Endless War Quotes

The prescription for endless war poses a far greater danger to Americans than perceived enemies do, for reasons the terrorist organisations understand very well. ~ Noam Chomsky

[I]t's impossible to evade the fact that Endless War will inevitably degrade the citizenry of the country that engages in it. A country which venerates its military above all other institutions, which demands that its soldiers be spoken of only with religious-like worship, and which continuously indoctrinates its population to believe that endless violence against numerous countries is necessary and just - all by instilling intense fear of the minorities who are the target of that endless violence - will be a country filled with citizens convinced of the virtues and nobility of aggression. ~ Glenn Greenwald

It's the place built out of Man's ceaseless failure to overcome himself. Out of Man's endless war against himself we build our successes as well as our failures. Making it the city of all cities most like Man himself - loneliest creation of all this very old poor earth. ~ Nelson Algren

Music wasn't about learning how to love. It was about learning what to disown and when to disown it. Even the most magnificent piece would end up as collateral damage in the endless war over taste. ~ Richard Powers

Over time, however, the endless war in Iraq began to play a role in natural selection. Only idiots signed up; only idiots died. Back home, the average I.Q. soared. ~ Ted Rall

Once you have opened up prisoner interrogation, wiretapping, border patrol, jailing and the services of the military, when this has been turned into a for-profit business in this endless war, then we're in deep trouble. ~ John Cusack

Sally at this time gave up any notion of being a co-operative member of a family, named herself "Tiger" and settled down to an unceasing, and seemingly endless, war against clothes, toothbrushes, all green vegetables, and bed. ~ Shirley Jackson

The beauty and variety of the natural world are merely the visible legacies of endless war. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi invited me to breakfast on the eighteenth. Five days before, she had issued a news release saying, "The president's strategy in Iraq has failed," and "The choice is between a Democratic plan for responsible redeployment and the president's plan for an endless war in Iraq." With those comments as backdrop, at the breakfast I urged her to pass the defense appropriations bill before October and to pass the War Supplemental in total, not to mete it out a few weeks or months at a time. I reminded her that the president had approved Petraeus's recommendation for a change of mission in December and told her that Petraeus and Crocker had recommended a sustainable path forward that deserved broad bipartisan support. She politely made clear she wasn't interested. I wasn't surprised. After all, one wouldn't want facts and reality - not to mention the national interest - to intrude upon partisan politics, would one? ~ Robert M. Gates

For what can war, but endless war, still breed? ~ John Milton

Punctuation! We knew it was holy. Every sentence we cherished was sturdy and Biblical in its form, carved somehow by hand-dragged implement or slapped onto sheets by an inky key. For sentences were sculptural, were we the only ones who understood? Sentences were bodies, too, as horny as the flesh-envelopes we wore around the house all day. Erotically enjambed in our loft bed, Clea patrolled my utterances for subject, verb, predicate, as a chef in a five-star kitchen would minister a recipe, insuring that a soufflé or sourdough would rise. A good brave sentence ("I can hardly bear your heel at my nape without roaring") might jolly Clea to instant climax. We'd rise from the bed giggling, clutching for glasses of cold water that sat in pools of their own sweat on bedside tables. The sentences had liberated our higher orgasms, nothing to sneeze at. Similarly, we were also sure that sentences of the right quality could end this hideous endless war, if only certain standards were adopted at the higher levels. They never would be. All the media trumpeted the Administration's lousy grammar. ~ Jonathan Lethem

The genius of America's endless war machine is that, learning from the unpleasantness of the Vietnam war protests, it has rendered the costs of war largely invisible. ~ Glenn Greenwald

Happy people are not their own enemies, do not carry on an endless war with their souls. We may be fiercely at odds with the wrongs of the world around us. But inside ourselves, near the core, if we are happy, we are at peace. ~ Lewis B. Smedes

What happened? Stan repeats.
To us?
To the country?
What happened when childhood ends in Dealey Plaza, in Memphis, in the kitchen of the Ambassador, your belief your hope your trust lying in a pool of blood again? Fifty-five thousand of your brothers dead in Vietnam, a million Vietnamese, photos of naked napalmed children running down a dirt road, Kent State, Soviet tanks roll into Prague so you turn on drop out you know you can't reinvent the country but maybe you reimagine yourself you believe you really believe that you can that you can create a world of your own and then you lower that expectation to just a piece of ground to make a stand on but then you learn that piece of ground costs money that you don't have.
What happened?
Altamont, Charlie Manson, Sharon Tate, Son of Sam, Mark Chapman we saw a dream turn into a nightmare we saw love and peace turn into endless war and violence our idealism into realism our realism into cynicism our cynicism into apathy our apathy into selfishness our selfishness into greed and then greed was good and we
Had babies, Ben, we had you and we had hopes but we also had fears we created nests that became bunkers we made our houses baby-safe and we bought car seats and organic apple juice and hired multilingual nannies and paid tuition to private schools out of love but also out of fear.
What happened?
You start by trying to create a new world and then you find yourself just wanting to add a b ~ Don Winslow

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

She supposed they were imperfections, those marks, but they didn't feel that way to her; they were a history, cut into his body: the map of a life of endless war. ~ Cassandra Clare

I can't quite remember the exact moment when I became obsessed with writing a play about the seemingly endless war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but I knew that I wanted to somehow tell the stories of the Congolese women caught in the cross-fire. ~ Lynn Nottage

Everything is going according to plan in this strategically fathomed notion of "country" where the population wholeheartedly believes in that fabled myth known as democracy. The corporations that profit from our endless war campaigns, who have a multifarious number of politicians at the top of their covert letterheads and on payroll always get what they pay for - a route to even more of our tax dollars. The status quo doesn't change with the election of any given politician, whether it be in the Senate, the Congress, or even the White House. This nation (i.e. notion) is, in and of itself, nothing but an ingeniously designed corporation that uses you and I to further perpetuate the myth of country, the myth of united, the myth of democracy, and the myth of patriotism. We have long passed the point where we the people sat on the tongue of this monstrosity. We now reside in the belly of the beast. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

It's not a choice between war and peace. It's a choice between war and endless war. It's not appeasement. I think it's better even to call it American self-interest. ~ Michael Scheuer

fighting the enemy is futile when you inhabit a system that has the endless generation of enemies built into it. That is a recipe for endless war. ~ Charles Eisenstein

She stepped closer to the edge to watch the waves beat against rock. She felt that way, she mused. Battered by forces that were beyond her control, lapped in a violent, endless war with no choice but to stand. ~ Nora Roberts

What a high-minded thing revolution had seemed when it started; but now I wondered if, in trying to bring about liberty, we'd instead opened the gates of endless war, bloodshed, and immorality. ~ Stephanie Dray

We are not pleasant people here, for the story of war is always the story of hate; it makes no difference with whom one fights. The hate destroys you. ~ Agnes Newton Keith

To thousands of elder women in the late sixties and early seventies [the private women's club movement] came like a new gospel ofactivity and service. They had reared their children and seen them take flight; moreover, they had fought through the war, their hearts in the field, their fingers plying needle and thread. They had been active in committees and commissions, the country over; had learned to work with and beside men, finding joy and companionship and inspiration in such work. How could they go back to the chimney-corner life of the fifties? ~ Laura E. Richards

Whether the Union stands or falls, I believe the profession of arms will henceforth be more desirable and more respected than it has been hitherto. ~ Charles Sumner

War on terror is far less of a military operation and far more of an intelligence-gathering, law-enforcement operation. ~ John F. Kerry

President Bush paid homage Wednesday to World War II veterans of Normandy at the D-Day Memorial. Later that night, his twin daughters paid a special tribute to World War II veterans of the Pacific. They each downed two kamikazes. ~ Argus Hamilton

It had to be done," Rumfoord told Billy, speaking of the destruction of Dresden. "I know," said Billy. "That's war." "I know. I'm not complaining." "It must have been hell on the ground." "It was," said Billy Pilgrim. "Pity the men who had to do it." "I do." "You must have had mixed feelings, there on the ground." "It was all right," said Billy. "Everything is all right, and everybody has to do exactly what he does. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

War makes monsters out of men. ~ Patrick Ness

This is what it means to be in the middle of love, I thought. Being in the middle of love is like being in the middle of a war zone. ~ Tiffanie DeBartolo

I know of no wars started by anyone to impose lack of religion on someone else. We have lethal Sunni v Shia, Catholic against Protestant, but no agnostic suicide bombers attack crowded atheist pubs. ~ Simon Hoggart

A brick could be used to simulate a war opponent. Especially if your nemesis is paraplegic and without transportation. ~ Jarod Kintz

The war we have to wage today has only one goal and that is to make the world safe for diversity. ~ U Thant

Certainly war meant dying, but it always shifted the ground beneath a person's feet when it was someone who had once lived and breathed in close proximity. ~ Markus Zusak

Her heart raced with joy to sleep with War ~ Homer

Sometimes, and in particular dealing with a dictator, the only chance of peace is a readiness for war. ~ Tony Blair

If I had unlimited funds, wall space and storage, I would collect a lot more things, like 'Planet of the Apes,' 'Star Wars,' science fiction stuff, autographs, and prop guns and weapons. I have to draw the line somewhere. ~ Kirk Hammett

We did an album one time called White Mansions, about the civil war, but it was written by a guy from England. His looking at it from over there and it not being a part of his history made it so he could be objective. ~ Waylon Jennings

God doesn't start wars. That's the greatest load of nonsense. Mankind starts wars. But then we bless armies to go and kill in God's name. Somebody's got to blow that myth out of the water. ~ Betty Williams

We can best understand the furies of war and politics by remembering that almost the whole of each party believes absolutely in its picture of the opposition, that it takes as fact, not what is, but what it supposes to be the fact. ~ Walter Lippmann

In the event of a victory over Germany by Soviet Russia and England, Bolshevism in Europe would inevitably follow. Under these circumstances I would prefer to see Germany win the war. ~ Pierre Laval

As long as society is absolutely divided as milk is, the cream being at the top and the impoverished milk at the bottom, so long will society be unbalanced, and liable to be thrown into convulsions out of which will spring wars. A circulation throughout keeps it in health. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

The Annual Register for 1763 tabulated the casualty list for British sailors in the Seven Years' War with France. Out of 184,899 men raised or rounded up for the war, 133, 708 died from disease, primarily scurvy, while only 1,512 were killed in action. ~ Stephen R. Brown

We need to learn ... how war brutalises and degrades winners and losers alike and what happens to us when, having heedlessly waged war for no good reason, we are encouraged to inflate and demonise our enemies in order to justify that war's indefinite continuance. ~ Tony Judt

Solemn three-day fasts, which were instituted by Adhemar of Le Puy, were decreed after an earthquake which took place on 30 December 1097, before the battle of Antioch on 28 June 1098, before an ordeal undergone by Peter Bartholomew on 8 April 1099 and before the procession round Jerusalem on 8 July 1099. These fasts certainly made an impression on the crusaders; they could hardly have failed to have done so, since they can only have made their hunger worse. It was reported that during their fast at Antioch Turks came up to walls with loaves of white bread, with which they tempted and mocked the starving men within. The achievement of the crusaders becomes even more remarkable - in fact it is quite incredible - when one considers that soldiers already weakened by starvation, who certainly appreciated die importance of taking food before battle since they took care to give their horses extra rations, deliberately fasted before their more important engagements. One wonders how they managed to fight at all. ~ Jonathan Riley-Smith

[The cause of inaction in war] ... is the imperfection of human perception and judgment which is more pronounced in war than anywhere else. We hardly know accurately our own situation at any particular moment while the enemy's, which is concealed from us, must be deduced from very little evidence. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

Nothing is easy in war. Mistakes are always paid for in casualties and troops are quick to sense any blunder made by their commanders. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

Only in war does the madman become sane. ~ Anthony Ryan

It was the enormity of war, she thought, it left you scrabbling for ways to think about it. Bridget ~ Kate Atkinson

and he became a communist. He was court-martialed but allowed to resign from the army. In the revolutions of 1848 he fought to overthrow his king and, failing, fled to America. There he became first a carpenter and then the editor of a German-language newspaper in Cincinnati with a slant so leftist he earned the nickname "Reddest of the Red." When the Civil War came, Willich recruited fifteen hundred Cincinnati Germans within a matter of hours and helped organize the Ninth Ohio-now marching with the XIV Corps. ~ Steven E. Woodworth

National historical myths are a way of giving identity and more authenticity to a people. Exodus flattered the Jews half a millennium after it allegedly took place by making them feel like heroic refugees from slavery, and righteous conquerors of a land corrupted by paganism, wealth, and sex. The Illiad made the politicians, merchants, sailors, farmers, and schoolteachers of Athens in the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. into the heirs of austere, remorseless, honorable, courageous warriors, a race of demigods. Contrast this with the real Athenians of ca. 375 B.C. -- their bellies full of fishcakes, their throats bloated with cheap resined wine, their far-flung sharp commercial deals a laughable, reverse mirror-image of the noble warriors of the Trojan War era. ~ Norman F. Cantor

The difference between a terrorist and a freedom fighter is a matter of perspective: it all depends on the observer and the verdict of history. ~ Pentti Linkola

No spoon has yet destroyed a mouth, but the knife of war cuts portions that are hard to swallow. Perhaps the big mouths of the privileged are able to cope with them, but they dull the teeth of the little people and ruin their stomachs. ~ Franz Grillparzer

Father was an atheist; he had even joined the Skeleton Army - a club of men who went about in masks or black faces, with ribald placards and a brass band, to make war upon the Salvation Army. ~ A.E. Coppard

The most intractable problem today is not pollution or technology or war; but the lack of belief that the future is very much in the hands of the individual. ~ Margaret Mead

He who wants peace must prepare for war. ~ Claudius

It was far easier for me to see how the war in Syria was in part an unintended consequence of other American wars, no matter how well-meaning they might have been. The toppling of "Saddam Hussein had strengthened Iran, provoked Putin, opened up a Pandora's box of sectarian conflict that now raged in Iraq and Syria, and led to an insurgency that had given birth to ISIL. The toppling of Muammar Gaddafi had made plain to dictators that you either cling to power or end up dead in a sewer. Syria looked more and more like a moral morass - a place where our inaction was a tragedy, and our intervention would only compound the tragedy. Obama kept probing for options that could make a positive difference, finding none. ~ Ben Rhodes

[democrats] hated Richard Nixon, and no wonder. It was Nixon who sent Alger Hiss to jail, and Nixon who waged the Vietnam War after the Democrats gave up, ~ David Frum

Shiloh had as many casualties as Waterloo, and yet there were another 20 Waterloos to come. ~ Bruce Catton

From where Winston stood it was just possible to read, picked out on its white face in elegant lettering, the three slogans of the Party: WAR IS PEACE FREEDOM IS SLAVERY IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH. ~ George Orwell