to put it in a side pocket or pass it to a clerk who understood it better than I did. ~ Ulysses S. Grant

Military strategy...has become the diplomacy of violence. ~ Thomas C. Schelling

Sooner or later the world will have to return to the good old days when we fought wars and killed people the old-fashioned way, one at a time. ~ Andy Rooney

I think that we should be less focused on the crisis and more focused on what we can learn from the crisis. For the biggest crisis of all is the crisis of repeating the crisis. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

A daughter, a wife, a grandson,' You could say this place took away all I had. I could easily appear to be one of those unfortunate white men you hear about, who thought too lovingly of the other races and civilization of the world, who left his own country in the West to set up a home among them in the East, and was ruined as a result, paying dearly for his foolish mistake. His life smashed to pieces by the barbarians surrounding him. ~ Nadeem Aslam

Imagine that the country is like a dog. The terrorist attacks are like fleas biting the dog, but what the terrorists are really after is not to bite the dog. It's to have the dog, in an attempt to get the fleas on him, chew himself to pieces. ~ Dan Carlin

For those of us who have lived abroad and seen our nation in a highly competitive 21st century, and kind of see where this world is going - unless we are able to strengthen our core, we're going to see the end of the American century. And that is totally unacceptable. ~ Jon Huntsman, Jr.

Parisian men make love all day and have no time to work; American men work all day and have no time for love. ~ Zsa Zsa Gabor

Along with the concept of American Dream runs the notion that every man and woman is entitled to an opinion and to one vote, no matter how ridiculous that opinion might be or how uninformed the vote. It could be that the Borderer Presbyterian tradition of "stand up and say your rightful piece" contributed to the American notion that our gut-level but uninformed opinions are some sort of unvarnished foundational political truths. I have been told that this is because we redneck working-class Scots Irish suffer from what psychiatrists call "no insight".Consequently, we will never agree with anyone outside our zone of ignorance because our belligerent Borderer pride insists on the right to be dangerously wrong about everything while telling those who are more educated to "bite my ass! ~ Joe Bageant

The butter was real of course. Daddy had a fetish about using only real butter. As he handed it to me, I noticed the hue was brash and yellow, almost like the artificial color used in the making of cheap Margarine. The boysenberry preserves were recently purchased. The glass had a bright red foil label with intricate embossed wording and as I turned the lid, I heard the sucking sound of the seal breaking. Daddy looked over, concerned, until I carefully laid the jar of jam on the counter, pushing it toward him. "I can do everything Tweetie Bird," he said to me. I smiled, embarrassed at my old nickname from when I was a child and nodded my head. ~ ~Theresa Griffin Kennedy~

Every time I come to the States, I wish people would react to war like they react to tobacco, for example. Because war really kills in a second lots of people, thousands of people. ~ Diego Luna

We're here to let the Democrats know that the grass roots and the anti-war movement elected them to create change. ~ Cindy Sheehan

Word it as softly as you please, the spirit of patriotism is the spirit of the dog and wolf. The moment there is a misunderstanding about a boundary line or a hamper of fish or some other squalid matter, see patriotism rise, and hear him split the universe with is war-whoop. The spirit of patriotism being in its nature jealous and selfish, is just in man's line, it comes natural to him - he can live up to all its requirements to the letter; but the spirit of Christianity is not in its entirety possible to him. ~ Mark Twain

The actual God of many Americans ... is simply the current of American life. ~ Charles Horton Cooley

Love is like war; easy to begin, hard to end. ~ Ann Brashares

Family and work. Family and work. I can let them be at war, with guilt as their nuclear weapon and mutually assured destruction as their aim, or I can let them nourish each other. ~ Ellen Gilchrist

Who cares?' she said impatiently, 'it's always one bloody war after another, and one knows the news is all lies anyway. ~ George Orwell

The American people are sheep. They're comfortable, rich, working. It's like the Romans, they're happy with bread and their spectator sports. The Super Bowl means more to them than any right. ~ Jack Kevorkian

If it's by an American it's certain to be filth. That's all they write about. ~ Roald Dahl

After the war, Lucian had drifted back to Wyoming and then back to Absaroka County. He then drifted into being sheriff on the strength of his being the toughest piece of gristle in four states. ~ Craig Johnson

She loves being an American, but being an American overseas is quite a different thing. Edie was able to see herself, and her country, through other people's eyes - through the eyes of aid workers from Europe and Asia, through the eyes of the people they were trying to help. She knows that Americans are often viewed as arrogant and frivolous, clueless about their own country, and she hates that this is true. ~ Darien Gee