War Memorial Quotes

The rising wave of nostalgia and an increasing interest in heritage sites and historic buildings is perhaps not only a sense of yearning for a lost Singapore, but also the recognition that neither 1959 nor 1965 marked Year One (...) In all the campaigns and features on Singapore's 50th anniversary that I've come across, the Kranji War Memorial was never mentioned. It just doesn't fit the slender narrative. That's such a shame because the cemetery is a fitting, dignified tribute to thousands of Singapore heroes, both local and foreign. ~ Neil Humphreys

Reminders

'The peace garden is opposite the War Memorial,'
Said the old soldier.

'We had to fight to make peace
Back in the good old days.'

'No, the War Memorial is opposite the peace garden,'
Said the old pacifist.

'You've had so many wars to end all wars,
Still millions are dying from the wars you left behind.'

'Look,' said the old soldier.
'You chickens stuck your peace garden
In front of our War Memorial to cause non-violent trouble.
This War Memorial is necessary,
It reminds us that people have died for our country.'

'Look,' said the old pacifist,
'In the beginning was peace
And the peace was with God
And the peace was God,
This peace garden is unnecessary but
It reminds us that people want to live for our country. ~ Benjamin Zephaniah

Our lives are a story shaped by circumstance, twisted by Fate, and ultimately judged by how we reacted. ~ Mary Marchese

I deliberately did not read anything about the Vietnam War because I felt the politics of the war eclipsed what happened to the veterans. The politics were irrelevant to what this memorial was. ~ Maya Lin

Sadly, a prize for peace is a rarity in this world. Most nations have monuments or memorials to war, bronze salutations to heroic battles, archways of triumph. But peace has no parade, no pantheon of victory. ~ Kofi Annan

President Clinton broke ground Saturday for the World War II memorial in Washington. He'll never have the military's full respect. However, after surviving ten female accusers, he's been made an honorary member of the Tailhook Association. ~ Argus Hamilton

If liberals had been in charge of the Arizona memorial, it would probably have featured an exhaustive exhibit about the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and little about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. ~ Mona Charen

The rain still drummed on the roof, like fine needles striking the shingles. The family sat silently around the table, each one wrapped in their own thoughts.
It was Matthew's voice that broke the silence, asking, "And what happened after that?"
"After that," said Paul, "came Gettysburg. ~ Elisabeth Grace Foley

The [Vietnam War Memorial] Wall became a magnet for citizens of every generation, class, race, and relationship to the war perhaps because it is the only great public monument that allows the anesthetized holes in the heart to fill with a truly national grief. ~ Adrienne Rich

I'm American. Like I told you. And I'm American and not something else because they failed that day. They couldn't do it and most of them probably knew they couldn't do it before they even started, but they went anyhow. There's honor in that. I don't reckon there's much honor left in the world now, but they had it that day and I honor them on both sides by knowing what I can about it. Much as I can. ~ Lance Weller

The truth of war is not always easy. The truth is always more heroic than the hype. ~ Jon Krakauer

This is a story of Africa. A pioneer woman's journey north was merely the beginning. ~ Jeffrey Whittam

The expulsion of Spain from Cuba (a worthwhile venture) so that the U.S. could take control of Cuba (an unworthy venture) was preceded by a dubious story, never proven, that the Spaniards had exploded the U.S. battleship Maine in Havana harbor. Our seizure of the Philippines (from the Filipinos) was preceded by a manufactured "incident" between Filipino and U.S. troops. The German sinking of the passenger ship Lusitania in World War I was one of the instances of "ruthless" submarine warfare given as a reason to enter that war; years afterward, it was disclosed that the Lusitania was not an innocent vessel but a munitions ship whose papers had been doctored. ~ Howard Zinn

We were sweet, lovely people who wanted to throw out all the staid institutions who placed money and wars above all else. When you're young you think that's how life works. ~ Margot Kidder

When I was growing up in Virginia, the Civil War was presented to me as glorious with dramatic courage and military honor. Later, I realized how death was central to the reality. It was at the core of women's lives. It's what they talked about most. ~ Drew Gilpin Faust

Because civilization isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, recreated daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he ever would have thought possible. And if he wishes to live, he must do what he can to prevent the world he wants to live in from fading away. As long as there's war, life is a preventative measure. ~ Steven Galloway

Among those dazzled by the Administration team was Vice-President Lyndon Johnson. After attending his first Cabinet meeting he went back to his mentor Sam Rayburn and told him with great enthusiasm how extraordinary they were, each brighter than the next, and that the smartest of them all was that fellow with the Stacomb on his hair from the Ford Motor Company, McNamara. "Well, Lyndon," Mister Sam answered, "you may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say, but I'd feel a whole lot better about them if just one of them had run for sheriff once." It is my favorite story in the book, for it underlines the weakness of the Kennedy team, the difference between intelligence and wisdom, between the abstract quickness and verbal fluency which the team exuded, and the true wisdom, which is the product of hard-won, often bitter experience. Wisdom for a few of them came after Vietnam. ~ David Halberstam

I believe that there was a great age, a great epoch when man did not make war: previous to 2000 B.C. Then the self had not reallybecome aware of itself, it had not separated itself off, the spirit was not yet born, so there was no internal conflict, and hence no permanent external conflict. ~ D.H. Lawrence

They can see everything they want to, but never forget that they cannot see beyond the distortion of their imagination where there is no color and everything exists in black and white. And that is why we will survive, because they do not have what is necessary to defeat us. The real war is between our imagination and theirs, what we can see and what they are blinded to. Do not despair. None of them can see far enough, and so long as we do not let them violate our imagination we will survive. ~ Lawrence Thornton

It was a reasonable argument. And for the past ten years things had only gotten worse. Blackouts, war, fifty-seven varieties of terrorists, water shortages, plagues. It reminded me of a story about frogs: if you put them in an open pot of water and turn on the burner, they just sit there and boil to death, because they're not equipped to recognize and respond to gradual changes in water temperature. They could jump out at any time, but there never comes a time when their little brains judge it's time to jump. So they cook. I ~ Will McIntosh

One example of an uniquely Sethian approach towards initiation is for the initiate to regard his or her own life with the same urgency and need experienced as in a war zone in which every move and action must be weighed yet determined swiftly, as necessity dictates. During battle, situations such as missed opportunity, lingering sentimentality, second or third chances, or excessive contemplation would be fatal; and so it is on the sinister path. ~ Zeena Schreck

Why would Westerners interpret victories of war by Sun Tzu as signs of strength and wisdom, but victories of war by Bible believers as signs of barbarism and ignorance? This cognitive dissonance is either a symptom of religious bigotry or a form of "worldview schizophrenia". ~ Steve Cioccolanti

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

Our conflict is not likely to cease so soon as every good man would wish. The measure of iniquity is not yet filled; and unless we can return a little more to first principles, and act a little more upon patriotic ground, I do not know when it will-or-what may be the issue of the contest. Speculation-peculation-engrossing-forestalling-with all their concomitants, afford too many melancholy proofs of the decay of public virtue; and too glaring instances of its being the interest and desire of too many, who would wish to be thought friends, to continue the war. ~ George Washington

Some conservatives are surprised to find people on the Left supporting the war in Afghanistan. It's not surprising at all ... It is hard for the government to prosecute a war and not expand ... Conservatives may think they can support war and oppose the expansion of the state, but that is like trying to square the circle. What makes them think they can contain the expansion? ~ Sheldon Richman

The deduction of effect from cause is often blocked by some insuperable extrinsic obstacle: the true causes may be quite unknown. Nowhere in life is this so common as in war, where the facts are seldom fully known and the underlying motives even less so. ~ Carl Von Clausewitz

People say you can't have peace without a war, but on the contrary they say they don't support war. You can not, ever achieve happiness from focusing on suffering, you have to change your perspective. World peace starts with Inner peace. ~ Mark Ryan

We must quickly mobilize our civilization with the urgency and resolve that has previously been seen only when nations mobilized for war. These prior struggles for survival were won when leaders found words at the 11th hour that released a mighty surge of courage, hope and readiness to sacrifice for a protracted and mortal challenge. ~ Al Gore

When, late in the war, with the Wehrmacht breaking up on all fronts, our planes were sent to destroy this last major city, I doubt if the question was asked, "How will this tragedy benefit us, and how will that benefit compare with the ill-effects in the long run?" Dresden, a beautiful city, built in the art spirit, symbol of an admirable heritage, so anti-Nazi that Hitler visited it but twice during his whole reign, food and hospital center so bitterly needed now - plowed under and salt strewn in the furrows. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The fact that someone didn't experience the war itself doesn't mean that he doesn't perceive its consequences. ~ Guido Westerwelle

It was a good thing, we told ourselves; the eyes grow weary with looking at new things; sleeping late, we said, has its genuine therapeutic value; we would be better for it, would be able to work more effectively. We have little doubt that all this was true, but we wish we could build as good a rationalization every time we are lazy. For in some beastly way this fine laziness has got itself a bad name. It is easy to see how it might have come into disrepute, if the result of laziness were hunger. But it rarely is. Hunger makes laziness impossible. It has even become sinful to be lazy. We wonder why. One could argue, particularly if one had a gift for laziness, that it is relaxation pregnant of activity, a sense of rest from which directed effort may arise, whereas most busy-ness is merely a kind of nervous tic.
...
How can such a process have become a shame and a sin? Only in laziness can one achieve a state of contemplation which is a balancing of values, a weighing of oneself against the world and the world against itself. A busy man cannot find time for such balancing. We do not think a lazy man can commit murders, nor great thefts, nor lead a mob. He would be more likely to think about it and laugh. And a nation of lazy contemplative men would be incapable of fighting a war unless their very laziness were attacked. Wars are the activities of busy-ness. ~ John Steinbeck

Right from the start most German generals knew that Hitler was psychotic. But as long as he was winning the war, almost all of them were happy to overlook that detail ~ Charles Kaiser

This [a surprise attack] is an operation by no means to be despised in war, although it is rare, and less brilliant than a great strategic combination which renders victory certain even before the battle is fought. ~ Antoine-Henri Jomini

All scientific effort must now be concentrated in the area of defence (sic). We have learned our lesson. We, the most civilized of people, have been misled by our own sages through the last four thousand years. We are now over-civilized in a world of barbaric peoples. WE were taught centuries ago that war is not the pastime of a civilized people. We stopped the development of explosive weapons a thousand years ago, on the ground that it was inhuman and monstrous to kill innocent people. Let warriors fight with broadswords and kill each other, we said, but others who are innocent must not die by accident. Therefore, though we understood the principles of rocketry, we did not allow it to be used. Even gunpowder was used only in fireworks. We felt secure in our place under heaven, the centre of a protective ring of subject peoples, beyond whose borders we did not penetrate. Who could have imagined that those outer barbarians would themselves develop atomic bombs and rocket weapons and all manner of deadly chemicals? ~ Pearl S. Buck

Since the end of the Cold War, America has been grasping left and right for an identity. ~ Matt Taibbi

An army abroad is of little use unless there are prudent counsels at home.
[Lat., Parvi enim sunt foris arma, nisi est consilium domi.] ~ Marcus Tullius Cicero

So Englishmen saw it. Lincoln's insincerity was regarded as proven by two things: his earlier denial of any lawful right or wish to free the slaves; and, especially, his not freeing the slaves in 'loyal' Kentucky and other United States areas or even in Confederate areas occupied by United States troops, such as New Orleans. ~ Sheldon Vanauken

Mere praise of peace is easy and ineffective. What is needed is acitve participation in the fight against war and everything which leads to it. ~ Albert Einstein

We took a bowl each and started eating. He went back into the little room, and by the time he returned to the table with his own bowl of food to eat with us, we had already finished. He was shocked and looked around to see if we had done something else with the food. ~ Ishmael Beah

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

The world can seem very chaotic these days. Humankind is constantly changing, and evolving. Advances in science have made it possible to travel thousands of miles in a matter of hours. We can keep in touch with people we care about and even with the world at large with the push of a button. Many of the diseases that plagued humankind for centuries have been wiped out. Yet there is still poverty. There is still famine. There is still disease. There is still war. There is still injustice. ~ The Prophet Of Life

it is the considered belief of the writer of this book that wars are fought by the finest people that there are, or just say people, although, the closer you are to where they are fighting, the finer people you meet; but they are made, provoked and initiated by straight economic rivalries and by swine that stand to profit from them. I believe that all the people who stand to profit by a war and who help provoke it should be shot on the first day it starts by accredited representatives of the loyal citizens of their country who will fight ~ Ernest Hemingway,

If Iran invaded Israel, it's up to Congress to declare war. ~ Ron Paul

The two systems slave and free-labor are incompatible. They have never permanently existed together in one country, and they never can. ~ William H. Seward

During the 1980s, in California, a large number of Cambodian women went to their doctors with the same complaint: they could not see. The women were all war refugees. Before fleeing their homeland, they had witnessed the atrocities for which the Khmer Rouge, which had been in power from 1975 to 1979, was well known. Many of the women had been raped or tortured or otherwise brutalized. Most had seen family members murdered in front of them. One woman, who never again saw her husband and three children after soldiers came and took them away, said that she had lost her sight after having cried every day for four years. She was not the only one who appeared to have cried herself blind. Others suffered from blurred or partial vision, their eyes troubled by shadows and pains.

The doctors examined the women - about a hundred and fifty in all - found that their eyes were normal. Further tests showed that their brains were normal as well. If the women were telling the truth - and there were some who doubted this, who thought the women might be malingering because they wanted attention or were hoping to collect disability - the only explanation was psychosomatic blindness.

In other words, the women's minds, forced to take in so much horror and unable to take more, had managed to turn out the lights. ~ Sigrid Nunez

All that is needed to set us definitely on the road to a Fascist society is war. It will of course be a modified form of Fascism at first. ~ John T. Flynn

When I was at Stratford, the very first thing that I was commissioned to work on was trying to make a musical out of the documentary material about the General Strike, which was the next big historical event in England, after the First World War. ~ Trevor Nunn

For years, the Bush Administration eviscerated all the military and legal structures that were designed to separate the innocent from the guilty in the 'Global War on Terror.' ~ Alex Gibney

Chimerical and empty being, your name alone has caused more blood to flow on the face of the earth than any political war ever will. Return to the nothingness from which the mad hope and ridiculous fright of men dared call you forth to their misfortune. You only appeared as a torment for the human race. What crimes would have been spared the world, if they had choked the first imbecile who thought of speaking of you. ~ Marquis De Sade

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

What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated? What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy. What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals? The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty. ~ Mahatma Gandhi