Surviving War Quotes

You know what, BB? We've got dark spots on our souls. We have to live with that. War is not about doing what's right. War's about surviving."

Verner aka 'Jens'
in the novel 'The Informer' by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

Surviving war is an excellent training process. If it weren't so brutal, I 'd recommend it as an excellent start-up course in life. I feel that over years of endurance, hard work and perseverance of determination and conviction, of claiming our rights to stay alive, to be free and to be ourselves, of fighting the biggest wars as much as the smaller ones, our will can indeed move mountains for us. ~ Joumana Haddad

Their locked hands offered a stark reminder of how many scars lingered … shards of war and distressing anguish forever branded them. Yet in this endearing moment of comfort, their adversity became skinspeak between survivors phoenixing from the ashes of their perilous journey - their burning eagerness for survival overcoming the forces that once tried to stifle their light. ~ Becca Vry

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

The point is the love story. We live in a love story in the midst of war. ~ John Eldredge

Everybody is careful these days to maintain just the right attitude toward the war effort. ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

I think that war is diplomacy by other means, for sure, and there have been wars that have been fought for righteous reasons. There are wars that have had to be fought, and there will probably continue to be. ~ Stephen Lang

The classes were valuable, but the real education was the game. ~ Orson Scott Card

I feel as if it were not for me to record, even though this manuscript is intended for no eyes but mine, how hard I worked at that tremendous short-hand, and all improvement appertaining to it, in my sense of responsibility to Dora and her aunts. I will only add, to what I have already written of my perseverance at this time of my life, and of a patient and continuous energy which then began to be matured within me, and which I know to be the strong part of my character, if it have any strength at all, that there, on looking back, I find the source of my success. I have been very fortunate in worldly matters; many men have worked much harder, and not succeeded half so well; but I never could have done what I have done, without the habits of punctuality, order, and diligence, without the determination to concentrate myself on one object at a time, no matter how quickly its successor should come upon its heels, which I then formed. Heaven knows I write this, in no spirit of self-laudation. The man who reviews his own life, as I do mine, in going on here, from page to page, had need to have been a good man indeed, if he would be spared the sharp consciousness of many talents neglected, many opportunities wasted, many erratic and perverted feelings constantly at war within his breast, and defeating him. I do not hold one natural gift, I dare say, that I have not abused. My meaning simply is, that whatever I have tried to do in life, I have tried with all my heart to do well; that ~ Charles Dickens

An army which cannot be regularly recruited is a doomed army. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

Everyone has friends who were killed in the War. Everyone gives up something when they marry. ~ Virginia Woolf

And we remember the end of our combat mission and the emergence of a new dawn
the precision of our efforts against al Qaeda in Iraq, the professionalism of the training of Iraqi security forces, and the steady drawdown of our forces. In handing over responsibility to the Iraqis, you preserved the gains of the last four years and made this day possible. ~ Barack Obama

Like so many great American fortunes, the Rosewater pile was accumulated in the beginning by a humorless, constipated Christian farm boy turned speculator and briber during and after the Civil War. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

There are strange hells within the minds war made ... ~ Ivor Gurney

ARMOR, n. The kind of clothing worn by a man whose tailor is a blacksmith. ~ Ambrose Bierce

Why should we care about the coup? First, because we depend on Yemen's government to support our drone war against another local menace, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). It's not clear if we can even maintain our embassy in Yemen, let alone conduct operations against AQAP. And second, because growing Iranian hegemony is a mortal threat to our allies and interests in the entire Middle East. ~ Charles Krauthammer

That's war: very high in the morning and very low in the evening: from triumph to failure is only one step. ~ Andrew Roberts

If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a President fresh from a war victory. ~ Judy Woodruff

With the situation now, people might be intrigued to see how a country coped with war all those years ago. ~ Dougray Scott

Idle war of head versus heart
It's always this way
My head is weak it always speaks
Before I know what it will say ~ Death Cab For Cutie

The fighting was horrendous. Bloodshed and death lie everywhere around us. It was not exciting, Vindhya. It is fearsome, and we were all scared out of our wits. There is no honour in battle but to protect you, my love. We have won the gates of Grilsom and lost the fortress of Loare...but we've gained allies from the Knights of Scrivehrim, and enemies of the dark elves of Scryire. There is no winning in War, my sweet...only loss. People die on
every side. How can any battle be won with such consequence and loss? I do not understand war. It's so unfair, so...unjustified.

We take innocent lives, yet we gain medals of highest honour and divine, sacred blessings. What is the sense of it? And even much less do I understand Andsar's concept of celibacy in soldiers, and that they choose to stay alone their entire lives. I might understand, were the reasoning that we would leave no one behind to suffer...but there is no reason for it. They tell us we are wrong to love one another, and so they justify our love by sending me to my assured death. If anyone were to find out about us, we'd both surely be killed. Love like this, though…I believe it is worth the cost of my life, if I could only be with you one moment. ~ Jennifer Megan Varnadore

I actually collect old First and Second World War memorabilia. ~ Jeremy Irvine

The weak against the strong, Is always in the wrong. ~ Ivan Krylov

An argument ensued about abundance, leisure, work, nature, and what a second girl kept calling 'the American way.' When I asked her what she meant by 'the American way,' she said, 'Basically the destruction of everything
the world, your happiness, your soul, everything. The complete package. Evil and war. That's who we are, Mr. Countryman.' ~ David Guterson

The corporate controlled military does a great job of ruining peoples lives. ~ Steven Magee

The generation which lived through the Second World War is disappearing. Post-war generations see Europe's great achievements - liberty, peace and prosperity - as a given. ~ Jan Peter Balkenende

I wanted to do what Marilyn Monroe did (during the Korean War), when she went and just set up a stage and did a concert for the troops all by herself. It's so amazing seeing that one woman just going somewhere, this beautiful sex kitten, who's basically a pinup, which is what I've always aspired to be. ~ Lindsay Lohan

Gandhi was such an important figure to the pacifists of the '30s, and he was such an extraordinary embodiment of nonviolence, that I thought it was necessary to have him in there. When he would say something about the war, it was to some extent news - and he was sure to have a response that was different from that of other world leaders. ~ Nicholson Baker

I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so. ~ Romain Rolland

We're not destroying the world because we're clumsy. We're destroying the world
because we are, in a very literal and deliberate way, at war with it. ~ Daniel Quinn

The point I would make is that the novelist and the historian are seeking the same thing: the truth – not a different truth: the same truth – only they reach it, or try to reach it, by different routes. Whether the event took place in a world now gone to dust, preserved by documents and evaluated by scholarship, or in the imagination, preserved by memory and distilled by the creative process, they both want to tell us how it was: to re-create it, by their separate methods, and make it live again in the world around them. ~ Shelby Foote

That was how she had felt most of her life.
Caught in the middle. Struggling, flailing, just trying to survive while not knowing which way to go. Which path to commit to without regret. ~ Matt Haig

I wasn't here to make love. I was here to make war. ~ R.K. Lilley

From suffering to suffering, he had gradually arrived at the conviction that life is a war; and that in this war he was the conquered. ~ Victor Hugo

Fondly do we hope, ferverently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I gotta be honest with you, Joe. This isn't a really social job. We don't talk to each other much. We tried it once. A bunch of us all got together to have a party, maybe get to know each other better."
"What happened?"
I pause. Think how best to put it. "We accidentally triggered a civil war in Cambodia. ~ Jay Stringer

They murdered him. ~ Robert Cormier

Peace is a road to happiness and the future.
War is a road to destruction and death. ~ Debasish Mridha

But in another city, another valley, another ghetto, another slum, another favela, another township, another intifada, another war, another birth, somebody is singing Redemption Song, as if the Singer wrote it for no other reason but for this sufferah to sing, shout, whisper, weep, bawl, and scream right here, right now. ~ Marlon James

When I look round to see how we can win the war I see that there is only one sure path ... and that is absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland. We must be able to overwhelm them by this means, without which I do not see a way through. ~ Winston Churchill

[The wives of powerful noblemen] must be highly knowledgeable about government, and wise – in fact, far wiser than most other such women in power. The knowledge of a baroness must be so comprehensive that she can understand everything. Of her a philosopher might have said: "No one is wise who does not know some part of everything." Moreover, she must have the courage of a man. This means that she should not be brought up overmuch among women nor should she be indulged in extensive and feminine pampering. Why do I say that? If barons wish to be honoured as they deserve, they spend very little time in their manors and on their own lands. Going to war, attending their prince's court, and traveling are the three primary duties of such a lord. So the lady, his companion, must represent him at home during his absences. Although her husband is served by bailiffs, provosts, rent collectors, and land governors, she must govern them all. To do this according to her right she must conduct herself with such wisdom that she will be both feared and loved. As we have said before, the best possible fear comes from love.

When wronged, her men must be able to turn to her for refuge. She must be so skilled and flexible that in each case she can respond suitably. Therefore, she must be knowledgeable in the mores of her locality and instructed in its usages, rights, and customs. She must be a good speaker, proud when pride is needed; circumspect with the scornful, surly, or rebellious ~ Christine De Pizan

With few apparent connections to Afghanistan as such, but there were no calls to bomb Riyadh (imagine if the hijackers had been Iraqi). Rather, Saudi Arabia is a favoured ally in the 'war against terrorism'. It is obvious that at stake here are US geopolitical interests (discussed further below), more than concerns to prevent future terrorism. ~ Mark Curtis

If you will remember history correctly, even the Second World War was perpetrated by a stateless actor, by murdering the Prince Rudolf, if you remember. And so is the case with 9/11. It was a stateless actor which has made the world go to war. ~ Asif Ali Zardari

Man, attracted by the treasure that the victory over the whale might afford him, has troubled the peace of their immense solitary abodes, violated their refuges, sacrificed all those which the icy, unapproachable polar deserts could not screen from his blow; and the war he has had made on them has been especially cruel because he has seen that it is large catches that make his commerce prosperous, his industry vital, his sailors numerous, his navigators daring, his pilots experienced, his navies strong and his power great.

Thus it is that these giants among giants have fallen beneath his arms; and because his genius is immortal and his science now imperishable, because he has been able to multiply without limit the imaginings of his mind, they will not cease to be the victims of his interest until they have ceased to exist. In vain do they flee before him; his art will transport him to the ends of the earth; they find no sanctuary except in nothingness. ~ Bernard-Germain De La Cépède