Effects Of War Quotes

Violence is itself a form of political mobilisation. It is mainly directed against civilians and not at another army. The aim is to capture territory through political control rather than through military success. And political control is maintained through terror, through expulsion or elimination of those who challenge political control, especially those with a different label. Population displacement, massacres, widespread atrocities are not just side effects of war; they are a deliberate strategy for political control. The tactic is to sow the fear and hate on which exclusive identity claims rest. ~ Leon Kukkuk

The lingering effects of war can inspire callousness even after the guns have fallen silent. Many of us have seen the notorious clip from 60 Minutes in which Madeleine Albright, then U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and soon to be U.S. Secretary of State, declared that the price of half a million dead children as a result of the sanctions against Iraq during the 1990s had been worth it. ~ Thomas E. Woods Jr.

The United States is so powerful that the only country capable of destroying her might be the United States herself, which means that the ultimate terrorist strategy would be to just leave the country alone. That way, America's ugliest partisan tendencies could emerge unimpeded by the unifying effects of war. The ultimate betrayal of tribe isn't acting competitively - that should be encouraged - but predicating your power on the excommunication of others from the group. ~ Sebastian Junger

Often, then, the stories came pouring out, and often they were set before us slowly and quietly like tea. These slow stories were told with understatement that made my eyes and voice fill as I translated; for when people seem to have no emotion remaining for such stories, your own heart must supply it. ~ Daoud Hari

We recognize the force of the argument that the effects of war under modern conditions may be felt in the economy for years and years, and that if the war power can be used in days of peace to treat all the wounds which war inflicts on our society, it may not only swallow up all other powers of Congress but largely obliterate the Ninth and the Tenth Amendments as well. ~ William O. Douglas

And then it developed that Campbell was not going to go unanswered after all. Poor old Derby, the doomed high school teacher, lumbered to his feet for what was probably the finest moment in his life. There are almost no characters in this story, and almost no dramatic confrontations, because most of the people in it are so sick and so much the listless playthings of enormous forces. One of the main effects of war, after all, is that people are discouraged from being characters. But old Derby was a character now. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The boy went back to his family there, in the distance, in a distance he did not find there in the distance. My grandfather died counting sunsets, seasons, and heartbeats on the fingers of his withered hands. He dropped like a fruit forbidden a branch to lean its age against. They destroyed his heart. He wearied of waiting here, in Damur. He said goodbye to friends, water pipe, and children and took me and went back to find what was no longer his to find there. Here the number of aliens increased, and refugee camps got bigger. A war went by, then two, three, and four. The homeland got farther and farther away, and the children got farther and farther from mother's milk after they had tasted the milk of UNRWA. So they bought guns to get closer to a homeland flying out of their reach. They brought their identity back into being, re-created the homeland, and followed their path, only to have it blocked by the guardians of civil wars. They defended their steps, but then path parted from path, the orphan lived in the skin of the orphan, and one refugee camp went into another. ~ Mahmoud Darwish

Going to war is a rare experience in American culture, so it's easy for simple notions to gain a lot of weight. The reality is always more complex. ~ Phil Klay

A war changes people in a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations that you might as well have been a larva, pupating in dampness, darkness and tightly wrapped puttees. Then, providing you don't take flight from a burst shell, you emerge from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you've gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone who, through a bizarre coincidence, had the same name, address and blood ties as you, but who must have died in the war. And you have no choice but to live as an impostor because you can't remember who you were before the war. There's a simple but horrible explanation for this: you were born in the war. You slid, slick, bloody and fully formed, out of a trench.
The Great War was the greatest changer of them all. ~ Ann-Marie MacDonald

Mills surveyed a postwar landscape in which Mass Man had been successfully alienated from the actual levers of power in the society. As institutions grew larger, and war and governance more complex, a subclass of men that Mills dubbed the "Power Elite" exerted more and more control over the nation's pillar institutions. "Insofar ~ Christopher L. Hayes

What you are about to hear is God's word to the men of this nation. We are going to war as of tonight. We have divine power - that is our weapon. We will not compromise. Wherever truth is at risk, in the schools or legislature, we are going to contend for it. We will win. ~ Bill McCartney

There is no economic necessity for continuing the arms race after the World War, even from the standpoint of the capitalist class itself, with the exception of at most certain armaments interests. ~ Anonymous

Those of us who finally saw through the Vietnam war saw through this war, and all the actions that were necessary to end the Vietnam war will be necessary here. I think the American people will get us out of this war. ~ Daniel Ellsberg

All wars signify the failure of conflict resolution mechanisms, and they need post-war rebuilding of faith, trust and confidence. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

It seemed ironic to her that women were considered far too meek for the morbidity of war, and yet a child could give their life in a battle they did not even understand. ~ Katlyn Charlesworth

If love exists between two persons, it is blessed. If love does not exist between two persons, then all your laws put together cannot bridge them. Then they exist separate, then they exist apart, then they exist in conflict, then they exist always in war. And they create all kinds of trouble for each other. They are nasty to each other, nagging to each other, possessive of each other, violent, oppressive, dominating, dictatorial. ~ Rajneesh

Whenever you become aware of a conflict in the world, realize that you only perceive it as a conflict because it resonates with something that's already inside of you. ~ Auliq Ice

[The Soviet State Security Service] is more than a secret police organization, more than an intelligence and counter-intelligence organization. It is an instrument for subversion, manipulation and violence, for secret intervention in the affairs of other countries. ~ Allen W. Dulles

It struck me that such analyses had it backward. It's the American public for whom the Iraq War is often no more real than a video game. Five years into this war, I am not always confident most Americans fully appreciate the caliber of the people fighting for them, the sacrifices they have made, and the sacrifices they continue to make. After the Vietnam War ended, the onus of shame largely fell on the veterans. This time around, if shame is to be had when the Iraq conflict ends - and all indications are there will be plenty of it - the veterans are the last people in America to deserve it. When it comes to apportioning shame my vote goes to the American people who sent them to war in a surge of emotion but quickly lost the will to either win it or end it. The young troops I profiled in Generation Kill, as well as the other men and women in uniform I've encountered in combat zones throughout Iraq and Afghanistan, are among the finest people of their generation. We misuse them at our own peril. ~ Evan Wright

This country was taken into war based on lies about weapons of mass destruction and Al Qaeda's role with respect to Iraq, which there wasn't one at the time we went in. I want to state that Mr. Cheney must be held accountable. He is already ginning up a cause for war against Iran. Now, we have to stand for this Constitution, we have to protect and defend this Constitution. ~ Dennis Kucinich

President Bush's campaign is now attacking John Kerry for throwing away some of his medals to protest the Vietnam War. Bush did not have any medals to throw away, but in his defense he did have all his services records thrown out. ~ Jay Leno

When you want to put something into your part that is not in the play, you must ask the author-or some other author-to lead up to the interpolation for you. Never forget that the effect of a line may depend not on its delivery, but on something said earlier in the play, either by somebody else or by yourself, and that if you change it, it may be necessary to change the whole first act as well. ~ George Bernard Shaw

The USDA is tasked with managing and promoting agriculture - including the well-funded animal agriculture industry - so it's pulled into a tug-of-war every time the dietary guidelines are re-evaluated. ~ Michael Greger

It is time we accept there's no Cronkite moment for Afghanistan. Perhaps it's time we value the hearts and minds of our own over distant Afghan tribes. ~ Tiffany Madison

Ah yes, the facts. I've spent my whole life running after them, convinced that if I found demonstrable, incontrovertible facts I would also find some kind of truth. Now aged sixty-three, faced with this war which has only just begun and with an unsettling premonition of what is soon to follow, I'm beginning to think the facts are just a front and that the truth they mask is at best like a Russian doll: as soon as you open it up you find a smaller one inside, then another which is even smaller, then another and another, till finally all you are left with is something the size of a grain.
Letters against the war: Letter from Quetta, 2011. ~ Tiziano Terzani

Every day there is a war inside your mind: A war between you and yourself! One side of you may defeat the other side of you! But you must know that your winning side might fail in the real world! Always be ready to give a chance immediately to your losing side, to your defeated idea! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

A poet is a poet, whether he rides in a Ford or on a donkey; a sage is a sage, whether he plays golf in New Jersey or bathes in the Ganges, or prays in the desert; and a fool is a fool, whether he be a maharaja or a president of a post-war republic. ~ Ameen Rihani

Historically, war journalists have embedded themselves with one side, which means the greatest threat comes from the clearly delineated enemy of that side. ~ Alan Huffman

When one speaks of religion influencing public policy, the immediate question is, Whose religion? If one subscribes to the notion that this is in some sense a Christian society, then the question becomes, Whose Christianity? Without some basic agreement religiously, the entrance of religion into the public arena would seem to be a formula for open-ended conflict and possible anarchy.

Yet, in the absence of a public ethic, we arrive at that point where, in Alisdair MacIntyre's arresting phrase, "politics becomes civil war carried on by other means." MacIntyre believes that we have already reached that point, and he may be right. A major problem, however, is that a public ethic cannot be reestablished unless it is informed by religiously grounded values. . . .

It is important to note that, unlike Rousseau, for example, the founders thought the conventional religions could manage this role of ancillary reinforcement. They did not think it necessary to construct a new "civil religion" for the maintenance of republican virtue. ~ Richard John Neuhaus

The legitimate object of war is a more perfect peace-this sentence ~ B.H. Liddell Hart

Yet only the atrocities of the conquered are referred to as criminal acts; those of the conqueror are justified as necessary, heroic, and even worse, as the fulfillment of God's will. ~ Jim Fergus

Sin and death and suffering and war and poverty are not natural - they are the devastating results of our rebellion against God. We long for a return to Paradise - a perfect world, without the corruption of sin, where God walks with us and talks with us in the cool of the day. ~ Randy Alcorn

I renounce war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatred it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in place of democracy, for the starvation that stalks after it. I renounce war, and never again, directly or indirectly, will I sanction or support another. ~ Harry Emerson Fosdick

Pearl Harbor caused our Nation to wholeheartedly commit to winning World War II, changing the course of our Nation's history and the world's future. ~ Joe Baca

Homer's Hymn to Venus

Published by Garnett, "Relics of Shelley", 1862; dated 1818.

Verses 1-55, with some omissions.

Muse, sing the deeds of golden Aphrodite,
Who wakens with her smile the lulled delight
Of sweet desire, taming the eternal kings
Of Heaven, and men, and all the living things
That fleet along the air, or whom the sea,
Or earth, with her maternal ministry,
Nourish innumerable, thy delight
All seek ... O crowned Aphrodite!
Three spirits canst thou not deceive or quell: -
Minerva, child of Jove, who loves too well
Fierce war and mingling combat, and the fame
Of glorious deeds, to heed thy gentle flame.
Diana ... golden-shafted queen,
Is tamed not by thy smiles; the shadows green
Of the wild woods, the bow, the...
And piercing cries amid the swift pursuit
Of beasts among waste mountains, - such delight
Is hers, and men who know and do the right.
Nor Saturn's first-born daughter, Vesta chaste,
Whom Neptune and Apollo wooed the last,
Such was the will of aegis-bearing Jove;
But sternly she refused the ills of Love,
And by her mighty Father's head she swore
An oath not unperformed, that evermore
A virgin she would live mid deities
Divine: her father, for such gentle ties
Renounced, gave glorious gifts - thus in his hall
She sits and feeds luxuriously. O'er all
In every fane, her honours first ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

You just said that you decapitated the major cartels," one of the senators says.
"Exactly," Keller says. "And what was the result? An increase in drug exports into the United States. In modeling the war against terrorists, we've been following the wrong model. Terrorists are reluctant to take over the top spots of their dead comrades - but the profits from drug trafficking are so great that there is always someone willing to step up. So all we've really done is to create job vacancies worth killing for."
The other major strategy of interdiction - the effort to prevent drugs from coming across the border - also hasn't worked, he explains to them. The agency estimates that, at best, they seize about 15 percent of the illicit drugs coming across the border, even though, in their business plans, the cartels plan for a 30 percent loss.
"Why can't we do better than that?" a senator asks.
"Because your predecessors passed NAFTA," Keller says. "Three-quarters of the drugs come in on tractor-trailer trucks through legal crossings - San Diego, Laredo, El Paso - the busiest commercial crossings in the world. Thousands of trucks every day, and if we thoroughly searched every truck and car, we'd shut down commerce. ~ Don Winslow

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

Imagine urself waking up & finding urself inside that roar of rockets, bombardment & death symphony played by the howling of weepings. ~ Bela Anĝelo

Those deterrents - the brotherhood of socialists, the interlocking of finance, commerce, and other economic factors - which had been expected to make war impossible failed to function when the time came. Nationhood, like a wild gust of wind, arose and swept them aside. People ~ Barbara W. Tuchman

Look, I'm not trying to upset you, but, lately, you have this really bad habit of going for the jugular the micro-second someone says anything you don't like. You're so focused on winning every battle that you don't even realize you're losing the war. I'm sure it feels good in the short-term but, Ivy, it's childish. You've got to start considering the consequences of your actions before going off half-cocked all the time. Otherwise, one day you're gonna look around and realize you've run everyone off who cares about you. ~ Jaycee DeLorenzo

Having therefore no foreign establishments, either colonial or military, the ships of war of the United States, in war, will be like land birds, unable to fly far from their own shores. To provide resting places for them, where they can coal and repair, would be one of the first duties of a government proposing to itself the development of the power of the nation at sea. ~ Alfred Thayer Mahan

Since the end of the Cold War, hegemonism has become increasingly unpopular. ~ Li Peng

There is no military solution to the war in Iraq. Our troops can help suppress the violence, but they cannot solve its root causes. And all the troops in the world won't be able to force Shia, Sunni, and Kurd to sit down at a table, resolve their differences, and forge a lasting peace. In fact, adding more troops will only push this political settlement further and further into the future, as it tells the Iraqis that no matter how much of a mess they make, the American military will always be there to clean it up. ~ Barack Obama

After 911, the US Government engaged in mock investigations and shut down many small Islamic charities and organizations, giving the appearance of action in the so-called 'War on Terror.' Why did they harbor, support and resource Fethullah Gulen's $25 billion madrassa-and-mosque-establishment efforts throughout the Central Asian region and the Balkans? ~ Sibel Edmonds

Instead of giving it [war] a rest I continued pursuing more research, talking to more people on the subject as if I was to please this aftermath of the book by knowledge that was more historical and psychological than literary and aesthetical. ~ Sasa Stanisic

Imperialistic war is a rebellion of technology which collects, in the form of "human material," the claims to which society has denied its natural material. Instead of draining rivers, society directs a human stream into a bed of trenches; instead of dropping seeds from airplanes, it drops incendiary bombs over cities; and through gas warfare the aura is abolished in a new way. ~ Walter Benjamin

Morally it makes no difference whether a person is killed in war or condemned to starve by the indifference of others. ~ Willy Brandt

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu , virtue free of moral acid). ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Many religious fundamentalists around the world would like to see the establishment of theocracies - states where religion and government are closely intertwined. While some just reject separation of [name of place of worship] and state, others go further and insist that one religion's tenets be made law.

The normal arguments for a theocracy are that, for example, it would lend a greater sense of morality to the making and enforcement of laws. Or that as our laws were originally derived from some moral commandments in a particular religion, it makes sense to enthrone this religion as chief in the state.

Basically, theocrats can talk until the cows come home about how great it would be if we were ruled by God, how great it would be if our laws followed God's laws, and so forth. But this vision of theocracy will never come to be, and should never come to be.

The fundamental problem with every theocracy is that is innately unfair. Not just unfair to those who do not follow the state religion, but also unfair to those who do not follow the state religion as it is understood and interpreted by the humans who run the state.

After all, who really believes that all the Muslims in any of the Islamic theocracies we have today are happy? Those who believe the wrong things about Islam from one particular point of view are mercilessly vilified - the present civil war in Iraq is an excellent example.

Why a theocracy would be unfair ~ John Lee

People here are quite struck aback at Sunday's news of the capture of New Orleans. It took them three days to make up their minds to believe it. The division of American had become an idea so fixed that they had about shut out all the avenues to the reception of any other. ~ Henry Adams

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him. ~ G.K. Chesterton