War Quotes

It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the …

The only government that I recognize—and it matters not how few are at the head of it, or how small its army — is that power that establishes justice in the land, never that which establishes injustice.

Germany possesses an army commensurate with her needs, and if Great Britain has a navy corresponding to her requirements, Europe in general cannot fail to regard it as a most important factor for the maintenance of peace.

I am making no predictions and the Prime Minister is wise in taking that line, but I am perfectly certain that nothing will enable the German Empire for a generation or two to get anywhere near the same position of dominant force and …

Every attempt to make war easy and safe will result in humiliation and disaster.

the war between the States was a very bloody and a very costly war. One side or the other had to yield principles they deemed dearer than life before it could be brought to an end. I commanded the whole of the mighty host engaged on the …

When a real army is in retreat, machine guns are kept ready, and when an orderly retreat degenerates into a disorderly one, the command to fire is given, and quite rightly, too.

Did I tell you that I had quite a nice letter from Winston [Churchill]? I thought I ought to send him a line but I wasn't sure whether I should get an acknowledgement! I think he is the right man at the moment and I always did feel that …

If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known that we are at all times ready for war

The British Army should be a projectile to be fired by the British Navy.

What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise. The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may some day seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter …

This war torments me. Again and again I ask if it could have been avoided and what I should have done differently. ... [A]ll nations are guilty; Germany, too, bears a large part of the blame.

He did not say a monument to what, but he meant, I am sure, to leave it as a monument to the loyalty of our soldiers, who would bear all the horrors of Libby sooner than desert their flag and cause. We struggled on, the great crowd …

Not at all. If I had lost the battle, they would have shot me.

So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I have rejoiced that slavery is abolished. I believe it will be great for the interests of the south. So fully am I satisfied with this, as regards Virginia especially, that I would …

Peace or war, we are in the midst of a relentless struggle for power. Woe to the weak! Turn your back on the purveyors of soothing syrup!

Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier’s occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.

Fortune may raise up or abase the ordinary mortal, but the sage and the soldier should have minds beyond her control.

I should not be surprized at seeing a French Army conveyed by a British Navy to an attack upon this Kingdom.

It is very silly indeed to build vessels of War so strong as to last a hundred years. They are obsolete in less than ten years.

The fabric of our prosperity is so artificial, we have raised such a vast edifice of industry and manufacture and wealth within so narrow an area, that the progress of a hostile army through our country would shatter our prosperity with a …

Terror can be very efficient against a reactionary class which does not want to leave the scene of operations. Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded upon …

How glorious fall the valiant, sword in hand, In front of battle for their native land!

'E's a sort of a bloomin' cosmopolouse—soldier an' sailor too.