Total War Quotes

England expects that every man will do his duty. ~ Horatio Nelson

In the North, neither greenbacks, taxes, nor war bonds were enough to finance the war. So a national banking system was created to convert government bonds into fiat money, and the people lost over half of their monetary assets to the hidden tax of inflation. In the South, printing presses accomplished the same effect, and the monetary loss was total. ~ G. Edward Griffin

Beer is proof that God wants us to be happy ~ Benjamin Franklin

Hail to the Chief who in triumph advances!
Honored and blessed be the ever-green Pine!
Long may the tree, in his banner that glances,
Flourish, the shelter and grace of our line!
Heaven send it happy dew,
Earth lend it sap anew,
Gayly to bourgeon and broadly to grow,
While every Highland glen
Sends our shout back again,
'Roderigh Vich Alpine dhu, ho! ieroe! ~ Walter Scott

No war can end war except a total war which leaves no human creature on earth. Each war creates the causes of war: hate, desire for revenge and have-nots, desperate with need. ~ Zelda Popkin

God is on the side of the big battalions. ~ George Bernard Shaw

It is a sweet and seemly thing to die for one's country. ~ Horace

The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility. ~ John Fisher, 1st Baron Fisher

My argument is that War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. ~ Thomas Hardy

I am about to - or I am going to - die; either expression is correct. ~ Dominique Bouhours

You must either conquer and rule or serve and lose, suffer or triumph, be the anvil or the hammer. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

Tis a common observation here that our cause is the cause of all mankind, and that we are fighting for their liberty in defending our own. ~ Benjamin Franklin

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it. ~ Martin Luther

Japan suffered terribly from the atomic bomb but never adopted a pose of moral superiority, implying: 'We would never have done it!' The Japanese know perfectly well they would have used it had they had it. They accept the idea that war is war; they give no quarter and accept none. Total war, they recognize, knows no Queensberry Rules. If you develop a devastating new weapon during a total war, you use it; you do not put it into the War Museum. ~ George Mikes

Miss Blanche, having given through her tears a complete account of this event, assured me that, to maintain our own parental love and enjoy our beautiful family life, we, the cat-race, must engage in total war upon all humans. We have no choice but to exterminate them. I think it is a very reasonable proposition. ~ Soseki Natsume

I don't know what effect these men will have upon the enemy, but, by God, they frighten me. ~ Arthur Wellesley

If war production should remain the only way out of a long-term depression, industrial society would be reduced to the choice between suicide through total war or suicide through total
depression. ~ Peter Drucker

I never saw so many shocking bad hats in my life. ~ Duke Of Wellington

War makes rattling good history. ~ Thomas Hardy

The hardest thing of all for a soldier is to retreat. ~ Duke Of Wellington

Silent enim leges inter arma (Laws are silent in times of war). ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

The whole art of war consists of guessing at what is on the other side of the hill. ~ Arthur Wellesley

Even peace may be purchased at too high a price. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Even the bravest cannot fight beyond his power ~ Homer

Arabs and their allies are conducting a total war against Israel. A total war means a war of lies. The PA [Palestinian Authority] promotes lies; lying in Islam is permitted. ~ Manfred Gerstenfeld

Who overcomes by force, hath overcome but half his foe. ~ John Milton

The children are designated as "Air Force aides of the Hitler youth" and wear military uniforms and become used to handling the anti-aircraft artillery flak guns. 15 and 16 year old children as warriors! If the war still continues to last for a long time, perhaps the babies will be also employed. Total war!! ~ Friedrich Kellner

Do you want total war? If necessary, do you want a war more total and radical than anything that we can even imagine today? ~ Joseph Goebbels

All mankind is divided into three classes: those that are immovable, those that are movable, and those that move. ~ Benjamin Franklin

Let us immediately establish the point. Our enemies know full well that news is an important weapon in modern warfare and they are unceasingly applying their knowledge as they wages total war. How they do so directly affects every one of us. ~ Matthew Gordon

Ah! the Generals! they are numerous, but not good for much! ~ Aristophanes

The enemy of a good plan is the dream of a perfect plan. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

The best victory is when the opponent surrenders of its own accord before there are any actual hostilities ... It is best to win without fighting. ~ Sun Tzu

We English are good at forgiving our enemies; it releases us from the obligation of liking our friends. ~ P.D. James

War is nothing but a duel on a larger scale. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

Total war uses every conceivable means toward the end of national self-preservation. Everything is right and permitted that serves the cause of one's own people. ~ Dietrich Bonhoeffer

One minute can decide the outcome of the battle, one hour - the outcome of the campaign, and one day - the fate of the country. ~ Alexander Suvorov

You've heard the expression "total war"; it's pretty common throughout human history. Every generation or so, some gasbag likes to spout about how his people have declared "total war" against an enemy, meaning that every man, woman, and child within his nation was committing every second of their lives to victory. That is bullshit on two basic levels. First of all, no country or group is ever 100 percent committed to war; it's just not physically possible. You can have a high percentage, so many people working so hard for so long, but all of the people, all of the time? What about the malingerers, or the conscientious objectors? What about the sick, the injured, the very old, the very young? What about when you're sleeping, eating, taking a shower, or taking a dump? Is that a "dump for victory"? That's the first reason total war is impossible for humans. The second is that all nations have their limits. There might be individuals within that group who are willing to sacrifice their lives; it might even be a relatively high number for the population, but that population as a whole will eventually reach its maximum emotional and physiological breaking point. The Japanese reached theirs with a couple of American atomic bombs. The Vietnamese might have reached theirs if we'd dropped a couple more, 2 but, thank all holy Christ, our will broke before it came to that. That is the nature of human warfare, two sides trying to push the other past its limit of endurance, and no matter h ~ Max Brooks

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses. ~ Thomas Jefferson

War used to be something you could stand on the nearby hill and watch. Now we have total war; everybody's in it. We have total economics as well. Everything affects everybody. The Malaysian currency shakes, and people around the world are seriously affected. ~ Salman Rushdie

A moment comes in war when the last line must be crossed. The line that separates what you hold dear from what total war demands. If he couldn't cross that line, the battle was over, and he was lost.
His heart, the war.
Her face, the battlefield.
With a cry only he could hear, the hunter turned.
And ran. ~ Rick Yancey

It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back. ~ James Madison

Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

For God's Sake be sure you do not risk the cannon. ~ John Churchill, 1st Duke Of Marlborough

In an age that is utterly corrupt, the best policy is to do as others do. ~ Marquis De Sade

It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians. ~ John Hersey

No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it. ~ Winston Churchill

Not without hope we suffer and we mourn. ~ William Wordsworth

The United States has faced threats from criminal groups, from terrorists, from spies throughout our history, and we have limited our responses. We haven't resorted to total war every time we have a conflict around the world, because that restraint is what defines us. That restraint is what gives us the moral standing to lead the world. ~ Edward Snowden

Mistrust first impulses; they are nearly always good. ~ Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

Pardon one offence, and you encourage the commission of many. ~ Publilius Syrus

Ares (The God of War) hates those who hesitate. ~ Euripides

Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won. ~ Arthur Wellesley

The stark and inescapable fact is that today we cannot defend our society by war since total war is total destruction, and if war is used as an instrument of policy, eventually we will have total war. ~ Lester B. Pearson

I have resolved never to start an unjust war, but never to end a legitimate one except by defeating my enemies. ~ Charles XII Of Sweden

Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total ... because it may well involve the whole world. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Hard pounding, gentlemen. Let's see who pounds the longest. ~ Duke Of Wellington

The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us an answer to this question? ~ John Hersey

Nothing good ever comes of violence. ~ Martin Luther

There is no such thing as a good war or a bad peace. ~ Benjamin Franklin

What, do they run already? Then I die happy. ~ James Wolfe

We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it, to his home, to his centers of entertainment: a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to disappear. ~ Che Guevara

You must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your King, and you must treat every Frenchman as if he were the Devil himself. ~ Horatio Nelson

I have always been interested in the way that elements of stories twine and combine. At school I had an art teacher, a great influence on me, who disliked man-made objects unless they were old and showed the effects of time and wear; she loved all natural things. I share this attitude and it plays a large part in my writing. I'm fascinated by the ambiguity of man's relationship to the huge, mysterious universe around him; how, on the one hand, we make ourselves little boxes and think to exist safely and snugly in them; on the other, we extend our knowledge further and further into the limitless void; and yet from time to time these opposites collide and produce astonishing results. ~ Joan Aiken

No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy. ~ Horatio Nelson

Looking back at the recent history of the world, I find it amazing how far civilization has retrogressed so quickly. As recently as World War I - granted the rules were violated at times - we had a set of rules of warfare in which armies didn't make war against civilians: Soldiers fought soldiers. Then came World War II and Hitler's philosophy of total war, which meant the bombing not only of soldiers but of factories that produced their rifles, and, if surrounding communities were also hit, that was to be accepted; then, as the war progressed, it became common for the combatants simply to attack civilians as part of military strategy. By the time the 1980s rolled around, we were placing our entire faith in a weapon whose fundamental target was the civilian population. ~ Ronald Reagan

If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now. ~ Richard Perle

In this connection I must mention too a not altogether rational idea which I had nourished more or less vaguely for a long time: the notion that before I could achieve greatness as a writer I would have to pass through some ordeal. For this ordeal I had waited in vain. Even total war (I was never in uniform) failed to ruffle my life. I seemed doomed to quietness. ~ Iris Murdoch

If the military might of Germany and Japan are ultimately to be crushed, the United Nations, one and all, must definitely and urgently strive toward a total war effort. ~ William Lyon Mackenzie King

During the 1980s, international interest in the Nicaraguan war was intense. No conflict since the Spanish civil war had provoked such passion around the world. It was a classic good-versus-evil war. ~ Stephen Kinzer

I am here because I think it was a terrible sin of the west to allow those years of war. ~ Paddy Ashdown

You'd forgive me for Claire - but not for killing your ... men. He glanced at the two Craddocks, spotty as a pair of raisin puddings and - Grey's look implied - likely no brighter. ~ Diana Gabaldon

My view of Bradley Manning is that he's a very courageous young man who ... did what I didn't have the guts to do during the Vietnam war. ~ Ray McGovern

In Czechoslovakia in 1968, communist reformers appealed to democratic ideals that were deeply rooted in the country's pre-second world war past. ~ Adam Michnik

mean that we must mount them on horses in their earliest youth, and when they have learnt to ride, take them on horseback to see war: the horses must not be spirited and warlike, but the most tractable and yet the swiftest that can be had. In this way they will get an excellent view of what is hereafter to be their own business; and if there is danger they have only to follow their elder leaders and escape. I ~ Plato

I'm a Star Wars fan from way back, and I love where the stories are going now. ~ Troy Denning

Should any Iraqi officer or soldier receive an order from Saddam Hussein ... don't follow that order. Because if you choose to do so, when Iraq is liberated, you will be treated, tried and persecuted as a war criminal. ~ George W. Bush

That's nice."

"It is. And so I did not tell her that I'd written most of it while taking a shit. My point is neither you nor I know what will matter to the audience in the long run. The truth? Who gives a fuck? The Bible's full of utter cock and there are ten thousand wankers out there using it as an excuse to behave like total fucking arseholes. Same as the Koran and the Talmud and probably whatever the fuck it is that Buddhists get their spells out of. But on the other hand there's been millions of people, over thousand of years, who've got through the day because of that bullshit, or had their heart lifted, or looked at the world differently for ten minutes. ~ Michael Rutger

Jim knew that he was awake and asleep at the same time, dreaming of the war and yet dreamed of by the war. ~ J.G. Ballard

He's at war with himself. Why doesn't he surrender to his feelings and stop fighting himself? He has hang-ups that I must cut him loose from. ~ Steven L. Sheppard

I am convinced that it is one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world. Our involvement in the war in Vietnam has torn up the Geneva Accord. It has strengthened the military-industrial complex; it has strengthened the forces of reaction in our nation. It has put us against the self-determination of a vast majority of the Vietnamese people, and put us in the position of protecting a corrupt regime that is stacked against the poor. ~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

All other trades are contained in that of war.
Is that why war endures?
No. It endures because young men love it and old men love it in them. Those that fought, those that did not.
That's your notion.
The judge smiled. Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work. He knows too that the worth or merit of a game is not inherent in the game itself but rather in the value of that which is put at hazard. Games of chance require a wager to have meaning at all. Games of sport involve the skill and strength of the opponents and the humiliation of defeat and the pride of victory are in themselves sufficient stake because they inhere in the worth of the principals and define them. But trial of chance or trial of worth all games aspire to the condition of war for here that which is wagered swallows up game, player, all. ~ Cormac McCarthy

The Syrian army is tired of corruption. It is tired of party nepotism. It is becoming very angry with those it blames for the war. ~ Robert Fisk

Staying is not always a choice, and I have lived and lost enough to know that. But the way I think about grief is that it is the great tug-of-war, and sometimes the flag is on the side you don't want it to be on. And sometimes, the game has exhausted all of its joy, and all that's left is you on your knees. But, today, even though I am sad, my hands are still on the rope. ~ Hanif Abdurraqib

By 1945, a growing number of whites in the North had concluded that the Jim Crow system would have to be modified, if not entirely overthrown. This consensus was due to a number of factors, including the increased political power of blacks due to migration to the North and the growing membership and influence of the NAACP, particularly its highly successful legal campaign challenging Jim Crow laws in federal courts. Far more important in the view of many scholars, however, is the influence of World War II. The blatant contradiction between the country's opposition to the crimes of the Third Reich against European Jews and the continued existence of a racial caste system in the United States was proving embarrassing, severely damaging the nation's credibility as leader of the "free world. ~ Michelle Alexander

With total discipline we can solve all problems. ~ M. Scott Peck

Force without judgement falls on its own weight. ~ Horace

Another part of the global war on terrorism that Canada and the United States are working on together is in helping failed states, states like Afghanistan, where people have no voice. ~ Paul Cellucci

The one and only thing over which you have complete and total control is how you focus your own mind. Luckily, this determines everything else. ~ Napoleon Hill

Sometimes one should stop figuring out the complexities of the universe one should just free the slave - rjs ~ Rassool Jibraeel Snyman

Most Americans are close to total ignorance about the world. They are ignorant. That is an unhealthy condition in a country in which foreign policy has to be endorsed by the people if it is to be pursued. And it makes it much more difficult for any president to pursue an intelligent policy that does justice to the complexity of the world. ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

From the earth, from the air, sustaining forces pour into us
mostly from the earth. To no man does the earth mean so much as to the soldier. When he presses himself down upon her long and powerfully, when he buries his face and his limbs deep in her from the fear of death by shell-fire, then she is his only friend, his brother, his mother; he stifles his terror and his cries in her silence and her security; she shelters him and releases him fro ten seconds to live, to run, ten seconds of life; receives him again and often for ever. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

In Malta, the Wars of Religion reached their climax. If both sides believed that they saw Paradise in the bright sky above them, they had a close and very intimate knowledge of Hell. ~ Ernle Dusgate Selby Bradford

Do you have still the dye with which to turn your tunic red?'
'The madder? Yes, I do.'
'Enough of it for a century?'
'Enough for the entire cohort, if you want it.'
He twitched a smile then; I was coming to know it, and to revel in the sight of it. I was his then, part of the XIIth, and he knew it.
'Not the entire cohort yet, Demalion. The century will do. Henceforth we are the Bloody First. And I fancy we might have a mule's tail on our standard. See to it on our return. ~ M.C. Scott

What I saw in Washington that October were a lot of Americans who were genuinely dismayed by what their country was doing in Vietnam; I also saw a lot of other Americans who were self-righteously attracted to a most childish notion of heroism - namely, their own. They thought that to force a confrontation with soldiers and policemen would not only elevate themselves to the status of heroes; this confrontation, they deluded themselves, would expose the corruption of the political and social system they loftily thought they opposed. These would be the same people who, in later years, would credit the antiwar 'movement' with eventually getting the U.S. armed forces out of Vietnam. That was not what I saw. I saw that the righteousness of many of these demonstrators simply helped to harden the attitudes of those poor fools who supported the war. That is what makes what Ronald Reagan would say - two years later, in 1969 - so ludicrous: that the Vietnam protests were 'giving aid and comfort to the enemy.' What I saw was that the protests did worse than that; they gave aid and comfort to the idiots who endorsed the war - they made that war last longer. That's what I saw. ~ John Irving

The Arabs will have to go, but one needs an opportune moment for making it happen, such as a war. ~ David Ben-Gurion

Three hundred types of mussel, a third of the world's total, live in the Smokies. Smokies mussels have terrific names, like purple wartyback, shiny pigtoe, and monkeyface pearlymussel. Unfortunately, that is where all interest in them ends. Because they are so little regarded, even by naturalists, mussels have vanished at an exceptional rate. Nearly half of all Smokies mussels species are endangered; twelve are thought to be extinct.

This ought to be a little surprising in a national park. I mean it's not as if mussels are flinging themselves under the wheels of passing cars. Still, the Smokies seem to be in the process of losing most of their mussels. The National Park Service actually has something of a tradition of making things extinct. Bryce Canyon National Park is perhaps the most interesting-certainly the most striking-example. It was founded in 1923 and in less than half a century under the Park Service's stewardship lost seven species of mammal-the white-tailed jackrabbit, prairie dog, pronghorn antelope, flying squirrel, beaver, red fox, and spotted skunk. Quite an achievement when you consider that these animals had survived in Bryce Canyon for tens of millions of years before the Park Service took an interest in them. Altogether, forty-two species of mammal have disappeared from America's national parks this century. ~ Bill Bryson

One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. ~ Howard Zinn

If all Europe lies flat while the Russian mob tramps over it, we will then be faced with a war under difficult circumstances, and with a very good chance of losing it. ~ James Forrestal