Civil War Western Theater Quotes

War was hell.
So was Andersonville Prison.
Justice lay curled on her side on the dank, roach-infested floor. She inhaled a short breath, trying to keep from breathing too deeply when waste of all sorts and colours lined every square inch of the place. How had it come to this? ~ Ashley Nikole

Getting shot wasn't an issue of skill; it was an issue of chance. And Justice had a bullet-sized issue of chance lodged in her shoulder. ~ Ashley Nikole

For America, Britain, and the Western powers, the rise of ISIS and the caliphate is the ultimate disaster. Whatever they intended by their invasion of Iraq in 2003 and their efforts to unseat Assad in Syria since 2011, it was not to see the creation of a jihadi state spanning northern Iraq and Syria, run by a movement a hundred times bigger and much better organized than the al-Qaeda of Osama bin Laden. The war on terror for which civil liberties have been curtailed and hundreds of billions of dollars spent has failed miserably. ~ Patrick Cockburn

It's been my dream to be in a Western, and to be able to wear the clothes, have a big gun, wear a big hat, have a big horse, and be a take-no-prisoners lady in the Civil War era. ~ Lauren Ambrose

The post-war loss of Churchill may have damaged the Western world with the same impact as the post-civil war world was damaged by the loss of Lincoln. ~ Warren Adler

Whether we like it or not, Islam has entered its third phase of conquest, towards the 'Universal Caliphate'. The first two phases happened in the Seventh to the Eleventh centuries, as well as in the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth centuries. It is a question of a groundswell that the governments of Islamic countries, which are pro-Western out of temporary calculation, cannot disguise for long. Islam's principal weapon is its demographic vigour, in the face of Western countries that are experiencing depopulation. This confrontation will cover the planet and will usually take the form of civil war, with episodes of classic war. ~ Guillaume Faye

School-leavers unfortunately will come away thinking the First World War consisted simply of 'going over the top' on the Western Front to slaughter in no-man's-land, when the conflict extended so much further, to the collapse of four empires and numerous civil wars. ~ Antony Beevor

Here we introduce the nation's first great communications monopolist, whose reign provides history's first lesson in the power and peril of concentrated control over the flow of information. Western Union's man was one Rutherford B. Hates, an obscure Ohio politician described by a contemporary journalist as "a third rate nonentity." But the firm and its partner newswire, the Associated Press, wanted Hayes in office, for several reasons. Hayes was a close friend of William Henry Smith, a former politician who was now the key political operator at the Associated Press. More generally, since the Civil War, the Republican Party and the telegraph industry had enjoyed a special relationship, in part because much of what were eventually Western Union's lines were built by the Union Army.

So making Hayes president was the goal, but how was the telegram in Reid's hand key to achieving it?

The media and communications industries are regularly accused of trying to influence politics, but what went on in the 1870s was of a wholly different order from anything we could imagine today. At the time, Western Union was the exclusive owner of the nationwide telegraph network, and the sizable Associated Press was the unique source for "instant" national or European news. (It's later competitor, the United Press, which would be founded on the U.S. Post Office's new telegraph lines, did not yet exist.) The Associated Press took advantage of its economies of scale to produce m ~ Tim Wu

War -- is a last ditch moral nightmare. People begin worshiping a mysterious slouching beast, following after, bowing down, offering gifts, making much of zero; and worse. Love of death, idolatry, fear of life; that roughshod trek of war and warmakers throughout the world, hand in hand with death. Long live death!

They wouldn't worship it if they weren't in love. Or if they weren't in fear. The second being a state of devouring, at least, as the first. I think the clue is the second masquerading as the first -- just as the beast is the ape of god; to do some thing successfully, you have to, above all, hide what your up to. In this way fear can ape love. Death can demand a tribute owed to life, the ape can play God.

Such reflections are of course ill at ease by some: those to whom the state is a given, the church is a given, Western culture a given, war a given, consumerism a given, paying taxes a given. All the neat slots of existence into which one fits, birth to death and every point in between. Nothing to be created, no one to be responsible to, nothing to risk, no objections to lodge. Life is a mechanical horizontal sidewalk, of the kind you sometimes ride at airports between buildings. One is carried along, a zonked spectator...

Every nation-state tends towards the imperial -- that is the point. Through banks, armies, secret police propaganda courts and jails, treaties, taxes, laws and orders, myths of civil obedience, assumptions of civi ~ Daniel Berrigan

MANO: There's no question in my mind that we've always felt, in the heart of our Western, Christian culture, that Jesus was very much female. That is why the representations of Jesus with long hair have always been predominant in art. The Virgin Mary was later presented as a harmless sort of woman to whom we can address our need for a maternal outlet in prayer, as a safer way of dealing with the fact that Jesus was as much a woman as a man, particularly when he died.

DOOR: You said that if men don't overcome their wanting of women, society will crack.
MANO: We are coming to a point where the genders are clumsily engaging in civil war with each other. There's a lot of unpleasantness in the land. Men feel terribly threatened. Women have been crucified for many years, so they understand it and have their axes to grind as well. The truth of the matter is, Jesus on the cross is the female being exploited in every which way. I mentioned intercourse being, at its best, an act of penetration, but there are many other ways in which women have been sacrificed, whether from childbirth or being sold as wives or whatever, through history. So when the male S&M devotee binds a woman to a cross, he has to realize, if he's a Christian--

DOOR: Uh, just how many Christian S&M devotees are there?
MANO: Even if he's not a Christian, he ought to realize that he is essentially binding Jesus again, because Jesus contains in him the female--very, very strongly- ~ D. Keith Mano

I had dropped more or less by chance into the only community of any size in Western Europe where political consciousness and disbelief in capitalism were more normal than their opposites. Up here in Aragon one was among tens of thousands of people, mainly though not entirely of working-class origin, all living at the same level and mingling on terms of equality. In theory it was perfect equality, and even in practice it was not far from it. There is a sense in which it would be true to say that one was experiencing a foretaste of Socialism, by which I mean that the prevailing mental atmosphere was that of Socialism. Many of the normal motives of civilized life - snobbishness, money-grubbing, fear of the boss, etc. - had simply ceased to exist. The ordinary class-division of society had disappeared to an extent that is almost unthinkable in the money - tainted air of England; there was no one there except the peasants and ourselves, and no one owned anyone else as his master. ~ George Orwell

The twenty hooves of the horses slowed their relentless cadence on the damp ground as they approached the town. A sudden cloudburst had only just ended, and steaming snorts emitted from the winded mounts. From behind the edge of the bizarre leather mask that covered half of the leader's face, a small smile of recognition curled on his chapped lips. ~ C.G. Faulkner

Slaughter personified to him every evil of this war. It would never end for Tom until he had dealt with Slaughter. His chance had been delayed last night. The next time he encountered the Colonel, he'd kill him. ~ C.G. Faulkner

61 lynchings occurred in 1920 alone. In 1921, 62, some of the victims, soldiers returning from the Great War who after fighting and winning significant victories - just as they had fought in the Revolutionary and Civil wars and the wars again the Indians - thought that America would repay them for the generosity of putting their lives on the line, for aiding in salvaging their hides from the Kaiser who had been tagged "enemy" this time. Instead, a Protestant country ignorant even of Western mysteries executes soldiers after a manner of punishments dealt to witches in the "Middle Ages." Europe and the Catholic Church are horrified but not surprised at this "tough guy" across the waters whose horrendous murders in Salem led Europe to reform its "witch laws. ~ Ishmael Reed

Moscow's orbit and make it a Western bulwark on Russia's doorstep. The key ingredients of this boneheaded policy were NATO and EU expansion, coupled with democracy promotion, which effectively means installing pro-Western leaders in countries like Ukraine - and maybe even Russia itself. Not surprisingly, Russia has fiercely resisted the West's efforts to win over Ukraine, which is now engulfed in a civil war. ~ Dimitri K. Simes

The American Civil War produced carnage that has often been thought reserved for the combination of technological proficiency and inhumanity characteristic of a later time. ~ Drew Gilpin Faust

And if there was one title that could be applied to all my films, it would be 'Civil War' - not civil war in the way we know it, but the daily war that goes on between us all. ~ Michael Haneke

There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war. ~ Victor Hugo

The prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State ... ~ Alexis De Tocqueville

The U.S. is telling the Northern Alliance to kill Taliban prisoners. It's totally a breach of all the known conventions of war. Western television networks aren't showing this, but Arab networks are showing how prisoners are being killed and what's being done to them. Instead, we're shown scenes that are deliberately created for the Western media: a few women without the veil, a woman reading the news on Kabul television, and 150 people cheering. ~ Tariq Ali

Richmond has fallen - and I have no heart to write about it ... They are too many for us. Everythign lost in Richmond, even our archives. Blue-black is our horizon. ~ Mary Boykin Chesnut

Obama was elected in a flourish of promise that many in the African-American community believed would help not only to symbolize African-American progress since the Civil War and Civil Rights Acts but that his presidency would result in doors opening in the halls of power as had never been seen before by black America. ~ Douglas Wilder

The three values which men held for centuries and which have now collapsed are: mysticism, collectivism, altruism. Mysticism - as a cultural power - died at the time of the Renaissance. Collectivism - as a political ideal - died in World War II. As to altruism - it has never been alive. It is the poison of death in the blood of Western civilization, and men survived it only to the extent to which they neither believed nor practiced it ... ~ Ayn Rand

A throne is always paid for in blood.
The king of En had told her that once. Even should a king's ascension be bloodless as a gift from Heaven, to hold onto one's throne invariably meant that blood must flow
as it had at the beginning, in the fight against the false king's armies, and the quelling of civil war, and the execution of criminals.
Luckily, the fighting part was easy for Yoko. All she had to do was resist the temptation to run away. ~ Fuyumi Ono

We are losing each day an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is. ~ Iyad Allawi

I'm smarter than Grant; I know more about organization, supply and administration and about everything else than he does; but I'll tell you where he beats me and he beats the world. he don't care a damn for what the enemy does out of his sight, but it scares me like hell. ~ Philip Sheridan

Economist and Africa expert Collier analyzes why a group of 50 nations, home to the poorest one billion people, are failing. Considering issues such as civil war, dependence on extractive industries, and bad governance, he argues that the strongest industrialized countries must enact a plan to help with international policies and standards. ~ Amy Lockwood

You don't have to pose your camera. The pictures are there, and you just take them. The truth is the best picture, the best propaganda. (On the Spanish Civil War, 1937) ~ Robert Capa

God requireth not a uniformity of religion. ~ Roger Williams

A state of war is not a blank check for the president when it comes to the rights of the nation's citizens. ~ Sandra Day O'Connor

Pity for these inhabitants, I have none. In the first place, they are rebels, and I am almost prepared to agree with Sherman that a rebel has no rights, not even the right to live except by our permission. ~ Charles Fessenden Morse

While politicians contend, and men are swerved this way and that by conflicting tides of interest and passion, the great cause of human liberty is in the hands of one ... who shall not fail nor be discouraged ... ~ Harriet Beecher Stowe

There is a concept in psychology called 'moral injury,' notion, distinct from the idea of trauma, that relates to the ways in which ex-soldiers make sense of the socially transgressive things they have done during wartime. Price felt a sharp sense of moral injury: she believed that she had been robbed of any ethical justification for her own conduct. ~ Patrick Radden Keefe

I've seen it all in Nevada, Kansas before that, and the War of Northern Aggression before that. People do all sorts of nasty things. And while I used to believe that there was something profoundly wrong about the human condition - sin passed on from the first man and that only the grace of God in Jesus Christ could make everything right, the standard explanation in churches Mormon to Methodist - it didn't take me long to learn that Christians and non-Christians, women and men, young and old were all capable of doing the worse things a human being might imagine, and then some.

From my upcoming novel, BATHHOUSE ROW, (available this fall). ~ Gregg Edwards Townsley

The newly created Darth Vader flexes his Force-muscle as the Emperor's enforcer to maintain order and obedience in a galaxy reeling from civil war and the destruction of the Jedi Order. To the galaxy at large, Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker - the Chosen One - died on Coruscant during the siege of the Jedi Temple. And, to some extent, the was true - Anakin was dead. But from the site of Anakin Skywalker's last stand - on the molten surface of the planet Mustafa, where he sought to destroy his friend and former master, Obi-Wan Kanobi - a fearsome spectre in black has risen. Once the most powerful Knight ever known to the Jedi order he is not a disciple of the dark side, a lord of the dreaded Sith, and the avenging right hand of the galaxy's ruthless new Emperor. Seduced, deranged and destroyed by the machinations of the Dark Lord Sidious, Anakin Skywalker is dead ... and Darth Vader lives ... ~ James Luceno

The major western democracies are moving towards corporatism. Democracy has become a business plan, with a bottom line for every human activity, every dream, every decency, every hope. The main parliamentary parties are now devoted to the same economic policies - socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor - and the same foreign policy of servility to endless war. This is not democracy. It is to politics what McDonalds is to food. ~ John Pilger

There is no such source and cause of strife, quarrel, fights, malignant opposition, persecution, and war, and all evil in the state, as religion. Let it once enter into our civil affairs, our government soon would be destroyed. Let it once enter our common schools, they would be destroyed. Those who made our Constitution saw this, and used the most apt and comprehensive language in it to prevent such a catastrophe.
[Weiss v. District Board, March 18, 1890] ~ Supreme Court Of Wisconsin

We've already got gays in the military. We always have had. World War Two, the Western Allies had fourteen million men in uniform. Any kind of reasonable probability says at least a million of them were gay. And we won that war, as I recall, last time I checked with the history books. We won it big time. ~ Lee Child

When Abraham Lincoln declared, in 1863, that the battle of Gettysburg must ensure "that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth," he was not merely being aspirational; at the onset of the Civil War, the United States of America had one of the highest rates of suffrage in the world. The question is not whether Lincoln truly meant "government of the people" but what our country has, throughout its history, taken the political term "people" to actually mean. In 1863 it did not mean your mother or your grandmother, and it did not mean you and me. Thus America's problem is not its betrayal of "government of the people," but the means by which "the people" acquired their names. This ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Religious canons, civil laws, are cruel; then what should war be? ~ William Shakespeare

Wallace had read the Tractatus, of course (he wrote to Lance Olsen that he thought its first sentence was "the most beautiful opening line in western lit"). He knew that Wittgenstein's book presented a spare and unforgiving picture of the relations among logic, language, and the physical world. He knew that the puzzles solved and raised by the book were influential, debatable, and rich in their implications. But as a flesh-and-blood reader with human feelings, he also knew, though he had never articulated it out loud, that as you labored to understand the Tractatus, its cold, formal, logical picture of the world cold make you feel strange, lonely, awestruck, lost, frightened-a range of moods not unlike those undergone by Kate herself. The similarities were not accidental. Markson's novel, as Wallace put it, was like a 240-page answer to the question, "What if somebody really had to live in a Tractatusized world?" Pronouncing the novel "a kind of philosophical sci-fi," Wallace explained that Markson had staged a human drama on an alien intellectual planet, and in so doing he had "fleshed the abstract sketches of Wittgenstein's doctrine into the concrete theater of human loneliness. ~ James Ryerson

Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose the shout that was the greatest sound he could make, boiling the yell up from his chest: Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! He leaped down from the boulder, still screaming, his voice beginning to to crack and give, and all around him his men were roaring animal screams, and he saw the whole Regiment rising and pouring over the wall and beginning to bound down through the dark bushes, over the dead and dying wounded, hats coming off, hair flying, mouths making sounds, one man firing as he ran, the last bullet, last round. ~ Michael Shaara

We want trumpets that sound like thunder, and men to act as though they were going to war with those corrupt and degrading principles that rob one of all rights, merely because he is ignorant, and of a little different color. Let us have principles that will give every one his due; and then shall wars cease, and the weary find rest. ~ William Apess