War Quotes — page 26

A law was made... allowing every person who owned twenty negroes to go home. It gave us the blues; we wanted twenty negroes. Negro property suddenly became very valuable, and there was raised the howl of "rich man's war, poor man's fight." …

We cannot crusade against war without crusading implicitly against the State.

I think all men recognize that in time of war the citizen must surrender some rights for the common good which he is entitled to enjoy in time of peace. But, sir, the right to control their own government according to constitutional forms …

So vast has been the change in the claim and position of slavery! So entirely has it reversed the classic story, and the blind, begging Belisarius has become the imperial general! So proudly, in such long and dazzling and magnificent …

Now, take as an illustration the Rock of Gibraltar. Many of you have been there, I dare say. I have; and among the things that interested me were the monkeys on the top of it, and a good many people at the bottom, who were living on …

The influence of war on the community at large, on its prosperity, its morals, and its political institutions, though less striking than on the soldiery, is yet baleful. How often is a community impoverished to sustain a war in which it …

Not seas, nor climes, nor wild ambition's fire In nations' minds could e'er the wish inspire; Where equal rights each sober voice should guide, No blood would stain them, and no war divide. 'Tis dark deception, 'tis the glare of state, Man …

[S]hould a French war be our fate, I trust you will concurr with me in the only means of making it successful, the withdrawing the greatest part of them [the troops] from America, and employing them against the French and Spanish …

We are the Choice of the Will: God, when He gave the word That called us into line, set in our hand a sword;Set us a sword to wield none else could lift and draw, And bade us forth to the sound of the trumpet of the Law.

Peace without Justice is a low estate,— A coward cringing to an iron Fate! But Peace through Justice is the great ideal,— We'll pay the price of war to make it real.

The art of war, which I take to be the highest perfection of human knowledge.

The motions of the Grand Army will best deter mine the propriety of endeavouring to hold all the ground from King's Bridge to the lower lines. I shall be as much on the Island of York as possible, so as not to neglect the duties of my own …

All wars are boyish, and are fought by boys.

In politics, as in religion, it is equally absurd to aim at making proselytes by fire and sword. Heresies in either can rarely be cured by persecution.

How shall we rank thee upon glory's page, Thou more than soldier, and just less than sage?

Many evils, no doubt, were produced by the civil war. They were the price of our liberty.

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.

Ef you take a sword an’ dror it, An’ go stick a feller thru, Guv’mint ain’t to answer for it, God’ll send the bill to you.

This man, O'Connell, is the hired instrument of the Papacy; as such, his mission is to destroy your Protestant Society, and, as such, he is a more terrible enemy to England than Napoleon, with all his inspiration. Your empire and your …

Of strange, discordant, and even hostile elements, we gathered from the four winds, and formed and fought the battle through, under the constant hot fire of a disciplined, proud, and pampered enemy.

You cannot make soldiers of slaves, nor slaves of soldiers.

I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon … shook …

These arguments about natural defences and strategic boundaries are pushed too far. Real defence and security comes from the guarantee which is given by the fact that they cannot touch you without declaring war on all those interested in …

War loses a great deal of its romance after a soldier has seen his first battle. I have a more vivid recollection of the first than the last one I was in. It is a classical maxim that it is sweet and becoming to die for one's country; but …