First World War Quotes
Words shaped by turmoil, loss, and remembrance.
This collection gathers quotes about the First World War, from the disillusioned generation it left behind to the political upheaval it triggered across Europe. Related reading: our First World quotes.
As the First World War made painfully clear, when politicians and generals lead nations into war, they almost invariably assume swift victory, and have a remarkably enduring tendency not to foresee problems that, in hindsight, seem obvious.
The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.
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Lenin was the first to discover that capitalism 'inevitably' caused war; and he discovered this only when the First World War was already being fought. Of course he was right. Since every great state was capitalist in 1914.
The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power.
Adverse Quotes
The end of the First World War had thrown Germany's youth into great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger ones drew together in larger and smaller groups...
Mum told me stories about her time in the Women's Royal Navy, and about her dad, who had died before I was born - he'd been sent to Australia as a child, then joined the Australian Army in the First...
I always found the extraordinary loss of life in the First World War very moving. I remember learning about it as a very young child, as an eight- or nine-year-old, asking my teachers what poppies were for. Every year the...
The adverse economic events following the First World War turned me toward economics.
No campaign of the First World War better justifies the poets' view of the conflict as futile and pitiless than Gallipoli.
First Quotes
We are constantly trying to cope with what our fathers or our grandfathers did. I wrote the book 'Great War of Civilization,' and my father was a solider in the First World War which produced the current Middle East -...
What distinguished the First World War from all wars before it was the massive power of the antagonists.
The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism: a complex interplay of nation-state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism.
The First World War not only destroyed European civilisation and the empires at its heart; its aftermath led to a second conflagration, the Second World War, which divided the continent until the end of the century.
First World Quotes
The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war.
Remembering the loss of those Irishmen from all parts of the island who were sent to their deaths in the imperialist slaughter of the First World War is crucial to understanding our history. It is also important to recognise the...
I wish we could see understanding the First World War as a European issue, or even a global one, and not a nationalistic one.
The period after the First World War was an extremely different time, so that Sherlock Holmes would have been a different person following 1918 than he was during the Victorian era.
After the First World War the economic problem was no longer one of production. It was the problem of finding markets to get the output of industry and agriculture dispersed and consumed.
Great Quotes
Readers want to have the confidence that you understand the era in which the book is set, so for 'The Perfumer's Secret,' I needed to know everything about the First World War from a French perspective. I had to understand...
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Frequently Asked Questions
What is this First World War quotes collection about?
Why do people search for First World War quotes?
What historical shift do these quotes connect to the war?
Do any quotes reflect personal or family memories of the war?
Why do these quotes so often mention loss of life?
Several quotes also recall family memories of relatives who served, and the staggering loss of life the war caused. For more on hardship, see our Adverse quotes.
