During The War Quotes

It is as heroic as he makes it sound. "Why have I never heard anything about all this - and not just from you? Sophie never said a word. Hell, I didn't even know that people escaped over the mountains or that there was a concentration camp just for women who resisted the Nazis." "Men tell stories," I say. It is the truest, simplest answer to his question. "Women get on with it. For us it was a shadow war. There were no parades for us when it was over, no medals or mentions in history books. We did what we had to during the war, and when it was over, we picked up the pieces and started our lives over. Your sister was as desperate to forget it as I was. Maybe that was another mistake I made - letting her forget. Maybe we should have talked about it. ~ Kristin Hannah

I'm a Bristol person too, I lived in Bristol during the war. ~ Julian Glover

Workers, comrades, and you, women of the people, let not this festival of May, the second during the war, pass without protest against the Imperialist Slaughter. ~ Karl Liebknecht

In France, this general climate of distrust toward private capitalism was deepened after 1945 by the fact that many members of the economic elite were suspected of having collaborated with the German occupiers and indecently enriched themselves during the war. It was in this highly charged post-Liberation climate that major sectors of the economy were nationalized, including in particular the banking sector, the coal mines, and the automobile industry. The Renault factories were punitively seized after their owner, Louis Renault, was arrested as a collaborator in September 1944. ~ Anonymous

Do you remember, during the war, when Porky worked in a defense plant? He and Bugs Bunny. That was a good one too. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Night-time train travel is wonderful again! No standing in the corridors for hours, no being shunted off for a troop train to pass, and above all, no black-out curtains. All the windows we passed were lighted, and I could snoop once more. I missed it so terribly during the war. I felt as if we had all turned into moles scuttling along in our separate tunnels. I don't consider myself a real peeper-they go in for bedrooms, but it's families in sitting rooms or kitchens that thrill me. I can imagine their entire lives from a glimpse of bookshelves, or desks, or lit candles, or bright sofa cushions. ~ Mary Ann Shaffer

I was born during the war and grew up in a time of rationing. We didn't have anything. It's influenced the way I look at the world. ~ Vivienne Westwood

During the war, I saw many films that made me fall in love with the cinema. ~ Francois Truffaut

He'd imagined peacetime would bring him a sense of belonging. During the war it kept him going, that thought of peace. He'd believed in it like a season he knew it would arrive one day ~ Amanda Hodgkinson

During the War of the Rebellion, a new and influential club was established in the city of Baltimore in the State of Maryland ~ Jules Verne

To the Memory of those faithful brown slave-men of the plantations throughout the South, Daddy's contemporaries all, who during the war while their masters were away fighting in a cause opposed to their emancipation, brought their blankets and slept outside their mistresses' doors, thus keeping night-watch over otherwise unprotected women and children
a faithful guardianship of which the annals of those troublous times record no instance of betrayal. ~ Ruth Stout

I had kissed my share of men, particularly during the war years, when flirtation and instant romance were the light-minded companions of death and uncertainty. Jamie, thought, was something different. His extreme gentleness was in no way tentative; rather it was a promise of power known and held in leash; a challenge and a provocation the more remarkable for its lack of demand. I am yours, it said. And if you will have me, then ... ~ Diana Gabaldon

So, I created these creatures called The Frightened Ones which in the film you see do have mask like kind of heads and they run beneath the ground to hide. Which is what in fact we did during the war. ~ Gerald Scarfe

During the war, I promised the dead I would never forget them. I stared at them, barely able to move myself. Pretended I was one of them. To this day I can recall the light in the ruins. ~ Chris Bohjalian

I think the educational and psychological studies I mentioned are examples of what I would like to call cargo cult science. In the South Seas there is a cargo cult of people. During the war they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to make things like runways, to put fires along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas - he's the controller - and they wait for the airplanes to land. They're doing everything right. The form is perfect. It looks exactly the way it looked before. But it doesn't work. No airplanes land. So I call these things cargo cult science, because they follow all the apparent precepts and forms of scientific investigation, but they're missing something essential, because the planes don't land. ~ Richard Feynman

Poverty and Discontent appear in every Face (except the Countenances of the Rich) and dwell upon every Tongue." He spoke of a few men, fed by "Lust of Power, Lust of Fame, Lust of Money," who got rich during the war. ~ Howard Zinn

There isn't a damn thing wrong with prayer. During the war I served with a guy who prayed all the time, carried a Bible with him everywhere. We all mocked him to no end. One day, that Bible stopped a bullet, my hand to God, that Bible stopped a bullet. If only he'd had another Bible in front of his face, he'd be alive today. ~ Delroy Lindo

In 1945, when the male soldiers started coming back home from Europe, she and all the other women pilots that had served as WASPs during the war were unceremoniously told to go home and never received a dime or even thanks from the government. ~ Fannie Flagg

The German physicists knew at least so much about the manufacture and construction of atomic bombs that it was clear to them that the manufacture of bombs in Germany could not succeed during the war. For this reason, they were spared the moral decision whether they should make an atomic bomb, and they had only worked on the uranium engine. ~ Werner Heisenberg

There was a saying during the war: Those who decide late will always decide right. At Christmas in 1943 we could see that our front was moving backwards, but we had no real idea how bad it was. Anyway, no one could accuse Sindre of changing like a weather-vane. Unlike those at home who sat on their backsides during the war and suddenly rushed to join the Resistance in the last months. We used to call them the latter-day saints'. A few of them today swell the ranks of those who make public statements about the Norwegians' heroic efforts for the right side. ~ Jo Nesbo

That was not what men and women fought for during the war. ~ Barbara Castle

All around him during the war, Ciro saw men lie, engage in acts of cowardice, create feeble attachments to women, only to leave them - men acting in pursuit of their own comforts, men behaving without grace. And ~ Adriana Trigiani

My grandson was circumcised today. I was surprised how easily my son-in-law accepted his son's circumcision. He is Christian, Greek Orthodox. I think it is a good thing it happened. During the war, they were exchanging corpses of dead fighters on both sides. The Christians found out they had eighteen unidentified corpses. They weren't sure whether to send them to West Beirut or keep them. Bashir Gemayel told them to undress the corpses. If they were circumcised, send them to West Beirut. If they happened to be circumcised Christians, they deserve to be buried with Muslims. ~ Rabih Alameddine

I was in Estonia when a professor asked me if I was aware that making any criticism of the Red Army during the war was now an imprisonable offence. I was quite shaken. ~ Antony Beevor

Cecily, Cecily. Foolish girl, to think herself enamored with a beast. She could have no conception of Luke's animal side. There were times during the war he'd been stripped down to it - become a base, feral creature that knew only hunger, sweat and the smells of blood and fear.
She was dreaming after a myth: a gentleman who dallied as a noble beast, rescuing damsels in some enchanted forest. With Luke, she would get a beast wearing the clothes of a man. An uncivilized creature who'd lost all enjoyment in balls and parlor games, who'd forgotten the words to all her trite little songs of green meadows and shepherds and love.
Enjoy your fantasy world, Cecily. Let me visit you there, from time to time.
-Luke's thoughts ~ Tessa Dare

Everyone was important during the war. Everyone. We worked together and we won. ~ Sara Sheridan

My latter schooldays and my university days were during the war, when science - physics, in particular - was a very important and glamorous subject. A lot of us felt that if we couldn't get into science, we might try engineering or medicine. ~ John Henry Carver

His subordinates remembered him as tough but fair-minded. Years later, one of them retained Hamilton as a lawyer, even though he had become a vocal political enemy. When Hamilton questioned the wisdom of this, the ex-soldier replied, "I served in your company during the war and I know you will do me justice in spite of my rudeness. ~ Ron Chernow

The United States Navy, during the war, used Navajos as "code-talkers" who relayed messages from ship to ship, talking in Navajo (a language not studied in Japan). ~ Michael Lesk

I've always liked American actors particularly. Because that was my first impression. I was very enamoured of America when I was a kid because we were surrounded by American soldiers during the war, the accent was very strange to me, it was very exotic and very captivating. ~ Anthony Hopkins

Only the Jew knew that by an able and persistent use of propaganda heaven itself can be presented to the people as if it were hell and, vice versa, the most miserable kind of life can be presented as if it were paradise. The Jew knew this and acted accordingly. But the German, or rather his Government, did not have the slightest suspicion of it. During the War the heaviest of penalties had to be paid for that ignorance.
Mein Kampf, Chapter 10 ~ Adolf Hitler

My father was in Ataturk's closest group. They lived together during the War of Liberation in Turkey. ~ Ahmet Ertegun

We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house. ~ Stephen Hawking

I had old bunk beds that my dad got from Seabrook Farms. They were first used by German prisoners during World War II, who were sent to work the farms during the war. The metal beds with their thin mattresses could easily be used as a jungle gym and I loved them. ~ David Mixner

Confederate surgeons usually performed "circular" amputations. They made a 360-degree cut through the skin, then scrunched it up like a shirt cuff. After sawing through the muscle and bone, they inched the skin back down to wrap the stump. This method led to less scarring and infection. Union surgeons preferred "flap" amputations: doctors left two flaps of flesh hanging beside the wound to fold over after they'd sawed through. This method was quicker and provided a more comfortable stump for prosthetics. Altogether, surgeons lopped off 60,000 fingers, toes, hands, feet, and limbs during the war. ~ Sam Kean

When your grandchildren ask you what you did during the war, you can say, I made this movie. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen

During the war, the holders of power in all countries found it necessary to bribe the populations into cooperation by unusual concessions. Wage-earners were allowed a living wage, Hindus were told they were men and brothers, women were given the vote, and young people were allowed to enjoy those innocent pleasures of which the old, in the name of morality, always wish to rob them. The war being won, the victors set to work to deprive their tools of advantages temporarily conceded. ~ Bertrand Russell

So before and during the war, the Bush administration had to build up an image in people's minds of Iraq as a monstrous military superpower, in order to mobilize enough popular hysteria so that people here would go along with their policies. And again, the media did their job 100 percent. So I don't know how well you remember what was going on around the country back then, but people were literally quaking in their boots about the extraordinary might of Iraq―it was a superpower with artillery we'd never dreamt of, all this kind of stuff.93 I mean, this was a defenseless Third World country that was so weak it had been unable to defeat post-revolutionary Iran in eight years of warfare [from 1980 to '88]―and that was with the support of the United States, the Soviet Union, all of Europe, the Arab oil countries: not an inconsiderable segment of world power. Yet with all those allies, Iraq had been unable to defeat post-revolutionary Iran, which had killed off its own officers' corps and barely had an army left: all of a sudden this was the superpower that was going to conquer the world? You really had to be a deeply brainwashed Western intellectual even to look at this image―a defenseless Third World country threatening the two most advanced military forces in the world, the United States and Britain―and not completely collapse in ridicule. But as you recall, that's what all of them were saying―and people here really believed it. ~ Noam Chomsky

I broke down while at Oxford, was rejected by a record number of medical tribunals during the War, and finally got permission to leave Oxford and do civilian work till the War ended. ~ Leonard Alfred George Strong

World War II put feminism on hold for a long time; the men went away to fight, a lot of women in those years got jobs both in teaching and in factories - at all social levels - which they enjoyed very much. A lot of them were quite happy during the war. ~ Margaret Drabble

I don't mean to offend, but ... how did you die? I mean what happened that made Raphael turn you?" Duncan smiled at her. Cyn thought it was the only time she'd really seen him smile. "You're very straightforward, Ms. Leighton. I admire that. As to your question, I was dying, struck down with so many others during the war." He caught her eye. "That would be the War of Northern Aggression, the Civil War I believe you call it. ~ D.B. Reynolds

Since I'm allergic to various things, the army wouldn't accept me during the war, and I got into the Office of War Information, which sent music to Europe. ~ Elliott Carter

When it came time to go to the University, it was during the war. ~ Daniel J. Evans

Under standing orders from General Lee, the Army of Northern Virginia enslaved any and all black persons it could seize - in Virginia, Maryland, even Pennsylvania during the Gettysburg Campaign. It made no distinctions between those who had escaped during the war, those born free, or those freed before the war under the laws of Southern states. If they were black, the men in gray took them as property. ~ T. J. Stiles

Women learned one important lesson
namely, that it is impossible for the best of men to understand women's feelings or the humiliation of their position. When they asked us to be silent on our question during the War, and labor for the emancipation of the slave, we did so, and gave five years to his emancipation and enfranchisement ... I was convinced, at the time, that it was the true policy. I am now equally sure that it was a blunder. ~ Elizabeth Cady Stanton

I've just finished a series of Olivia Manning novels. She's best known for two trilogies: Balkan Trilogy and Levant Trilogy. The six novels are continuous and contain the same set of characters. They are based on Manning's experiences in Eastern Europe and Egypt during the Second World War. Each novel is a wonderful picture of the peculiar British expatriate culture and what was happening during the war. She's one of those brilliant women who write very well about domestic relationships. All the books are slim, and it's easy to gallop through them. ~ Sarah Waters

The present danger which this country faces is at least as great as the danger which we faced during the war with Germany and Japan. Briefly stated, it is the very real danger that this country, as we know it, may cease to exist. ~ James Forrestal

I was born during the war, on October 20, 1942, as the second of five children. My father, Rolf Volhard, was an architect. ~ Christiane Nusslein-Volhard

I believe that at the beginning of the life of every artist there is some kind of trauma. We have a problem and all of our life we try to speak about this problem. My trauma was historical. When I was three or four, all the friends of my parents were survivors of the Holocaust; they spoke a lot about that. My father was hiding during the war, it was something totally present when I was a boy. It is sure that it has made me. ~ Christian Boltanski

My mother knew a man during the war. Theirs was a love story, and like any good love story, it left blood on the floor and wreckage in its wake. ~ Mark Slouka

Tree of Liberty: A tree set up by the people, hung with flags and devices, and crowned with a cap of liberty. The Americans of the United States planted poplars and other trees during the war of independence, "as symbols of growing freedom." The Jacobins in Paris planted their first tree of liberty in 1790. The symbols used in France to decorate their trees of liberty were tricoloured ribbons, circles to indicate unity, triangles to signify equality, and a cap of liberty. Trees of liberty were planted by the Italians in the revolution of 1848. ~ E. Cobham Brewer

My mother, writing from France, admonished me to take care of my health as she had during the war. My head could be all set for the guillotine, and still my mother would scold me for forgetting my muffler. She never missed an opportunity to try and convince me that the world is a kindly place and that she'd done a good job in conceiving me. This alleged Providence was the great subterfuge of maternal thoughtlessness. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

WHEREVER WE HAD BEEN in Russia, in Moscow, in the Ukraine, in Stalingrad, the magical name of Georgia came up constantly. People who had never been there, and who possibly never could go there, spoke of Georgia with a kind of longing and a great admiration. They spoke of Georgians as supermen, as great drinkers, great dancers, great musicians, great workers and lovers. And they spoke of the country in the Caucasus and around the Black Sea as a kind of second heaven. Indeed, we began to believe that most Russians hope that if they live very good and virtuous lives, they will go not to heaven, but to Georgia, when they die. It is a country favored in climate, very rich in soil, and it has its own little ocean. Great service to the state is rewarded by a trip to Georgia. It is a place of recuperation for people who have been long ill. And even during the war it was a favored place, for the Germans never got there, neither with planes nor with troops. It is one of the places that was not hurt at all. ~ John Steinbeck

Studio press agents make up anything they want to, and reporters go along with it. One flack created the legend that I had been blown up in an air crash during the war, and my face had to be put back together by way of plastic surgery. If it is a 'bionic face,' why didn't they do a better job of it? ~ Jack Palance

In the same way it may be said that a man endowed with great mental gifts leads, apart from the individual life common to all, a second life, purely of the intellect. He devotes himself to the constant increase, rectification and extension, not of mere learning, but of real systematic knowledge and insight; and remains untouched by the fate that overtakes him personally, so long as it does not disturb him in his work. It is thus a life which raises a man and sets him above fate and its changes. Always thinking, learning, experimenting, practicing his knowledge, the man soon comes to look upon this second life as the chief mode of existence, and his merely personal life as something subordinate, serving only to advance ends higher than itself. An example of this independent, separate existence is furnished by Geothe. During the war in the Champagne, and amid all the bustle of the camp, he made observations for his theory of color; and as soon as the numberless calamities of that war allowed of his retiring for a short time to the fortress of Luxembourg, he took up the manuscript of his Farbenlehre. This is an example which we, the salt of the earth, should endeavor to follow, by never letting anything disturb us in the pursuit of our intellectual life, however much the storm of the world may invade and agitate our personal environment; always remembering that we are the songs, not of the bondwoman, but of the free. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Judging Pius by what he did not say, one could only damn him. With images of piles of skeletal corpses before his eyes; with women and young children compelled, by torture, to kill each other; with millions of innocents caged like criminals, butchered like cattle, and burned like trash - he should have spoken out. He had this duty, not only as pontiff, but as a person. After his first encyclical, he did reissue general distinctions between race-hatred and Christian love. Yet with the ethical coin of the Church, Pius proved frugal; toward what he privately termed "Satanic forces," he showed public moderation; where no conscience could stay neutral, the Church seemed to be. During the world's greatest moral crisis, its greatest moral leader seemed at a loss for words.

But the Vatican did not work by words alone. By 20 October, when Pius put his name to Summi Pontficatus, he was enmeshed in a war behind the war. Those who later explored the maze of his policies, without a clue to his secret actions, wondered why he seemed so hostile toward Nazism, and then fell so silent. But when his secret acts are mapped, and made to overlay his public words, a stark correlation emerges. The last day during the war when Pius publicly said the word "Jew" is also, in fact, the first day history can document his choice to help kill Adolf Hitler. ~ Mark Riebling

During the war crimes trials after World War II, Nazi scientists cited American eugenics programs as the foundation for their own plans for racial hygiene. ~ Jodi Picoult

Instead of the international police action we had hoped for during the war in Kosovo, there are wars again - conducted with state-of-the-art technology, but still in the old style. ~ Jurgen Habermas

In seeking the Bird's death to free himself, Louie had chained himself, once again, to his tyrant. During the war, the Bird had been unwilling to let go of Louie; after the war, Louie was unable to let go of the Bird. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

Our embedded reporters during the war agreed to guidelines established by the military. ~ Jim Walton

During the war, I was constantly afraid Chris would die. What made it worse was that he told me many times that he wanted to die on the battlefield.
Let me refine that.
He didn't want to die, but if he had to die, then he couldn't imagine anything better than dying on the battlefield. It was part of his sense of duty: dying on the battlefield would mean that he had been doing his utmost to protect others. There was no higher calling, and no higher proof of dedication, for Chris. So there was no sense fearing death in combat. It would be an honor.
That idea hurt me. I knew my husband wasn't reckless--far from it--but in war there is a very thin line between being brave and being foolish, and when Chris talked like that I worried the line might be crossed.
I started going to church more during his first deployment, and eventually went to women's Bible studies to learn more about the Bible. But fitting the idea of God and faith and service together was never easy. What should I pray for? My husband to live, certainly. But wasn't that selfish? What if that wasn't God's will?
I prayed Chris would make the right decision when it came time to reenlist or leave the Navy. I wanted him to leave, yet that wasn't exactly what I prayed for.
Yet I was disappointed when he reenlisted. Was I disappointed with God, or Chris?
Had my prayers even been heard?
If it was God's plan that he reenlist, I should have been at peace with it. Yet I can't say that ~ Taya Kyle

During the war, the killers decides to kill people, but some or many people, is your death day. They get killed, even if they hide they get found and if they try to escape they get caught. But if is not your death day, God allows you to escape, he helps you to hide, and if you try to escape he goes with you, many dies but you survive ~ Mary Uwamahoro

I had my religious crisis after the war, not during the war. ~ Elie Wiesel

Wars, therefore, are to be undertaken for this end, that we may live in peace, without being injured; but when we obtain the victory, we must preserve those enemies who behaved without cruelty or inhumanity during the war. ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

Was he proud that you became a soldier?" "No, it hurt him deeply. He was very angry with me, in his own silent, simmering way. "During the war I did what was expected of me when I pulled on the uniform. I can see now that he was afraid that was what would happen to me. ~ S.R. Wilsher

Senate Doc. # 259. The 65th congress( ... The coal companies made between 100% and 7,856% on their capital stock during the war (to end all wars, WWI) ... The leather people sold your Uncle Sam hundreds of thousands of saddles for the calvary. But there wasn't any calvary overseas! ~ Smedley Butler

Dad wouldn't let me fool with his guitar much, because I'm left-handed, and I'd pick it up upside down. But I remember learning to sing 'Paper Doll,' the Mills Brothers song - this was during the war - and I remember my dad taking me down to one of those little record booths where you could make spoken letters to send home. ~ Don Everly

The exercise of deciding where to go next is difficult. Because next most likely means a new forever. It means thinking about where to settle. Where to start over. During the war, their options were fewer, the stakes higher, their mission singular. It was simple, in a way. Keep your chin down, your guard up. Stay one step ahead. Stay alive for one more day. Don't let the enemy win. To think about a long-term plan feels complicated, and burdensome, like flexing an atrophied muscle. ~ Georgia Hunter

I later became more interested in equal rights for women in the work place because of what was happening at IBM. One of the women at Remington Rand had previously been a system service girl for IBM during the war. After a system was installed, a system service girl would go out and show the users how it worked. She was the liaison between the users and the computer company. She was married and had been fired to make room for a returning veteran. When the war ended, IBM rehired all of its former employees who had left to join the military, then fired all of the married women with jobs that could be filled by men. ~ Jean Jennings Bartik

When I was a kid, the neighbor woman, she'd been a partisan during the war, she told me a story about how their unit was surrounded but they escaped. She had her little baby with her, he was one month old, they were moving along a swamp, and there were Germans everywhere. The baby was crying. He might have given them away, they would have been discovered, the entire unit. And she suffocated him. She talked about this distantly, as if it hadn't been her, and the child wasn't hers. I can't remember now why she told me this. What I remember very clearly is my horror. What had she done? How could she? I thought the whole unit was getting out from the encirclement for that little baby, to save him. Whereas here, in order to save the life of strong healthy men, they choked this child. Then what's the point of life? I didn't want to live after that. ~ Svetlana Alexievich

My fingers clutch the wooden edges of the podium. "My sister, Isabelle, was a woman of great passions," I say quietly at first. "Everything she did, she did full speed ahead, no brakes. When she was little, we worried about her constantly. She was always running away from boarding schools and convents and finishing school, sneaking out of windows and onto trains. I thought she was reckless and irresponsible and almost too beautiful to look at. And during the war, she used that against me. She told me that she was running off to Paris to have an affair, and I believed her. ~ Kristin Hannah

During the war, there were people wishing me death, wishing my son death, wishing my wife death in very graphic ways. In the past, I would go overseas and I would say, "Israel is like my family: we disagree, but we're all brothers." I can't say that anymore, because life proves me wrong. ~ Etgar Keret

When we consider that so few generations had passed since the
church left off disemboweling innocent men before the eyes of their
families, burning old women alive in public squares, and torturing
scholars to the point of madness for merely speculating about the
nature of the stars, it is perhaps little wonder that it failed to think
anything had gone terribly amiss in Germany during the war years. ~ Sam Harris

During the war, a battle was fought here, not only for the creation of a new Yugoslavia, but also a battle for Bosnia and Herzegovina as a sovereign republic. To some generals and leaders their position on this was not quite clear. I never once doubted my stance on Bosnia. I always said that Bosnia and Herzegovina cannot belong to this or that, only to the people that lived there since the beginning of time. ~ Josip Broz Tito

My narcotic was what had got me through the war; it was an ability to let my emotions be stirred by only one thing - my love for Helga. This concentration of my emotions on so small an area had begun as a young lover's happy illusion, had developed into a device to keep me from going insane during the war, and had finally become the permanent axis about which my thoughts revolved ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

An anonymous pamphleteer in Massachusetts, writing angrily after King George's War, described the situation: "Poverty and Discontent appear in every Face (except the Countenances of the Rich) and dwell upon every Tongue." He spoke of a few men, fed by "Lust of Power, Lust of Fame, Lust of Money," who got rich during the war. "No Wonder such Men can build Ships, Houses, buy Farms, set up their Coaches, Chariots, live very splendidly, purchase Fame, Posts of Honour." He called them "Birds of prey ... Enemies to all Communities - wherever they live. ~ Howard Zinn

We were very poor and my family lost everything during the war - our home and our identity. But I'm a believer in luck and think the social conditions you're born into provide the opportunity for you to prove your luck. And I suppose I've been lucky. ~ Sigmar Polke

Eat, woman," he bellowed, leaning over her, prepared to force the remainder of her meal into her opened mouth.
"I would," she said in a strained voice, "But there is a giant attached to my chin. Perhaps if he would be so gracious as to remove the cured pork from my pack, I would share it with him."
Rautu's eyes blazed in senseless joy. He released his companion and hastened toward her effects, rummaging through them with great anticipation. He found a small brown parchment parcel and assumed that this was the source of his happiness. He sniffed the outside of the paper and hummed in delight for the exquisite scent. He tore open the barrier between him and his prize and he was compelled to smile when remarking the numerous slices of meat in his hands. He began eating them immediately, leaving no time between one slice and the next to savour that which he had longed to again taste. The superior fare of Frewyn had been the chief of his consolation during the war, and if he was to remain on the islands with all its splendor, all its comforting familiarity, all its temperate climate, and all its horrendous food, he would relish this last ember of bliss before being made to suffer a diet of steamed grains again.
"I did say share," the commander called out.
"I am responsible for securing your life," he replied with a full mouth and without turning around.
"And I thanked you accordingly." The commander's remonstrations were unanswered, and she scoffed in ave ~ Michelle Franklin

During the war, in which several of our embedded correspondents were able to report from moving vehicles crossing the Iraqi desert, the use of technology made news gathering safer. ~ Jim Walton

Please write and tell me about London, I live for the day when I step off the boat-train and feel its dirty sidewalks under my feet. I want to walk up Berkeley Square and down Wimpole Street and stand in St.Paul's where John Donne preached and sit on the step Elizabeth sat on when she refused to enter the Tower, and like that. A newspaper man I know, who was stationed in London during the war, says tourists go to England with preconceived notions, so they always find exactly what they go looking for. I told him I'd go looking for the England of English literature, and he said:
Then it's there. ~ Helene Hanff

My parents, of Belgian-German extraction, were Belgian nationals who had taken refuge in England during the war. They returned to Belgium in 1920, and I grew up in the cosmopolitan harbour city of Antwerp, at a time when education in the Flemish part of the country was still half French and half Flemish. ~ Christian De Duve

The Russian general is used to such supplicant behavior. During the war, he ordered his troops to shoot any of their comrades who ran from the Germans, and any Russian village that was thought to have collaborated with the Nazis was burned to the ground. Zhukov is so feared that other Russian generals have been known to tremble in his presence. Patton does not tremble. "He was in full dress uniform much like comic opera and covered in medals," Patton later wrote to Beatrice of Zhukov. "He is short, rather fat and has a prehensile chin like an ape but good blue eyes." As Russian tanks rolled past the reviewing stand, Patton noticed Zhukov gloating over the new Soviet IS-3 model ~ Bill O'Reilly

But one thing is certain, he is the master criminal of this age. He controls a marvellous organization. Most of the Peace propaganda during the war was originated and financed by him. ~ Agatha Christie

The ending lights up like Baghdad during the war and your jaw drops and the curtains close and you feel a part of something much bigger and much weirder than yourself -- the mighty power of storytelling, a power embodied by the conclusion of narrative. The ending to any story is a potent moment, a super-charged dose of a story's capability to make you feel something and to leave you reeling, wondering, feeling. ~ Chuck Wendig

Some mediocre ladies in influential positions are usually embarrassed by an unusual book and so prefer the old familiar stuff which doesn't embarrass them and also doesn't give the child one slight inkling of beauty and reality. This is most discouraging to a creative writer, like you, and also to a hardworking and devoted editor like me. I love most of my editor colleagues but I must confess that I get a little depressed and sad when some of their neat little items about a little girl in old Newburyport during the War of 1812 gets [sic] adopted by a Reading Circle. ~ Leonard S. Marcus

Why, they're the dirtiest guys in any town. They're the same ones that burned the houses of old German people during the war. They're the same ones that lynch Negroes. They like to be cruel. They like to hurt people, and they always give it a nice name, patriotism or protecting the constitution. ~ John Steinbeck

I think my political transformation began with my exposure to the business-as-usual attitude of many civil service bureaucrats during the war; then came the attempted Communist take-over of the picture business, which a lot of my liberal friends refused to admit ever happened; next, I had a brief experience living in a country that promised the kind of womb-to-tomb utopian benevolence a lot of these liberal friends wanted to bring to America. In 1949, I spent four months in England filming The Hasty Heart while the Labor Party was in power. I saw firsthand how the welfare state sapped incentive to work from many people in a wonderful and dynamic country. ~ Ronald Reagan

Of all my accomplishments I may have achieved during the war, I am proudest of the fact that I never lost a wingman. ~ Erich Hartmann

It wasn't a new idea. During the war against the French we had this kind of broadcast for the French soldiers. ~ Hanoi Hannah

It struck me that Lee was in many ways our true hero. Lee was the one who did the dirtiest jobs, quietly, without fuss, without going into big emotional scenes. He was so efficient, so reliable, so brave. Whenever we fell short, he made up the gap. I'm not just talking about the red hot moments, when enemy soldiers were shooting at us, when we were within a moment of death. I'm talking about the sourer times too, when we were so tired we could hardly remember to breathe, or we were so bored we'd pick at each other just for something to do, or so distressed we'd wish a soldier would come along and blow us into oblivion with an M16. At all those times Lee stood strong. He was like the Wirrawee grain silo. You could see the grain silo from miles away, tall and reliable. It stood for Wirrawee, and it gave you a safe comforting feeling to know it was there. That was how I'd felt about Lee during the war. ~ John Marsden

We fully realize today that victory in war requires a mighty united effort. Certainly, victory in peace calls for, and must receive, an equal effort. Man has learned long ago, that it is impossible to live unto himself. This same basic principle applies today to nations. We were not isolated during the war. We dare not now become isolated in peace. ~ Harry S. Truman

I am saying that an Igbo man should be president in 2015. It matters where the president comes from, because all segment of the society had been president. People continue letting Ndigbo down because they think we were defeated during the war, which is not true. And until an Igbo man rules this country, the country will not move anywhere, ~ Orji Uzor Kalu

He has been reconciled to death during the war and then suddenly the war was over and there was a next day and a next day and a next day. Part of him never adjusted to having a future. ~ Kate Atkinson

Those who have experienced the most, have suffered so much that they have ceased to hate. Hate is more for those with a slightly guilty conscience, and who by chewing on old hate in times of peace wish to demonstrate how great they were during the war. ~ Thor Heyerdahl

During the war in the Persian Gulf, massive bombing attacks became "efforts." Thousands of "weapons systems" or "force packages" "visited a site." These "weapons systems" "hit" "hard" and "soft targets." During their "visits," these "weapons systems" "degraded," "neutralized," "attrited," "suppressed," "eliminated," "cleansed," "sanitized," "impacted," "decapitated" or "took out" targets. A "healthy day of bombing" was achieved when more enemy "assets" were destroyed than expected.

If the "weapons systems" didn't achieve "effective results" during their first "visit," a "damage assessment study" determined whether the "weapons systems" would "revisit the site." Women, children or other civilians killed or wounded during these "visits," and any schools, hospitals, museums, houses or other "non-military" targets that were blown up, were "collateral damage," which is the undesired damage or casualties produced by the effects from "incontinent ordnance" or "accidental delivery of ordnance equipment. ~ William D. Lutz

In addition to the alienation of farmers, large parts of the Mittelstand, growing numbers of industrialists and of the nationalist right by 1928, there was a further worrying trend facing the regime, the progressive disillusionment of young people and of the literary and cultural elites. The First World War and its aftermath had shaken loose many of the traditional ties binding young people to their families and to their local communities. As the Koblenz authorities noted in the early 1920s, 'the present sad appearance of the young, their debasement on the steeets, in pubs and dance halls results from the absence of firm authority by fathers and by schools during the war. The children of that time are today s young people who have little sense of authority and discipline.' In Cologne, it was observed that young people were spending too much time on 'visits to pubs, excessive drinking and dancing'. As ~ Ruth Henig

All of a sudden (in 1938 I think), in order to extend its autarchy to the domain of cinema, Italy decreed an embargo on American films. It wasn't a question of censorship: as usual the censors granted or denied permission to individual films, and nobody saw the ones that didn't get it and that was it. In spite of the awkward anti-Hollywood propaganda campaign that accompanied the measure (right around that time the regime began to conform to Hitler's racism), the true reason for the embargo was supposed to be commercial protectionism, in order to make room in the market for Italian (and German) productions. For this reason the four largest American production and distribution companies - Metro, Fox, Paramount, Warner - (I'm still relying on memory, trusting the accuracy of the registration of my trauma), whereas films by other American companies like RKO, Columbia, Universal, United Artists (which had also been distributed before then by Italian companies) continued to arrive until 1941, that is until Italy found itself at war with the United States. I was still granted some sporadic satisfaction (in fact, one of the greatest: Stagecoach [John Ford, 1939]) but my collector's voracity suffered a fatal blow.

Compared to all of the prohibitions and obligations that fascism had imposed on us, and to the even more severe ones that it continued to enforce in those years before and then during the war, the veto on American films was certainly a minor or small loss, and I ~ Italo Calvino

Truth, justice ... I always thought they were absolutes, like God. And Mom. And apple pie.
But you could make apple pie from Ritz crackers. You could make cakes without sugar. We learned how to fake things, during the war. ~ Judy Blundell

By my twenty-second birthday, you know, I had killed eight men. Eight that I was certain of, eight that I could plainly count. That information was stuffed deep within my gut, and if anyone ever asked if I killed someone during the war, particularly if a child ever asked, I vowed I'd shake my head no, that information was never coming out."--SHIFTY'S WAR ~ Marcus Brotherton

If he'd been making shell-cases during the war it might have been better for music. ~ Maurice Ravel