War Reporting Quotes

I've stopped war reporting. I realized that I'd answered all of my questions about war and about myself. ~ Sebastian Junger

We broadcast from coast to coast every utterance of Hitler, but the German people are not permitted to know a word of what Roosevelt speaks. ~ William L. Shirer

One of the great myths about war is that there is a ground zero, a center stage, where the terrible forces unleashed by it can be witnessed, recounted, and replayed like the launching of a rocket. War is a human activity far too large to be contained in the experience of a single reporter in a single place and time in any meaningful way. When it comes, it happens to everyone. Everything is in its path. Yet this is the allure of war reporting, the chance of acquiring some personal mother lode of truth to beam back to the living rooms of a waiting nation. The fear that comes from reporting on a war is as much a fear of missing this mother load as it is of being injured or killed in battle, and it sets reporters apart from the people who have to fight wars. Soldiers have their own agonies to think about as a battle approaches. Missing the war is not generally one of them. ~ John Hockenberry

War reporting is still essentially the same - someone has to go there and see what is happening. You can't get that information without going to places where people are being shot at, and others are shooting at you. The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that enough people, be they government, military or the man on the street, will care when your file reaches the printed page, the website or the TV screen. ~ Marie Colvin

War affected my family a lot, and I was quite curious about it. I first went off to war in the early 90's as a journalist, partly out of curiosity and partly because I needed a career. War reporting has been very glamorous and exciting, and everything else that young men like. ~ Sebastian Junger

Every person under the sound of my voice is a soldier. You are either fighting for your freedom or betraying the fight for freedom or enlisted in the army to deny somebody else freedom. - Malcom X ~ Maya Angelou

Be not dumb, obedient slaves in an army of destruction! Be heroes in an army of construction! ~ Helen Keller

All efforts to render politics aesthetic culminate in one thing: war. War and war only can set a goal for mass movements on the largest scale while respecting the traditional property system. This is the political formula for the situation. The technological formula may be stated as follows: Only war makes it possible to mobilize all of today's technical resources while maintaining the property system. It goes without saying that the Fascist apotheosis of war does not employ such arguments. ~ Walter Benjamin

The suppression of natural sexual gratification leads to various kinds of substitute gratifications. Natural aggression, for example, becomes brutal sadism which then is an essential mass-psychological factor in imperialistic wars. ~ Wilhelm Reich

Price of peace could only be valued by
people who had suffered loss in the war. ~ Toba Beta

Because the Indians are planning to start war now, the common people want all of them destroyed so that they can live in peace; however, this is probably a sinful and not at all decent wish. Not to mention the fact that the Indians were the first and legitimate inhabitants and hence are the rightful owners of this land. . . . If the English traders treated the Indians better, the Indians would behave better. ~ Johann Martin Boltzius

Man is, perhaps, no more prone to war than he used to be and no more inclined to commit other evil deeds. But a given amount of ill will or folly will go further than it used to. ~ Joseph Wood Krutch

All Americans and freedom-loving people around the world owe President Reagan our deepest gratitude for his strong, principled leadership that ended the Cold War and brought freedom to millions of people. ~ Jim Ramstad

The war on drugs is what makes thugs. ~ John McWhorter

Fraternity means that the father no longer sacrifices the sons; instead the brothers kill one another. Wars between nations have been replaced by civil war. The great settling of accounts, first under national 'pretexts,' led to a rapidly escalating world civil war. ~ Ernst Junger

We know that to wage a nuclear war today, for example, would be a form of suicide; or that to pollute the air or the oceans in order to achieve some short-term benefit would be to destroy the very basis for our survival. ~ Dalai Lama

In God's name cheerly on, courageous friends,
To reap the harvest of perpetual peace
By this one bloody trial of sharp war. ~ William Shakespeare

WHETHER IT'S A CHILD'S TOY OR A NATION'S OIL, IT'S ALL THE SAME, the Red Rider said. YOU FIGHT FOR WHAT YOU WANT. AGGRESSION. IT'S THE SPICE OF LIFE. War was right: people had to fight for what they wanted. Or maybe balance, as Famine has said
strength matched with temperance.
No, she thought. Not balance, Control. IT'S ALWAYS ABOUT CONTROL, War agreed merrily. [as in the meaning of why wars happen] ~ Jackie Kessler

If publishers are here, I've got a feeling they will agree with whatever I say because the publishing houses are packed full of people who love literature and whose hearts are being broken all the time by what happens, by the reign of the accountants.

There is a phenomenon which I call the Educated Barbarian. This is someone who could have been in school or university for many years, could have won prizes by the score, and at the end has read nothing, knows no history, and above all is totally incurious. Quite a large number of my young friends are like this. They're all utterly delightful. We have a wonderful time together. We gossip, we go shopping. We chat about our friends, but at the slightest mention of anything literary their eyes glaze over. Looking back at my misspent youth, I can remember people who were not particularly literary. They were not even very educated, but they would take for granted that they should have read War and Peace. They did not say, "Oh this is so difficult. Oh this is too long and I don't understand the long words." They just read it. That's what people were like then. ~ Doris Lessing

The only thing more dangerous then your enemy knowing how powerful you are, is your enemy not knowing how powerful you are. ~ Joshua Teya

The glamorous side is all they want to hear, the real part of war isn't believed or [is] listened to with a bored feeling, such as: the constant waiting, baking in the sun all day the flies all day & the mosquitoes all night, the hr. on & hr. off all night, the rain & shivering all night, the thirst & the same canned ration all the time till it becomes tasteless paste that you spit out, the always incomplete "word" never being told what the situation is. Furthermore an admission of fear is either regarded as weakness or modesty in a combat veteran. They don't realize that without fear there can be no courage. ~ Dan Levin

I used to think that the Civil War was our country's greatest tragedy, but I do remember that there were some redeeming features in the Civil War in that there was some spirit of sacrifice and heroism displayed on both sides. I see no redeeming features in Watergate. ~ Sam Ervin

Hello? War and Peace." "You've read War and Peace?" "Um, do I look like I have time to read a book as long as Oksana Chusovitina's career? ~ Lauren Hopkins

We ... are not really free if we can't control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant. ~ Charley Reese

My father didn't believe in war. He said war was evil, but if it came he would revel in it like sand in a storm. ~ Nnedi Okorafor

The Latino military fare badly when they stumble into war with the gringos. But in the torture, murder, and massacre of their own people, they have always performed with brilliance and elan. ~ Edward Abbey

There's a War Crimes Act in the United States passed by a Republican Congress in 1996, which says that grave breaches of the Geneva Convention are subject to the death penalty. And that doesn't mean the soldier that committed them - that means the commanders. ~ Noam Chomsky

War takes people's lives and destroys property, but it does not resolve the world's problems. If anything is achieved through war, it is to plant the seeds for the next violent conflict as the vanquished and their children will usually not accept the outcome. ~ Bruce Van Voorhis

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army?
Philip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who
Triumphed with him? ~ Bertolt Brecht

Jealousy is the most radical primeval and naked form of admiration in war paint, so to speak. ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

You can see a few of them can't believe this is really happening. That they're about to win a battle because the enemy started squabbling like children.
It's a terrible way to lose a war, a terrible way to end.
Not with a bang but a whimper. ~ Amie Kaufman

Creating a world that is truly fit for children does not imply simply the absence of war ... It means having primary schools nearby that educate children, free of charge ... It means building a world fit for children, where every child can grow to adulthood in health, peace and dignity. ~ Carol Bellamy

To live in the light of the resurrection is to refuse to use the powers that crucified Jesus in the name of achieving justice. Thus the sentence, "Christians are called to be nonviolent not because we believe nonviolence is a strategy to make war less likely, but because in a world of war, as faithful followers of Christ, we cannot imagine being anything else than nonviolent; it is a nonviolence, moreover, that may make the world more violent because the world will use violence rather than have the order it calls peace exposed as violence. ~ Stanley Hauerwas

Preparedness never caused a war and unpreparedness never prevented one. ~ Florence Prag Kahn

Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I was going to be a great woman novelist. Then the war came along and I think it's hard for young people today, don't you, to realize that when World War II happened we were dying to go and help our country. ~ Julia Child

In case anyone in America had missed the utter helplessness of their government, 4,000 British troops captured and burned Washington DC. The Presidential mansion, where the decision for war had been taken, was one of the public buildings to be torched. ~ Andrew D. Lambert

I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life. ~ Robert Capa