War Movie Quotes

There was a Russian director named Elem Klimov, who did his films during the communist days. They were constantly struggling with the authorities and to be allowed to express themselves. But he did one of the best war movies I've ever seen - it's called 'Come and See.' ~ Stellan Skarsgard

'Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,' while not nearly the masterpiece proclaimed by many critics, is certainly a fascinating cross-species: a big-budget summer action fantasy with a sylvan, indie-film vibe, and a war movie that dares ask its audience to root for the peacemakers. ~ Richard Corliss

As a child I always steered clear of science fiction, but in the autumn of 1977, the bow-wave of publicity for the first 'Star Wars' movie had already reached me, so I was eager for anything science-fictional. ~ Philip Reeve

People want to relate to that. That's a healthy place to be. Even movies do this: War movies or light-hearted comedies, they all have their different time. And this is the time, fortunately, for straight plays ... Are you going to come see it? ~ Sean Mahon

Hokey religions and ancient weapons are no match for a good blaster at your side, kid. ~ Harrison Ford

Terry Kitchen asked me one time why, since I had so few gifts as a husband and father, I had gotten married. And I heard myself say: That's the way the post-war movie goes. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Maybe I would get the chance to be financed for a small romantic comedy, but a war movie by a 28-year-old woman about Japanese soldiers? No one was going to go for that. It's easy to just steal an idea because it's very safe. ~ Julie Delpy

I wanted to do a war movie, a western and an alien movie. In reality, there are a lot of ugly things happening in the world. ~ Aaron Eckhart

If it weren't for the Japanese and the Germans, we wouldn't have any good war movies. ~ Stanley Ralph Ross

I've played heavies for years and years and years. I was bald. I came to Hollywood. I did a play about junk. I was a pusher, so I played pushers for years and years and years. I did war movies and things like that. ~ Gavin MacLeod

If one of your best friends is making a Star Wars movie, you're not gonna not abuse that privilege. I defy anybody to say otherwise! ~ Simon Pegg

I did do a war movie, 'Windtalkers.' That was a lot of action. But once you've done one big action/war movie, you don't need to do another one. ~ Noah Emmerich

In general, I hate films that are overtly either very masculine or very feminine, you know? The same way that I don't like a war movie about soldiers smashing people's heads. But a chick flick I like would be Cassavetes' movies. 'A Woman Under the Influence,' 'Husbands.' ~ Gael Garcia Bernal

The first Star Wars movie was one of six original stories I had written in the form of two trilogies. After the success of Star Wars, I added another trilogy. So now there are nine stories. The original two trilogies were concieved of as six films of which the first film was number four. ~ George Lucas

Here's an easy way to see if a war movie is being truthful: If you see an explosion on a faraway hillside and the sound of the explosion and the detonation of the bomb happen at the same time - if they're putting the sound and the vision together in the same moment - they're going toward our cultural understanding of war, not the reality of war. ~ Sebastian Junger

I collect old first and second World War artifacts and things. I'm a little secret history nerd. I've been lucky enough to do quite a few war movies too so I've taken little things off each film. ~ Jeremy Irvine

When you're doing a comedy and you want to somehow satirise people who are taking themselves seriously, I think the most serious genre is the thing you're going to get the most out of. If you're trying to satirise a comedy, it's hard to do that - it doesn't really work as well. But I love the war movie genre and I'm a fan of all those movies that are part of what this movie is. ~ Ben Stiller

He did not want to see the war movie. It would be full of shit. ~ Don Carpenter

Star Wars, the original movie, was all the various old genre of pictures: the swashbucklers, the war movies, all those things were put n there in a different look. ~ Bruce Boxleitner

Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny, consume you it will ... ~ George Lucas

I've loved the "Star Wars" movies for the ride and pure fun and found that it just didn't stand up when asked for more, particularly when it comes to back stories, prequels, spin-offs, encyclopedic scope, etc. ~ Hank Stuever

I think you should check out 'Battle: Los Angeles' because it really is a sci-fi movie, but it's not. It's not like anything you've seen before. The best way to describe it is it's a war movie that happens to have aliens as the enemy. ~ Noel Fisher

The one thing that I'm most proud of, during the Second World War, I worked on airplanes in a defense plant. ~ Ruth Duccini

Imagine a world where people were 10% happier and less reactive. Marriage, parenting, road rage, politics - all would be improved upon. Public health revolutions can happen rapidly. Most Americans didn't brush their teeth until after world war 2 after soldiers were demanded to maintain oral hygiene. Exercise didn't get popular until science proved its benefits. Mindfulness, I had come to believe, could, in fact, change the world. ~ Dan Harris

But wars - or the threat of war - at least put an end to American chattel slavery, Nazism, Fascism, Japanese militarism, and Soviet Communism. It is hard to think of any democracy - Afghan, American, Athenian, contemporary German, Iraqi, Italian, Japanese, ancient Theban - that was not an outcome of armed struggle and war. ~ Victor Davis Hanson

When John took those naked pictures, the most popular singer was a girl with a tiny stick body and a large deferential head, who sang in a delicious lilt of white lace and promises and longing to be close. When she shut herself up in her closet and starved herself to death, people were shocked. But starvation was in her voice all along. That was the poignancy of it. A sweet voice locked in a dark place, but focused entirely on the tiny strip of light coming under the door.
I drop the rag in the bucket and smoke some more, ashing into the sink,. A tiny piece of the movie from the naked time plays on my eyeball: A psychotic killer is blowing up amusement parks. At the head of the crowd clamoring to ride the roller coaster is a slim, lovely man with long blond hair and floppy clothes and big, beautiful eyes fixed on a tiny strip of light that only he can see. ~ Mary Gaitskill

Life is much like a movie we walk into well after its opening scene, and we will have to step out long before most of the story lines reach their conclusions. We are acutely aware that we need to know a great deal if we are to understand the few confusing minutes that we do watch. Of course, we don't know exactly what it is that we don't know, so we can't frame the question well. We ask, What is the meaning of life? ~ Jonathan Haidt

Somebody bugged Barry Goldwater's apartment during the 1964 election without it triggering a national trauma. The Johnson administration tapped the phones of Nixon supporters in 1968, and again nothing happened. John F. Kennedy regaled reporters with intimate details from the tax returns of wealthy Republican donors, and none of the reporters saw anything amiss. FDR used the Federal Bureau of Investigation to spy on opponents of intervention into World War II
and his targets howled without result. If Watergate could so transform the nation's sense of itself, why did those previous abuses, which were equally well known to the press, not do so? Americans did not lose their faith in institutions because of the Watergate scandal; Watergate became a scandal because Americans were losing faith in their institutions. ~ David Frum

The hardest thing about writing a script is you finish it, but it doesn't mean anything. It's not like a novel or short story - a script is meant to be made into a movie. ~ Maggie Carey

And Caesar's spirit, raging for revenge,
With Ate by his side come hot from hell,
Shall in these confines with a monarch's voice
Cry "Havoc!" and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion men, groaning for burial. ~ William Shakespeare

That may be great for a married couple, but I think it is a stupid idea for two people trying to get to know each other! If you are a young man trying to get to know a young girl, for heaven's sake, don't take her to a movie! ~ Richard G. Scott

Let us ask whether medicine is winning the war against death. The answer is obviously no, it isn't winning: the one fundamental rule of human existence remains, unfortunately, one man one death. ~ Theodore Dalrymple

The very rationalists who jeer at the trial by combat, in the old feudal ordeal, do in fact accept a trial by combat as deciding all human history. In the war of the North and South in America, some of the Southern rebels wrote on their flags the rhyme, "Conquer we must for our cause is just." The philosophy was faulty; and in that sense it served them right that their opponents copied and continued it in the form "Conquer they didn't; so their cause wasn't." But the latter logic is as bad as the former. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I can't measure up to Homer. His composition has survived for nearly three millennia and remains the world's most beautiful and mournful depiction of war. But the story of the Trojan War does not belong to Homer. The characters he employs were legendary long before he was born. ~ David Benioff

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln ~ Abraham Lincoln

I have lived through many wars and have lost everything many times Yet, life is beautiful, and I have so much to learn and enjoy. I have no space nor time for pessimism and hate. ~ Alice Herz-Sommer

If the person who can effectively sanction ill-conceived wars can play the electric guitar, which is a symbol of rebellion, then that whole worldview becomes confused. ~ Steve Coogan

I see this as the central issue of our time: how to find a substitute for war in human ingenuity, imagination, courage, sacrifice, patience ...
War is not inevitable, however persistent it is, however long a history it has in human affairs. It does not come out of some instinctive human need. It is manufactured by political leaders, who then must make a tremendous effort
by enticement, by propaganda, by coercion
to mobilize a normally reluctant population to go to war. ~ Howard Zinn

Something must happen; that is the reason for most human relationships. Something must happen; even servitude in love, in war, ordeath. ~ Albert Camus

Fishing is the opposite of war. ~ George Orwell

To win a war you must come to know all the players. All of them. Living ones, who will face you across the field. Dead ones, whose legends are wielded like weapons, or held like eternally beating hearts. Hidden players, inanimate players – the land itself, or the sea, if you will. Forests, hills, mountains, rivers. Currents both seen and unseen – no, Tavore didn't say all that; she was far more succinct, but it's taken me a long time to fully understand. It's not "know your enemy". That's simplistic and facile. No, it's "know your enemies". There's a big difference, Apsalar, because one of your enemies could be the face in the silver mirror. ~ Steven Erikson

Sometimes you are forced to defend your beliefs. Sometimes you are forced to look at relationships that aren't positive anymore. There are times when I have had to make peace with the fact that I am at war. And sometimes you have to fight those who do not want love to conquer all. ~ Tori Amos

In short, Arab leaders committed to the destruction of Israel invented the concept "Palestinian people" in order to justify their interminable war against Israel. ~ Meir Levi, David

And above all else, remember that the end of a movie (or a TV show, or a play, or a book) is never really the end. ~ Jen Calonita

Life's generally artless, but it does get these occasional hard-ons for plot. It connects things, nefariously, behind yor back, and before you know it you're in a final act of a lousy movie. A lousy horror-movine, usually ... ~ Glen Duncan

Soldiers of the American Revolution fought that 18th century war with heavy muskets. In the early 20th century, we kids fought it every Fourth of July not only with exploding powder and shimmering flares, but with all of our senses. ~ Paul Engle

To me, achieving tone, achieving consistency, is exactly the job of a director. It is to be the fusing, the nexus of a whole bunch of people contributing to the complex life of a movie. There are actors, there's a cinematographer, there're costume people, set people, there are all these things, and you somehow have to be the person in the middle of it who is making it all synchronize into the same magic bubble. ~ Edward Norton

A son of Ares stood here?" Hedge cried indignantly.
"I'm Roman . . . so Mars, actually."
"Whatever! Famous spot in the American Civil War!"
"I'm Canadian, actually."
"Whatever! . . . ~ Rick Riordan

The inconveniences and horrors of the pox are perfectly well known to every one; but still the disease flourishes and spreads. Several million people were killed in a recent war and half the world ruined; but we all busily go on in courses that make another event of the same sort inevitable. Experientia docet? Experientia doesn't. ~ Aldous Huxley

War was funny like that: one minute you could try and block it and have the most wonderful thoughts, the next you were back in the nightmare. ~ Mark A. Cooper

No place is safe - no place is at peace. There is no place where a women and her daughter can hide and be at peace. The war comes through the air, bombs drop in the night. Quiet people go out in the morning, and see air-fleets passing overhead - dripping death - dripping death! ~ H.G.Wells

Taking chances is my job; some will connect and some won't, and certain films find their audiences in different ways. I think 'Spotlight' probably is a better movie because of 'The Cobbler.' You learn with every movie you make: you learn from your mistakes, and you learn from your achievements, and I really do have that approach to filmmaking. ~ Tom McCarthy

Saedii sits there in the aftermath of my confession. I expect her to laugh. To call me a liar and a lunatic, to react the way any normal person might when you tell them that an ancient plant-being that lost a war against a race of ancient psychics is set to wake up after a million-year dirt-nap and nom down on the entire galaxy. ~ Amie Kaufman

I don't care how inventive you are; once you introduce strings into the ensemble for a horror film, you're entering into a world where a tradition has been thoroughly established. So it's repeated use over the years is like, 'Oh God, another film with strings, another spooky movie with strings.' ~ Christopher Young

People, like buildings, have facades. Tom created his. His walk was a feat. It had taken him twenty years of killing bad guys and a pair of Tony Lama boots to perfect the illusion. He made sure that everyone felt it by the third clunk of his boot heel. When he entered a crime scene there was a hush, and no one ever quite knew why they were holding their breath. But he did. A crime scene was theater and the stage was his. ~ Michael Ben Zehabe

What do you think an artist is? ... he is a political being, constantly aware of the heart breaking, passionate, or delightful things that happen in the world, shaping himself completely in their image. Painting is not done to decorate apartments. It is an instrument of war. ~ Pablo Picasso

For virtually all the socialist revolutions of the twentieth century, it was not a crisis of the capitalist system, but imperialist war that pushed old orders into crisis... ~ S.A. Smith

I think if you look at Sam Raimi and Jim Cameron, those guys know things about filmmaking that almost nobody knows anymore. They are students of film from when they handmade films themselves, you know cut films with their own hands and razor blades and tape. ~ Dileep Rao

On October 15, 1965, an estimated 70,000 people took part in large-scale anti-war demonstrations. ~ Noam Chomsky

The 1860s ushered in a number of changes that profoundly transformed the nation. While the emancipation of enslaved people and the increased resettlement of Native Americans represent critical turning points in the political, legal, social, and economic history of the United States, these transformations produced devastating and unanticipated consequences. When soldiers in the North reached for the rifles that hung above the mantles of their front doors and marched off to war, they did so in the name of ending slavery. But in the effort to dismantle the institution of slavery, very few considered how ex-slaves would survive the war and emancipation. An abstract idea about freedom became a flesh-and-blood reality in which epidemic outbreaks, poverty, and suffering threatened former bondspeople as they abandoned slavery and made their way toward freedom. The ~ Jim Downs