World War Two Quotes

The End of World War One
Out of the scraped surface of the land
men began to emerge, like puppies
from the slit of their dam. Up from the trenches
they came out upon the pitted, raw earth
wobbling as if new-born.
They could not believe they would be allowed to live,
the orders had come down: no more killing.
They approached the enemy, holding out chocolate
and cigarettes. They shook hands, exchanged
souvenirs
mess-kits, neckerchiefs.
Some even embraced, while in London
total strangers copulated
in doorways and on the pavement, in the ecstasy
of being reprieved. Nine months later,
like men emerging from the trenches, first the head,
then the body, there were lifted, newborn, from these mothers,
the soldiers of World War Two. ~ Sharon Olds

It was a distortion, a mercenary decision to create this parallel history in order to drive the movie for an American audience, Both my grandparents were officers in World War Two, and I would be personally offended if somebody distorted their achieve. ~ David Ayer

Hadn't we better turn it lower?" Tony whispered.
"Eh, what? It's quiet enough, I think."
Tony flung a hunted glance at the window. "You have let me listen in to Germany. If the police find out, there will be great trouble -"
"There won't be any trouble at all," said Thomas. "You're in England, remember. You're free to tune in to any station you please. ~ Constance Savery

May 1, 2011
Young jubulent Americans celebrating the killing of a murderer of women and children, and people ask;
"Is it right to celebrate?"
I watched these Americans in Times Square, D.C. and the world , a great generation, that died for freedom and that of the oppressed, and people ask; "Is it right to feel joy?"
"Yes, I sat proudly with tears in my eyes."
I was watching footage of the end of World War Two ... Johnny Flora ~ Johnny Flora

The U.S. military was segregated 'til the Korean War, and the blacks in World War Two were totally segregated. ~ Clint Eastwood

Her mother set to with the hairbrush again. "But would that be so awful, darling? To be the prettiest thing in Brimscombe-and-Thrupp?"

"I should rather die."

"You nearly did."

"Yes, but I tend to blame the Germans. ~ Chris Cleave

During [Erté]'s childhood St. Petersburg was an elegant centre of theatrical and artistic life. At the same time, under its cultivated sophistication, ominous rumbles could be distinguished. The reign of the tough Alexander III ended in 1894 and his more gentle successor Nicholas was to be the last of the Tsars … St. Petersburg was a very French city. The Franco-Russian Pact of 1892 consolidated military and cultural ties, and later brought Russia into the First World war. Two activities that deeply influenced [Erté], fashion and art, were particularly dominated by France. The brilliant couturier Paul Poiret, for whom Erté was later to work in Paris, visited the city to display his creations. Modern art from abroad, principally French, was beginning to be show in Russia in the early years of the century …

In St. Petersburg there were three Imperial theatres―the Maryinsky, devoted to opera and ballet, the Alexandrinsky, with its lovely classical façade, performing Russian and foreign classical drama, and the Michaelovsky with a French repertoire and company …

It is not surprising that an artistic youth in St. Petersburg in the first decade of this century should have seen his future in the theatre. The theatre, especially opera and ballet, attracted the leading young painters of the day, including Mikhail Vrubel, possibly the greatest Russian painter of the pre-modernistic period. The father of modern theatrical design in Russia was Alexandre Benois, an o ~ Charles Spencer

The Pentagon was built because World War Two was coming, and because World War Two was coming it was built without much steel. Steel was needed elsewhere, as always in wartime. Thus the giant building was a monument to the strength and mass of concrete. So much sand was needed for the mix it was dredged right out of the Potomac River, not far from the rising walls themselves. Nearly a million tons of it. The result was extreme solidity. ~ Lee Child

We've already got gays in the military. We always have had. World War Two, the Western Allies had fourteen million men in uniform. Any kind of reasonable probability says at least a million of them were gay. And we won that war, as I recall, last time I checked with the history books. We won it big time. ~ Lee Child

Looking up, Missouri saw a formation of low-flying P-47's on the horizon, heading up the coast from Naples...Sergeant Missouri laughed aloud. "They're sending us the Air Force, Chico, and we made it with a donkey," he said. ~ Maureen Daly

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

Who was Hitler" demanded little Tracy
"He was this bloke in World War Two" explained Ben. ~ Jackie French

We saved the lives of a whole family that night. Children, parents, uncles, aunts, grandparents, all sailed to safety in Sweden inside a little fisherman's boat."

Johannes aka 'BB'
The Informer by Steen Langstrup ~ Steen Langstrup

I suppose we ought to be getting home, in any case."

"Oh god, is it wartime already?"

"Look on the bright side: it'll be dinner when we get back. ~ Chris Cleave

Nothing about these times makes any sense. Nothing. Putting it to words only makes it sound too simple. ~ Ralph Webster

He supposed that they were part of an amazing new phase of World War Two. It was all right with him. Everything was pretty much all right with Billy. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

In World War One, they called it shell shock. Second time around, they called it battle fatigue. After 'Nam, it was post-traumatic stress disorder. ~ Jan Karon

A single three-bladed fan turned slowly in the centre of the ceiling, barely disturbing the scorching air which filled the small prefabricated hut like an oven... ~ Kevin Cowdall

At the Minsk tractor factory I was looking for a woman who had served in the army as a sniper. She had been a famous sniper. The newspapers from the front had written about her more than once. Her Moscow girlfriends gave me her home phone number, but it was old. And the last name I had noted down was her maiden name. I went to the factory where I knew she worked in the personnel department, and I heard from the men (the director of the factory and the head of the personnel department): "Aren't there enough men? What do you need these women's stories for? Women's fantasies…" The men were afraid that women would tell about some wrong sort of war. I visited a family…Both husband and wife had fought. They met at the front and got married there: "We celebrated our wedding in the trench. Before the battle. I made a white dress for myself out of a German parachute." He had been a machine gunner, she a radio operator. The man immediately sent his wife to the kitchen: "Prepare something for us." The kettle was already boiling, and the sandwiches were served, she sat down with us, but the husband immediately got her to her feet again: "Where are the strawberries? Where are our treats from the country?" After my repeated requests, he reluctantly relinquished his place, saying: "Tell it the way I taught you. Without tears and women's trifles: how you wanted to be beautiful, how you wept when they cut off your braid." Later she whispered to me: "He studied The History of the Great Patriot ~ Svetlana Alexievich

Many Germans nowadays say they were not Nazi, and many were not, but they were nearly ALL Party members. It was safer ... and if you were not, you could end up in a 'camp' for retraining ... so they mostly all paid 'lip service' to the Nazi Party. ~ Alfred Nestor

Lovely morning, World War Two. ~ Thomas Pynchon

It was the economy that troubled most people prior to World War II. Europe, especially Germany, was dealing with a deep worldwide depression. Fascism was gaining a stronghold in Germany as well as in many other European countries. Although small and generally not popular, the Communist Party was the only organized group to stand in opposition to the Nazis. Small bands of these Communists occasionally attempted to disrupt the government by rioting in the streets. Occasionally gunfire would be heard, but very little could be done about it by a people that did not want to get involved. Hitler's "Brown Shirts" were rapidly solidifying their position, and the Nazi Party was becoming stronger. Even though they frequently violated the National Constitution, they brought order to what had been chaos. The Treaty of Versailles, enacted after World War I, was hated by the German people, who felt that it suppressed them in a most demeaning way. However now Hitler was putting people to work building cars and an autobahn highway system that connected the larger cities. Modernization of airports and the development of a national railroad were all in violation of the imposed international regulations. Workers were again bringing paychecks home and could once more feed their families. Therefore, little thought was given to Hitler's power grab. Germany was emerging from the dark era following World War I, and things were getting better. The Vaterland was regaining its strength, without regard ~ Hank Bracker

Look, this is helping me out quite a bit, but could you just get to the punishment part? We're at the end of World War Two in history, and I can't wait to find out who wins. ~ Rob Thomas

Here at great expense,' [Colonel Groves] moaned to Oppenheimer, 'the government has assembled the world's largest collection of crackpots. ~ Steve Sheinkin

What a queer topsy turvy world it was. It used to be the man who went to the wars, the woman who stayed at home. But here the positions were reversed. ~ Agatha Christie

Sergeant Missouri crouched close to the ground, pulling up his collar against the bitter, gusting winds. Show me, he thought tiredly, I'm from Missouri. ~ Maureen Daly

The captain was amusing. He said that he himself couldn't draw and proved his words by drawing his own house for his prisoner to see. It was just such a house as the babies drew in the kindergarten: a square box with four square windows, a door and two chimneys, each with a neat curl of smoke. "That's best I can do," said the Captain, laughing.
Max laughed with him for politeness' sake, though inwardly he was shocked that an important man like the Captain made a fool of himself. "Vater does not draw," he said kindly, "nor does Mutti; but they are both very keen on photography. Perhaps you are good at that?"
"Not brilliant," said the Captain. ~ Constance Savery

Fascism accepts the individual only insofar as his interests coincide with the state's. ~ Benito Mussolini

Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.
- Winston S. Churchill ~ Ellen Brazer

I have returned many times to honour the valiant men who died ... every man who set foot on Omaha Beach was a hero. ~ Omar N. Bradley

It may come as a surprise but I also really started to get into history while I was at school. I found the projects about World War Two fascinating - perhaps when I get the time again, I could pick up where I left off. ~ Rory McIlroy

Both my grandparents were officers in World War Two, and I would be personally offended if somebody distorted their achievements. ~ David Ayer

Jim knew that he was awake and asleep at the same time, dreaming of the war and yet dreamed of by the war. ~ J.G. Ballard

What we accomplished during World War Two is just amazing. We turned our country upside down. African Americans were demanding to be given combat missions. 10% of Americans moved in order to relocate for a war job. We as a country accomplished this heroic, nearly miraculous thing, and we have this legacy of policies and agency - how did they do it? How did they fund it? How did they organize it? It is actually an example that we can borrow from very productively to guide us. ~ Margaret D. Klein

As she walked, the horror stories she'd heard from Felix and the others became real. This is what their underground efforts were fighting against. These camps, these guards, were reality to thousands of people ... Reality to the person who had just made the trip up the chimney. If they did not stop this madness, it would be the end of them all. ~ Tricia Goyer

I told him about the Oedipal thing, about my father leaving when I was very young so I knew how to pine for men, but not how to love them. So he said, 'You'd probably would have been perfect for somebody in World War Two. You'd meet him and then he would get shipped overseas.' And I said, 'Maybe on our date I could drop you off and you could enlist,' and he said he would just got out and rent a uniform. So he was very funny. ~ Carrie Fisher

If people see how we're all interconnected and connected with Nature, we wouldn't have an environmental crisis, we wouldn't have two dozen wars all over the world. ~ Stanley Krippner

[Father Dmitry] lived through collectivization, the crushing of the 80 percent of Russians that were peasants. He served as a soldier in World War Two, when millions of peasants died defending the government that had crushed them. He spent eight years in the gulag, the network of labour camps created to break the spirit of anyone who still resisted. He rose again to speak out for his parishioners in the 1960's and 1970's, striving to help young Russians create a freer and fairer society. ~ Oliver Bullough

If you go to Wikipedia and you look at the Tour de France, there's this huge block in World War One with no winners, and there's another block in World War Two. And then it seems like there's another world war. ~ Lance Armstrong

The hardcover book was an academic monograph from a Midwestern university about the Battle of Kursk. Kursk happened in July of 1943. It was Nazi Germany's last grand offensive of World War Two and its first major defeat on an open battlefield. It turned into the greatest tank battle the world has ever seen, and ever will see, unless people like Kramer himself are eventually turned loose. ~ Lee Child

People who spent the war in prison camps have written a lot of books about what a bad time they had," she said quietly, staring into the embers. "They don't know what it was like, not being in a camp. ~ Nevil Shute

Egypt, too, learned to respect the long arm of British capitalism. During the nineteenth century, French and British investors lent huge sums to the rulers of Egypt, first in order to finance the Suez Canal project, and later to fund far less successful enterprises. Egyptian debt swelled, and European creditors increasingly meddled in Egyptian affairs. In 1881 Egyptian nationalists had had enough and rebelled. They declared a unilateral abrogation of all foreign debt. Queen Victoria was not amused. A year later she dispatched her army and navy to the Nile and Egypt remained a British protectorate until after World War Two. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

Basically, Sherri's idea had to do with bringing Fat's mind down from the cosmic and the abstract to the particular. She had hatched out the practical notion that nothing is more real than a large World War Two Soviet tank. ~ Philip K. Dick

To those who are incapable of presenting the historic truth in an honest way, I want to say that Poland was not a perpetrator but a victim of World War Two. ~ Ewa Kopacz

Like a child in new boots leaping from puddle to puddle, this view sees history as leapfrogging from one bloodbath to the next, from World War One to World War Two to the Cold War, from the Armenian genocide to the Jewish genocide to the Rwandan genocide, from Robespierre to Lenin to Hitler. ~ Yuval Noah Harari

I used to be really into these when I was a kid," Nine says. "Now I'm more into the real thing. You want to join us?"
Five raises an eyebrow. "The real thing? We're going to go kill some soldiers in um - ?" He squints at the open case for the video game. "World War Two. I guess my Earth history must be spotty because I thought that was all over."
"We're going to train," Nine replies, unamused. "From what I heard about Arkansas, it sounds like your game could use some work. ~ Pittacus Lore

There in the sweet sacking smell of the mail bags he understood that he was dying, and it pleased him that he was going in the company of so many soft words home. ~ Chris Cleave

And his computer's spell-check always forces him to capitalize the word "Internet". Come on; World War Two earned it's capitalization. The Internet just sucks human beings away from reality. ~ Douglas Coupland

I can tell you that events were incremental, that the unbelievable became the believable and, ultimately, the normal. ~ Ralph Webster

For all that we might be, if only we'd let ourselves. ~ Elizabeth Berg

My own mother was evacuated at the age of five during World War Two and my father was a young man working as an ARP warden. This novel is purely fictitious, but I wanted to explore the traumas that many ordinary people of the war generation suffered, experiences which would be quite unimaginable to many of us today and then to contrast them with the issues we all face in the modern day. ~ Deborah Stone

Yousef gave up his kingdom to be with her, and Madeleine, well her father disowned her, too," Sophia continued. "But they didn't care. They went to America together and lived happily ever after. Until Hitler invaded Poland and started World War Two. Madeleine lost her husband and both of her sons in the war." She sighed dramatically. "I used to wonder, what if, when she stood in this room, at the very moment that she fell in love with Prince Yousef, what if she had the power to know what was to come? All that heartache and loss ... would she have taken that same path anyway? ~ Suzanne Brockmann

All humor is based on hostility - that's why World War Two was funny. ~ Neil Simon

Finally, Europe's post-war history is a story shadowed by silences; by absence. The continent of Europe was once an intricate, interwoven tapestry of overlapping languages, religions, communities and nations. Many of its cities - particularly the smaller ones at the intersection of old and new imperial boundaries, such as Trieste, Sarajevo, Salonika, Cernovitz, Odessa or Vilna - were truly multicultural societies avant le mot, where Catholics, Orthodox, Muslims, Jews and others lived in familiar juxtaposition. We should not idealise this old Europe. What the Polish writer Tadeusz Borowski called 'the incredible, almost comical melting-pot of peoples and nationalities sizzling dangerously in the very heart of Europe' was periodically rent with riots, massacres and pogroms - but it was real, and it survived into living memory.
Between 1914 and 1945, however, that Europe was smashed into the dust. The tidier Europe that emerged, blinking, into the second half of the twentieth century had fewer loose ends. Thanks to war, occupation, boundary adjustments, expulsions and genocide, almost everybody now lived in their own country, among their own people. For forty years after World War Two Europeans in both halves of Europe lived in hermetic national enclaves where surviving religious or ethnic minorities the Jews in France, for example - represented a tiny percentage of the population at large and were thoroughly integrated into its cultural and political mainstream. Only Yugos ~ Tony Judt

He had made a vow, a private promise to the world in the long dark watches of the night, that if he did survive then in the great afterward he would always try to be kind, to live a good, quiet life. Like Candide, he would cultivate his garden. quietly. And that would be his redemption. Even if he could add only a feather to the balance it would be some kind of repayment for being spared. When it was all over and the reckoning fell due, it may be that he would be in need of that feather. ~ Kate Atkinson

If future generations ask us what we are fighting for [in World War Two], we shall tell them the story of Lidice. ~ Frank Knox

How goddamn foolish it is, the war. They's no war in the worth that's worth fightin' for. I don't care where it is. They can't tell me any different. Money, money is the thing that causes it all. I wouldn't be a bit surprised that the people that start wars and promote 'em are the men that make the money, make the ammunition, make the clothing and so forth. Just think of the poor kids that are starvin' to death in Asia and so forth that could be fed with how much you make one big shell of. ~Alvin "Tommy" Bridges ~ Studs Terkel

Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource. ~ Al Gore

Lovely high ceilings,' I said. 'If you were very tall, you'd feel quite comfortable in here. ~ Phoebe Stone

When you want something, all the Universe conspires to helping you achieve it.
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Just ask.. ~ Victoria Aldridge Washuk

All medieval and classic cultures of the ancient world, including those on which Tolkien modeled his elves, routinely exposed their young and marriageable women to the fortunes of war, because bearing and raising the next generation of warriors is not needed for equality-loving elves.
Equality-loving elves. Who are monarchists. With a class system. Of ranks.
Battles are more fun when attractive young women are dismembered and desecrated by goblins! I believe that this is one point where C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and all Christian fantasy writers from before World War Two were completely agreed upon, and it is a point necessary in order correctly to capture the mood and tone and nuance of the medieval romances or Norse sagas such writers were straining their every artistic nerve and sinew to create.
So, wait, we have an ancient and ageless society of elves where the virgin maidens go off to war, but these same virgin maidens must abide by the decision of their father or liege lord for permission to marry?
-- The Desolation of Tolkien ~ John C. Wright

As soon as I read that, it clicked: that's my theater of war. It was exciting to think that I could write about World War Two from a totally new place. ~ Michael Chabon

At the sight of the flag he tasted tears in his throat. In the Stars and Stripes all the passions of his life coalesced to produce the ache with which he loved the United States of America - with which he loved the dirty, plain, honest faces of GIs in the photographs of World War Two, with which he loved the sheets of rain rippling across the green playing field toward the end of the school year, with which he cherished the sense-memories of the summers in his childhood, the many Kansas summers, running the bases, falling harmlessly onto the grass, his head beating with heat, the stunned streets of breezeless afternoons, the thick, palpable shade of colossal elms, the muttering of radios beyond the windowsills, the whirring of redwing blackbirds, the sadness of the grown-ups at their incomprehensible pursuits, the voices carrying over the yards in the dusks that fell later and later, the trains moving through town into the sky. His love for his country, his homeland, was a love for the United States of America in the summertime. ~ Denis Johnson

Universities are no longer the intellectual centers of the country. The very idea is preposterous. Universities are the backwater. Don't look so surprised. I'm not saying anything you don't know. Since World War II, all the really important discoveries have come out of private laboratories. ~ Michael Crichton

Queen Lily Ruckler, negotiations have ceased with the Commoner leaders of the world. The time for attempting peace is over. There is no other viable option. Mystical-Commoner World War II has been officially declared. Strike now. My heartfelt regrets, Elder Richard Harcourt." I lowered the missive while Bonnie jumped onto the table, sitting regally but watching everyone warily in front of where I stood, and I stated, "We're officially at war. I want to strike Sydney's defenses within the hour, before they realize what's happening." My dead gaze landed on Antonio. I blinked, and then moved on to every gentleman and lady in the room, letting my power touch each of them so that no one would dare argue with me. "I will lead the attack alongside Elder Farrar."
I did.
I relished it, my rage finally finding a useful outlet.
Surprise, surprise, I fucking finally found something I excelled at.
Bloodshed. ~ Scarlett Dawn

It is by manipulating "hidden forces" that the advertising experts induce us to buy their wares - a toothpaste, a brand of cigarettes, a political candidate. And it is by appealing to the same hidden forces - and to others too dangerous for Madison Avenue to meddle with - that Hitler induced the German masses to buy themselves a Fuehrer, an insane philosophy and the Second World War. ~ Aldous Huxley

While many people like the idea of exercising unconditional love, most eventually find it too draining and impossible to sustain, often because the attempt to practice it is misunderstood, discouraged, brought under attack, or made a target of willful abuse. As sad as it may be to admit, in our modern world people are far more accustomed to hearing news of war, genocide, murder, disasters, famine, and disease than they are to hearing anything about acts of love or grace. ~ Aberjhani

During the first two months of the war it was the Anarchists more than anyone else who had saved the situation, and much later than this the Anarchist militia, in spite of their indiscipline, were notoriously the best fighters among the purely Spanish forces. ~ George Orwell

History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
...
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody's place in line. ~ Wislawa Szymborska

There has never been a military operation remotely approaching the scale and the complexity of D-Day. It involved 176,000 troops, more than 12,000 airplanes, almost 10,000 ships, boats, landing craft, frigates, sloops, and other special combat vessels
all involved in a surprise attack on the heavily fortified north coast of France, to secure a beachhead in the heart of enemy-held territory so that the march to Germany and victory could begin. It was daring, risky, confusing, bloody, and ultimately glorious [p.25] ~ Tom Brokaw

Unfortunately, however, weapons of mass destruction tend to attract maniacs: men - it's almost always men - who want to jab the red button and yell "Take that, you heathen infidel bastards!" and sit in their revolving chairs in underground lead-lined bunkers or caves, watching on their monitors World War III or the Final Jihad or whatever. ~ Mal Peet

An equation: 40,000 dead young men = 3,000 tons of bone and flesh, 124,000 pounds of brain matter, 50,000 gallons of blood, 1,840,000 years of life that will never be lived, 100,000 children that will never be born (the last we can afford: there are too many starving children in the world already). ~ Dalton Trumbo

The time for princes and tsars and grand duchesses and especially holy madmen was gone. In its place came a world of war and revolution, of tanks and telephones, of murder and assassination. The bear had already become what it had been waiting to be, and the men who set it on its journey changed too. Lev became Trotsky, Vladimir took the name Lenin, and they stepped into a bright and furious modern world; blood red, and snow white. ~ Marcus Sedgwick

ON AUGUST 15, 1971, United States President Richard Nixon announced that foreign-held U.S. dollars would no longer be convertible into gold - thus stripping away the last vestige of the international gold standard.1 This was the end of a policy that had been effective since 1931, and confirmed by the Bretton Woods accords at the end of World War II: that while United States citizens might no longer be allowed to cash in their dollars for gold, all U.S. currency held outside the country was to be redeemable at the rate of $35 an ounce. By doing so, Nixon initiated the regime of free-floating currencies that continues to this day. ~ David Graeber

Weapons are just an extension of how we feel (about ourselves and this world) ~ Vineet Raj Kapoor

American policy seems to be wed to a perpetual state of war. Why? History shows that the world will always be in flux or turmoil, with different peoples competing for visibility and power. The U.S. cannot fix the fate of every nation. ~ Camille Paglia

The term "FTM-Butch Border War" just sounds like an alien land of yore. How is it that the gravitational pull of my beard and low-voice should hold [my lesbian friend's] masculinity in deferential orbit? That when standing side-by-side we are supposedly read in comparison, rendering her unalterably more feminine - shorthand, in patriarchal societies, for "lesser than"?

Masculinity has more than enough space to spare. But sometimes its flesh-and-blood vessels act as if we have to wound each other for it, like dogs fighting over too few scraps. Anyway, [she] and I know without speaking that in reality, right here and right now in our present moment, that she and I are two different sides of the same coin; two keys sung for the same tune."

- from "Snapshots: "Sharing Space with Women," Original Plumbing Magazine 2014 ~ Mitch Kellaway

The idea that the United States of American might shut down its government over abortion and funding to an organization that is 0.01% of the U.S. budget seems completely insane. Anyone looking at this debate around the world is thinking 'What is this country doing? They have three wars going on, they're trying to manage major problems and they're thinking of shutting down their government over abortion?' ~ Katty Kay

Let no man surrender so long as he is unwounded and can fight. ~ Bernard Law Montgomery

I do not hope for a world at peace, all of it, all the time. I do not believe in the perfectibility of man, which is what would be required for world peace; I only believe in the human race. I believe the human race must continue. ~ Martha Gellhorn

And he feels grateful that he has been left with this one substantial relic of all his years of service and thinks how sincerely he has deserved this. Yet he knows the world in which people deserve things or do not deserve them is passing away. Europe is at war. Fairness is now becoming a word without meaning. ~ Rose Tremain

What are the characters that I discern most clearly in the so-called Anglo-Saxon type of man? I may answer at once that two stickout above all others. One is his curious and apparently incurable incompetence
his congenital inability to do any difficult thing easily and well, whether it be isolating a bacillus or writing a sonata. The other is his astounding susceptibility to fears and alarms
in short, his hereditary cowardice ... There is no record in history of any Anglo-Saxon nation entering upon any great war without allies. ~ H.L. Mencken

The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril, and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet, and Contra-flow. ~ Terry Pratchett

It wasn't that he was a Confederate. Everyone in Gatlin County was related to the wrong side in the War Between the States. We were used to that by now. It was like being born in Germany after World War II, being from Japan after Pearl Harbor, or America after Hiroshima. History was a bitch sometimes. You couldn't change where you were from. But still, you didn't have to stay there. You didn't have to stay stuck in the past, like the ladies in DAR, or the Gatlin Historical Society, or the Sisters. And you didn't have to accept that things had to be the way they were, like Lena. Ethan Carter Wate hadn't, and I couldn't, either. ~ Kami Garcia

Seven million German dead, including the five hundred thousand killed by the Allied bombing campaign. The sixty million dead overall of the Second World War, including eleven million murdered in the Holocaust. The sixteen million of the First World War, over four million in Vietnam, forty million to the Mongol conquests, three and a half million to the Hundred Years War, the fall of Rome took seven million, the Napoleonic Wars took four million, twenty million to the Taiping Rebellion. And so on and so on and so on, all the way back to ~ Kate Atkinson

The world was all mud and wire. The war in the heavens was only a faint imitation of the horror men had learned to make. ~ Tad Williams

For a time, the Flying Tigers provided the only victories against the Japanese anywhere in the Far East ... This handful of men had shown that the Japanese were not invincible. ~ Duane P. Schultz

The peace we seek and need means much more than mere absence of war. It means the acceptance of law, and the fostering of justice, in all the world. ~ Dwight D. Eisenhower

But they were hers now. The Damned were solidly hers. If she said, "Jump," they paused only to ask, "How high?" then did their best to hit that exact mark, no more and no less. Even Hollick's replacement, Private Nesbit, was hers. He had asked plenty of questions among her crew, watched her actions and plans unfolding in combat after combat, and had developed a solid level of faith in his CO.

After more than two years of open war, two and a half if one counted their preliminary strikes, and after enduring three to four times as many fights as any other crew, they had lost only one soldier from their Company. There was no doubt that Ia's Damned were the finest fighting force available to the war. Two things made them that way: Ia's trust in them to be the right people for the right job at the right point in time, and their trust in her to let them know what the right job was. ~ Jean Johnson

I've learned two things in my life. One that love is the beginning and end of all meaning. And two that it is the same thing whatever shape our souls have taken on this journey. Love is love. Is love. ~ Clive Barker

Four years of world war, at a cost in human suffering which our minds are mercifully too limited to imagine, led to the very clear realization that international anarchy must be abandoned if civilization was to survive. ~ Arthur Henderson

"Red Dawn" was a movie made in 1984 I think about World War III. If you have not seen it and plan on watching it, you want to close your eye and cover your ears but not really. You can figure it out. ~ Rachel Maddow

You gotta admit, it's a messed-up world when going to war is safer than staying home. ~ Paul Langan

The battle of Kursk ... the forcing of the Dnieper ... and the liberation of Kiev, left Hitlerite Germany facing catastrophe. ~ Vasily Chuikov

No age lives entirely alone; every civilisation is formed not merely by its own achievements but by what it has inherited from the past."
- British Major Ronald Balfour of the Monuments Men ~ Robert M. Edsel

The war was not won by any single individual, be it Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant. The Union, as a whole, triumphed. The national army, fielding over two million men in toto, led by legions of staff, company, field, and general officers; a correspondingly potent navy; and a far more powerful economy than its adversary were all needed to ultimately subdue the Confederacy. ~ Joseph A. Rose

They [politicians] have defined the war simply in terms of the detonation of explosives. When you look at the broader picture, America is mired in two wars that we're losing at the moment. We have a political environment that is as poisonous as anything I've seen, at least since the end of Vietnam. ~ Michael Scheuer

All I ever wanted was a Virginia farm, no end of cream and fresh butter and fried chicken - not one fried chicken, or two, but unlimited fried chicken. ~ Robert E.Lee

Our works in stone, in paint, in print, are spared, some of them, for a few decades or a millennium or two, but everything must finally fall in war, or wear away into the ultimate and universal ash - the triumphs, the frauds, the treasures and the fakes. A fact of life: we're going to die. "Be of good heart," cry the dead artists out of the living past. "Our songs will all be silenced, but what of it? Go on singing." Maybe a man's name doesn't matter all that much. ~ Orson Welles

I had studied Dadaism after the Second World War. What attracted me to this movement was the style its inventors used when not engaged in Dadaistic activities. It was clear, luminous, simple without being banal, precise without being narrow; it was a style adapted to the expression of thought as well as of emotion. I connected this style with the Dadaistic exercises themselves ~ Paul Feyerabend