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Great War Quotes

Sober lines on wartime history, leadership, and memory

This collection looks at the Great War through quotes on leadership, shared blame, and the long shadow conflict leaves on later generations. For related themes, see our history quotes collection.

We became convinced that, regardless of Stalin's awful brutality and his reign of terror, he was a great war leader. Without Stalin, they never would have held.

Quotes by W. Averell Harriman

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 -...

Quotes by Robert Fisk

The Great War was a progressive revelation and disillusionment.

Quotes by Ralph Adams Cram

In the account book of the Great War the page recording the Russian losses has been ripped out. The figures are unknown. Five millions, or eight? We ourselves know not.

Quotes by Paul von Hindenburg

Conflict Quotes

A great war shall burst forth from fishes of steel. Machines of flying fire, lobsters, grasshoppers, mosquitoes. The mass attacks shall be repulsed in the woods, when no child in Germany shall obey any longer.

Quotes by Nostradamus

The Great War was nobody's fault - or everybody's.

Quotes by Margaret MacMillan

The example afforded before the Great War by Germany - which, if only it had exercised forbearance for another five or ten years, would by now be unrivaled in Europe - suggests that the task facing us now is to...

Quotes by Isoroku Yamamoto

General Sherman looked upon journalists as a nuisance and a danger at headquarters and in the field, and acted toward them accordingly, then as throughout his great war career.

Quotes by Henry Villard

I must return to my old comrades of the Great War - to the brown, the treeless, the flat and grave-set plain of Flanders - to the rolling, heat-miraged downlands of the Somme - for I am dead with them,...

Quotes by Henry Williamson

Courage Quotes

The Great War proved how confused the world is. Depression is proving it again.

Quotes by Anne Sullivan

Frequently Asked Questions

What historical period do these Great War quotes reference?
They mainly reference the First World War and, in one case, wartime alliance leadership during the Second World War.
Does one quote discuss a controversial wartime leader?
Yes, one quote acknowledges a wartime ally's serious historical brutality while separately crediting his wartime leadership, presented here as neutral historical commentary rather than endorsement.
Is blame for the war assigned to one side?
No, one quote frames responsibility as shared by everyone involved rather than pinned on a single nation, reflecting the war's tangled causes.
Do any quotes connect the war to personal family history?
Yes, one speaker describes writing about the Great War partly because their own father served as a soldier in it.
Where can I read more history-related quotes?
Explore our history quotes collection for further reflections on conflict and memory.

One quote notes that wartime allies were judged by their leadership even where their broader record, including grave brutality, was widely condemned. Also see our conflict quotes page.