Us War Quotes

The reason the founders chafed at the idea of an American standing army and vested the power of war making in the cumbersome legislature was not to disadvantage us against future enemies, but to disincline us toward war as a general matter ... With citizen-soldiers, with the certainty of a vigorous political debate over the use of a military subject to politicians' control, the idea was for us to feel it- uncomfortably- every second we were at war. But after a generation or two of shedding the deliberate political encumbrances to war that they left us ... war making has become almost an autonomous function of the American state. It never stops. ~ Rachel Maddow

The NSA was actually concerned back in the time of the crypto-wars with improving American security. Nowadays, we see that their priority is weakening our security, just so they have a better chance of keeping an eye on us. ~ Edward Snowden

We in the West think of peace as society's default position. War is a temporary state of affairs that happens when peace fails. For us, war is something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. When it is over, win or lose, the warring factions lay down their arms and resume their normal lives. ~ Kathleen Troia McFarland

I am so convinced of the advantages of looking at mankind instead of reading about them, ... that I think there should be a law amongst us to set our young men abroad for a term among the few allies our wars have left us. ~ Lord Byron

When the shingles hissed
in the rain incendiary,
other values were revealed to us ~ Hilda Doolittle

We have to go along a road covered with blood. We have no other alternative. For us it is a matter of life or death, a matter of living or existing. We have to be ready to face the challenges that await us. ~ Gamal Abdel Nasser

I don't think there is an implicit obligation for the United States to follow like a stupid mule whatever the Israelis do. If they decide to start a war, simply on the assumption that we will be automatically drawn into it, I think it is the obligation of friendship to say "you're not going to be making national decisions for us" ~ Zbigniew Brzezinski

It's not a world war yet, but we're at war, because ISIS has declared war on us. ~ Carly Fiorina

I have a message for president snow, you can bomb us but if we burn, you burn with us! ~ Susan Collins

Sensing us, the trees tremble in their sleep, The living leaves recoil before our fires, Baring to us war-charred and broken branches, And seeing theirs, we for our own destruction weep. ~ Kathleen Raine

Abroad, our most important policy is to support our troops and continue forward-thinking foreign policy in the war on terror - keeping our enemies on the run and hitting them before they hit us. ~ Christopher Bond

And there are other dangers potentially more dangerous than even nuclear war. There is AIDS. There is terrorism. There are drugs and more to the point the darkness of our time that makes people seek escape in drugs. There is the slow poisoning of what we call "the environment" of all things as if with that absurdly antiseptic phrase we can conceal from ourselves that what we are really poisoning is home, is here, is us. ~ Frederick Buechner

I considered the prevention of war as the test of our security policy; in addition to being able to rapidly and forcefully end any war forced upon us. ~ Yitzhak Rabin

We must earn the peace we seek just as we earned victory in the war, not by wishful thinking but by realistic effort. At no time in our history has unity among our people been so vital as it is at the present time. Unity of purpose, unity of effort, and unity of spirit are essential to accomplish the task before us. ~ Harry S. Truman

Do they think if we destroy our freedoms for the terrorists they will no longer have a reason to attack us? ~ Ron Paul

Peace among us, war to the tyrants. ~ Eugene Pottier

Secrecy is for losers ... It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most persuasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us. ~ Daniel Patrick Moynihan

I realize he does not know that a man cannot talk of such things; I would do it willingly, but it is too dangerous for me to put these things into words. I am afraid they might then become gigantic and I be no longer able to master them. What would become of us if everything that happens out there were quite clear to us? ~ Erich Maria Remarque

Cursed be he above all others Who's enslaved by love of money. Money takes the place of brothers, Money takes the place of parents, Money brings us war and slaughter. ~ Anacreon

We must end war before war ends us. ~ H.G.Wells

The enemy is here, and if we do not whip him, he will whip us. ~ Robert E.Lee

war is not inevitable. Nor has it always been with us. War is a human invention - an organized, deliberate action of an anti-social kind - and in the long span of human life on Earth, a fairly recent one. For more than 99 percent of the time that humans have lived on this planet, most of them have never made war. Many languages don't even have a word for it. Turn off CNN and read anthropology. You'll see.
What's more, war is obsolete. Most nations don't make war anymore, except when coerced by the United States to join some spurious "coalition." The earth is small, and our time here so short. No other nation on the planet makes war as often, as long, as forcefully, as expensively, as destructively, as wastefully, as senselessly, or as unsuccessfully as the United States. No other nation makes war its business. ~ Ann Jones

If we had not driven them into hell, hell would have swallowed us. ~ Alexander Suvorov

World War II ... did not happen to everyone, but it happened to most. There were people from Germany who were throwing bombs at us. ~ Graham Chapman

Frank Capra made a series of films during World War II called 'Why We Fight' that explored America's reasons for entering the war. Today, with our troops engaged in Iraq and elsewhere for reasons far less clear, I think it's crucial to ask the questions: 'Why are we doing what we are doing? What is it doing to others? And what is it doing to us?' ~ Eugene Jarecki

If the German nation wants to end a state of affairs that threatens its extermination in Europe, it must not fall into the error of the pre-War period and make enemies of God and the world; it must recognize the most dangerous enemy and strike at him with all its concentrated power. And if this victory is obtained through sacrifices elsewhere, the coming generations of our people will not condemn us. ~ Adolf Hitler

The war begins to make itself felt very near to us. ~ James L. Petigru

When a government goes to war, particularly a democracy, it is the most solemn and awesome responsibility of our leaders - to decide to send our kids to go off and kill and die for us. ~ Joe Wilson

Each of us is free to move our consciousness through that infinite pattern of possibilities as we please. If we're filled with fears, or if we trust the fears of others, we'll choose a path in which our city falls into the sea, or a path in which a third world war vaporizes us, or whatever other disaster is most thrilling or horrifying or fascinating for us. ~ Richard Bach

The United States should not under any circumstances throw away our gun until we are sure the rest of the world cannot arm against us. ~ Harry S. Truman

What had happened, for instance, at one of the war's biggest battles, the Battle of Midway? It was in the Pacific, there was something about aircraft carriers. Wasn't there a movie about it, one of those Hollywood all-star behemoths in which a lot of admirals look worried while pushing toy ships around a map? (Midway, released in 1976 and starring Glenn Ford, Charlton Heston, and -- inevitably -- Henry Fonda.) A couple of people were even surprised to hear that Midway Airport was named after the battle, though they'd walked past the ugly commemorative sculpture in the concourse so many times. All in all, this was a dispiriting exercise. The astonishing events of that morning, the "fatal five minutes" on which the war and the fate of the world hung, had been reduced to a plaque nobody reads, at an airport with a vaguely puzzling name, midway between Chicago and nowhere at all. ~ Lee Sandlin

On both sides the troops were commanded by royal princes and they massacred each other mercilessly. ~ Matthew Of Edessa

The world should be worried about those who go around the planet with a can of gasoline in one hand and a box of matches in the other, pretending to sell fire insurance. ~ Rodrigue Tremblay

'Feminist comedy,' practically an oxymoron, had a couple of good years after WWII. Chalk it up to the forced female autonomy that occurred during wartime, when Rosie the Riveter went to work in the factories, constructing the Allies' war machines while taking charge of the finances, the home, and the children. ~ Grace Slick

War vies with magic in its efforts to get something for nothing. ~ Lewis Mumford

Of course, mankind would not have landed on the Moon in 1969, were it not for two things: conquered Nazi rocket technology and post-war anti-Communist paranoia in the United States. ~ Charles Duke

One of the things that made Star Wars work was the kids didn't know who their dad was. ~ Mark Millar

You take it from me, we are losing the war because we can salute too well. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

Governments constantly choose between telling lies and fighting wars, with the end result always being the same. One will always lead to the other. ~ Thomas Jefferson

The psychological components of war have not gone away - dominance, vengeance, callousness, tribalism, groupthink, self-deception ~ Steven Pinker

Camouflage doesn't help when the other guy is willing to defoliate the whole jungle. ~ Andrew Vachss

Anger is always reserved for someone else. And yet, I've been in a room with a woman who escaped a war, who lost her father in ethnic cleansing, whose mother burned her hair, whose cousin raped her. "What right do I have to be angry, when I'm alive? she said.

Anger is a privilege of the truly broken, and yet I've never met a woman who was broken enough that she allowed herself to be angry. An angry woman must answer for herself. The reasons for her anger must be picked over, examined, and debated. My anger must stand the scrutiny of the court of law, of evidentiary procedures. I must prove it comes from somewhere justified and not just because one time some man touched my sister. Or because one time some man touched some woman and will continue on and on. ~ Roxane Gay

We've arrived at a point where the President of the United States is going to lead a war on traditional marriage. ~ Rush Limbaugh

One might have thought that the Cold War's conclusion would have convinced the Left that appeasement of dictators is not profitable. ~ Mona Charen

I wouldn't want to promote teenage girls having sex. But the reality is, it's happening, and they're just a little too young to understand how careful they need to be. That's a big battle with me, because I'm 23, and a lot of my fans are eight years younger than I am, so there's a bit of a tug-of-war there. I want to set the right example and, at the same time, live my life. ~ Rihanna

The industrial and social injustice of our era is the tragic aftermath of democracy's overemphasis on freedom as the "right to do whatever you please." No, freedom means the right to do what you ought, and ought implies law, and law implies justice, and justice implies God. So too in war, a nation that fights for freedom divorced from justice has no right to war, because it does not know why it wants to be free, or why it wants anyone else to be free. ~ Fulton J. Sheen

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, or their country, is a measure of that failure. ~ Adrienne Rich

And let Apollo drive Prince Hector back to battle,
breathe power back in his lungs, make him forget
the pain that racks his heart. Let him whip the Achaeans
in headlong panic rout and roll them back once more,
tumbling back on the oar-swept ships of Peleus' son Achilles.
And he, will launch his comrade Patroclus into action
and glorious Hector will cut him down with a spear
in front of Troy, once Patroclus has slaughtered
whole battalions of strong young fighting men
and among them all, my shining son Sarpedon.
But then - enraged for Patroclus -
brilliant Achilles will bring Prince Hector down.
And then, from that day on, I'll turn the tide of war:
back the fighting goes, no stopping it, ever. ~ Homer

We humans have existed in our present form for about a hundred thousand years. I believe that if during this time the human mind had been primarily controlled by anger and hatred, our overall population would have decreased. But today, despite all our wars, we find that the human population is greater than ever. This clearly indicates to me that love and compassion predominate in the world. And this is why unpleasant events are "news"; compassionate activities are so much a part of daily life that they are taken for granted and , therefore, largely ignored. ~ Dalai Lama

Let there be no more war or bloodshed between Arabs and Israelis. Let there be no more suffering or denial of rights. Let there be no more despair or loss of faith. ~ Anwar Sadat

NO NEUTRALS IN HEAVEN. There were no neutrals in the war in heaven. All took sides either with Christ or with Satan. Every man had his agency there, and men receive rewards here based upon their actions there, just as they will receive rewards hereafter for deeds done in the body. The Negro, evidently, is receiving the reward he merits ~ Joseph Fielding Smith

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise. ~ Winston Churchill

There are no unemployed, either in Russia or in Dartmoor jail, and for the same reason. ~ Philip Snowden, 1st Viscount Snowden

To defeat ISIS and let Iran get nuclear weapons would be to win the battle and lose the war, ~ Benjamin Netanyahu

If you took every nuclear weapon ever built at the height of the Cold War, lumped them together and blew them up at the same time, that would be one one-millionth of the energy released at that moment. ~ Phil Plait

Cheerily to sea; the signs of war advance:
No king of England, if not king of France ~ William Shakespeare

He'd grown up an untroubled believer, but the war had put an end to that. What God could permit such misery and slaughter? But, in time, he had found consolation in a God beyond understanding, and prayed for those he'd lost, for those he loved, and an end to evil in the world. ~ Alan Furst

The foolishness of the politicians of that era brought on the "First World War" But it was the people that had to fight it. The trenches that the soldiers dug and the craters from the artillery are still visible to visitors. The cemeteries where the fallen are buried, show that the majority were just young men, whereas the politicians, who were to blame, had mostly white hair and did little or no fighting! To secure our future we must read and learn from history! ~ Hank Bracker

So we have a group within the office that is devoted to support for the war fighter. That's, of necessity, an operational and tactical level of concern. ~ Stephen Cambone

Some people will talk about how Afghanistan has improved, but they're really just talking about the cities. In the countryside where the war has been fought, it's really not that much better than it was in 2001. ~ Anand Gopal

I hope that in the final settlement of the war, you insist that the Germans retain Lorraine, because I can imagine no greater burden than to be the owner of this nasty country where it rains every day. ~ George S. Patton Jr.

Ragnarok is coming. When the sky splits asunder and the dark powers of Muspell march out on their war journey, Frey ~ Neil Gaiman

The thing was, some men needed killing. The Church didn't admit that, save it was war. The Mohawk understood it fine. So did Uncle Jamie. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Never think you can convince God through prayer for a blessing. Praying for prosperity is a wrong weapon for war. If prayer could bring money, all intercessors would be billionaires. ~ Apostle T. Vutabwashe

We can make 'intelligent' missiles that can make war on one particular building hundreds of miles away, but we don't have an equivalent one that can make peace. Might that be because we have worshipped the gods of war, but have forgotten about worshipping the prince of peace? We can put a few men on the moon, but the few men who were standing between the Tutsis and the Hutus in Rwanda in 1994 had to be withdrawn for lack of funds and political will. Might that be because we have worshipped the gods of technology, the gods who boost our own national security--the gods we have wanted, i other words--and have forgotten the God who asked Cain, 'Where is Abel your brother? ~ N.T. Wright

Well, in my view what would ultimately be necessary would be a breakdown of the nation-state system―because I think that's not a viable system. It's not necessarily the natural form of human organization; in fact, it's a European invention pretty much. The modern nation-state system basically developed in Europe since the medieval period, and it was extremely difficult for it to develop: Europe has a very bloody history, an extremely savage and bloody history, with constant massive wars and so on, and that was all part of an effort to establish the nation-state system. It has virtually no relation to the way people live, or to their associations, or anything else particularly, so it had to be established by force. And it was established by centuries of bloody warfare. That warfare ended in 1945―and the only reason it ended is because the next war was going to destroy everything. So it ended in 1945―we hope; if it didn't, it will destroy everything. ~ Noam Chomsky

Each one of these treaties is a step for the maintenance of peace, an additional guarantee against war. It is through such machinery that the disputes between nations will be settled and war prevented. ~ Frank B. Kellogg

I took every chance I could to meet with U.S. soldiers. I talked with them and read the books they gave me about the war. I decided I needed to return to my country and join with them - active duty soldiers and Vietnam Veterans in particular - to try and end the war. ~ Jane Fonda

[Nuclear war] ... may not be desirable. ~ Edwin Meese

There was a war crimes trial because an American prisoner had been shot trying to escape. He had obviously been recaptured and shot, and that violated the Geneva Convention. ~ Charles Guggenheim

Have the people living here under untroubled circumstances and at so great a distance from the wars of others been afflicted with a poverty of experience, a sort of emotional anemia? Must living in peace - so fervently wished for throughout human history and yet enjoyed in only a few parts of the world - inevitably result in refusing to share it with those seeking refuge, defending it instead so aggressively that it almost looks like war? ~ Jenny Erpenbeck