War Battle Civilization Quotes

Battle is for an army to win or lose; war is for civilization to win or lose. ~ Ian C. Esslemont

You will never find peace with these fascists
You'll never find friends such as we
So remember that valley of Jarama
And the people that'll set that valley free.
From this valley they say we are going
Do not hasten to bid us adieu
Even though we lost the battle at Jarama
We'll set this valley before we're through.
All this world is like this valley called Jarama
So green and so bright and so fair
No fascists can dwell in our valley
Nor breathe in our new freedoms air. ~ Woody Guthrie

The two princes stared at each other, one gold and one silver, one her twin and one her soul-bonded. There was nothing friendly in the stares, nothing human - two Fae males locked in some unspoken dominance battle. ~ Sarah J. Maas

The mother's battle for her child with sickness, with poverty, with war, with all the forces of exploitation and callousness that cheapen human life needs to become a common human battle, waged in love and in the passion for survival. ~ Adrienne Rich

Then as Anna listened another sound began to rise within the first. It began as a low keening, like the wind in a bottle tree, almost indiscernible amid the guns. Yet it was there, and it grew and grew, gaining strength and timbre until suddenly a new note broke away and was taken up: a high weird quavering like nothing that Anna had ever heard, that peopled the smoke with an army of mourning phantoms. Anna had heard the men talk of this, too - the uncanny demon cry of the Rebel army going into the attack - and now here it was for real, echoing across violence and death for the last time in a wild crescendo that seemed to peak and yet peak again: descanting blood, crying lost youth and the loss of all dreams. One last time it shrilled out of the rolling smoke, then collapsed all at once into a maelstrom of voices - the deep snarling utterance of thousands of men in hell. ~ Howard Bahr

Dunkirk has fallen ... with it has ended the greatest battle of world history. Soldiers! My confidence in you knew no bounds. You have not disappointed me. ~ Adolf Hitler

To die,
so young to die.
No, no, not I,
I love the warm sunny skies,
light, song, shining eyes,
I want no war, no battle cry,
No, no, not I. ~ Hannah Senesh

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus. ~ Antoine De Saint Exupery

I must accept my Father's loving help in resisting and overcoming. Sin is like an octopus with many tentacles trying to crush out my life. Seldom do all tentacles loosen their hold on me at once. It is one tentacle at a time. In this war against sin, it is a victory won through one soldier dying at a time. Seldom does the entire enemy army fall dead at a single blast. It is hand-to-hand combat. It is one small victory at a time. But God doesn't send me out to do battle without a war plan. He is my Commander; I will fight - inch by inch, hour by hour - under His direction. He dispatches the Holy Spirit to me, with clear directions on how to fight, when to run, where to strike next. This battle against principalities and powers is His ~ David Wilkerson

He was in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.
He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them. ~ Napoleon Bonaparte

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

My mother was the perfect Spartan mother. I have always been able to imagine her telling her sons to return from battle 'with their shields, or on them'. She did actually try it on my father at the start of the Second World War. He didn't take it kindly, and confided to me ruefully that he thought she rather fancied herself a Hero's Widow. ~ Rosemary Sutcliff

The Prime Minister wins debate after debate and loses battle after battle. The country is beginning to say that he fights debates like a war and the war like a debate. ~ Aneurin Bevan

War brutalises a man. It is not surprising he was moody and violent. But you must remember two things: running away from battle has always been punishable by death. Military discipline must be harsh, or every soldier would run away; and secondly in a firing squad of ten men only one held a rifle with live ammunition - nine held blanks. So every man had a nine out of ten chance of not being responsible for the death of his colleague. ~ Jennifer Worth

Now with the squadrons marshaled, captains leading each,
the Trojans came with cries and the din of war like wildfowl
when the long hoarse cries of cranes sweep on against the sky
and the great formations flee from winter's grim ungodly storms,
flying in force. shrieking south to the Ocean gulfs, speeding
blood and death to the Pygmy warriors, laonching at daybreak
savage battle down upon their heads. But Achaea's armies
came on strong in silence, breathing combat-fury,
hearts ablaze to defend each other to the death. ~ Fagles Robert

Benedict Arnold was a war hero, wounded in battle
before he turned against his country. Hitler was likewise a decorated and wounded veteran of the First World War. Being a war hero is not a lifetime ... exempt[ion] ... from responsibility for what you do thereafter. ~ Thomas Sowell

For marriage is like life in this - that it is a field of battle, and not a bed of roses. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

Let our battle commence, Third War-Hammer Yolathian of Jeradia. I shall not be merciful again. ~ Marc Secchia

Every battle, every war - is fought for things worth dying for. ~ Arthur M. Jolly

A man becomes a Mahadev, only when he fights for good. A Mahadev is not born from his mother's womb. He is forged in the heat of battle, when he wages a war to destroy evil. Har Har Mahadev - All of us are Mahadev. ~ Amish Tripathi

The outcome of battle is never in a warrior's control. What is in his control is how he chooses to fight and what he chooses to fight for. Today, I choose to fight to keep the Anartas and Sindhuvarta free of the invaders – and I choose to fight such that the enemy will speak of me in their legends for generations to come. ~ Shatrujeet Nath

For the achiever the battle with critics is a slow war of attrition. Let time do the dirty work for you. ~ Bryant McGill

As a graduate of the Citadel, the military college of South Carolina, I am astonished by Tolstoy's absolute mastery at describing battles and military tactics. If I were teaching military history in any country in the world, I would make War and Peace required reading for anyone who held any ambition for advancement into the officer corps. It should be on the night table of the leader of every country who wishes to send troops into war. No writer has ever described the horror and anarchy of battle with more authority. It is one of the timeless lessons of War and Peace that no one, not Napoleon, nor the Tsar, nor the Russian general Katuzov, has any idea how a war is going to turn out once it is unleashed. Napoleon ~ Leo Tolstoy

My view of civilization is that there have always been small pockets of good, decent, kind people surrounded by corrupt and evil power structures. It's always a battle to stay on the side of good. ~ Nancy Farmer

Suddenly he spotted Gran deep in conversation with Kitty's closest friend, and relief coursed through him. Gran would squelch the tale at once. And once she tried to quash the gossip, he would win-because he could then threaten to send notice to the papers of his betrothal if she didn't back down. She'd have no choice but to give up on her scheme.
Except…she wasn't acting as if she meant to squelch it. She was talking to the other woman with great animation. And when she met his gaze from across the room, beaming from ear to ear, he realized in a flash that he'd misunderstood everything. Everything.
She hadn't been bluffing him. All the rot about trying to buy Maria off, the disapproving looks and snide remarks…all along, Gran had been goading him toward what she wanted. God preserve him.
With a sickening sense of inevitability, he saw her go to the duchess's side and whisper a few words, then saw the duchess rise and tap her glass to indicate she had an announcement to make. With a triumphant smile, Gran announced the engagement of her grandson, the Marquess of Stoneville, to Miss Maria Butterfield of Dartmouth, Massachusetts.
All eyes turned to him, and the whispers began anew.
He couldn't believe it. How could he have been so blind? He'd lost the battle, maybe even the war. ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Prisoner of War guard companies, or an equivalent organization, should be as far forward as possible in action to take over prisoners of war, because troops heated with battle are not safe custodians. Any attempt to rob or loot prisoners of war by escorts must be dealt strictly with. ~ George S. Patton

There is a strong conservative instinct in the average man or woman, born of the hereditary fear of life, that prompts them to cling to old standards, or, if too intelligent to look inhospitably upon progress, to move very slowly. Both types are the brakes and wheelhorses necessary to a stable civilization, but history, even current history in the newspapers, would be dull reading if there were no adventurous spirits willing to do battle for new ideas. ~ Gertrude Atherton

All the survivors of the war had reached their homes and so put the perils of battle and the sea behind them. ~ Homer

You can rescue someone from danger, but not from change and death; the soldier who survives the battle becomes someone else, something else, somewhere else. His war subsides; his memory fades; his nation ceases to exist; all but the elemental structures decay away; the very atoms that were once warring sides are now soil, trees, lovers, birds; all the medals are playthings for strangers; the cannons have been melted down and turned back into church bells that will become cannons again for another war. ~ Rebecca Solnit

As we rode slowly through the battle camp, the sounds and smells of war overwhelmed my senses: horses stamping and sweating in anticipation; men shouting; the steady rhythm of metal grinding on stone; leather snapping and buckling, and woo
d crackling in flame. The simmering energy of warriors as they eagerly awaited battle slithered through the camp like an invisible serpent ~ Virginia Chandler