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War Quotes

War, remembered and reckoned with.

This topic pairs literary observation, such as a novelist's take on the social fabric depicted in a sprawling Tolstoy epic, with hard historical fact about the 1962 border conflict between China and India. Readers interested in broader historical context can visit History.

On the contrary, all the world would point to that nation as violating a treaty, by going to war with a country with whom they had engaged to enter into arbitration.

Quotes by Richard Cobden

Treaties of peace, made after war, are entrusted to individuals to negotiate and carry out.

Quotes by Richard Cobden

George W. Bush, a charming and utterly gracious man, was a catastrophic twofer. He took the United States to war in Iraq, a wrenching debacle: more than 4,000 Americans dead, nearly 32,000 wounded, and the Middle East destabilized with Iranian...

Quotes by Richard Cohen

In order to take a nation to war, you have to believe mightily in the threat you are facing and the virtue of your cause.

Quotes by Richard Cohen

Since the end of World War II, American leadership has been essential to maintain world peace. Whether we liked it or not, we were the world's policeman. There was no other cop on the beat. Now, that leadership is gone....

Quotes by Richard Cohen

Being an American is life-threatening. For various reasons, men and women here don't live as long as men and women in about two dozen other countries, including the ones we defeated in World War II - Japan, Germany and Italy.

Quotes by Richard Cohen

Our country undergoes periodic episodes of extreme intolerance and fear of foreigners, refugees in particular. Not only were people of Japanese descent placed in internment camps during World War II, but so were some Italians and Germans.

Quotes by Richard Cohen

Food as sport is nothing new. To a vicar, especially, church catering has represented the conduct of war by other means for many years.

Quotes by Richard Coles

I'm a lad of the '60s. I started a magazine to try and end the Vietnam war, but it was a number of years before I had the profile, the financial resources and the time to do more.

Quotes by Richard Branson

My father Ted fought in North Africa, Italy, and Germany during World War II. My grandfather survived the horrors of the trenches in World War I. I truly believe that one of the E.U.'s greatest achievements is that it has...

Quotes by Richard Branson

DiMaggio was never a rube. He was very smart and very urban. Coming out of the Great Depression, he was the immigrant boy who made it big. Coming back from World War II, he had all the wealth and power...

Quotes by Richard Ben Cramer

The war we are fighting today against terrorism is a multifaceted fight. We have to use every tool in our toolkit to wage this war - diplomacy, finance, intelligence, law enforcement, and of course, military power - and we are...

Quotes by Richard Armitage

Well, I think In Love and War, which had a wonderful performance by Sandy, Sandra Bullock, who the authorities and, the supposed authorities, in cinema didn't want to know about.

Quotes by Richard Attenborough

I know I'm regarded as an establishment figure, but I was crucified by the establishment for 'Oh! What a Lovely War', 'Gandhi' and 'Cry Freedom.'

Quotes by Richard Attenborough

I lived in an atmosphere where Mama brought 60 Basque refugee children to England during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s.

Quotes by Richard Attenborough

The debate about the war seems pretty robust and free. Many publications, from the New Yorker to the Nation, feel perfectly comfortable printing anti-American articles and that's fine. That's what the First Amendment is all about.

Quotes by Rich Lowry

Bush's faith in the rightness of his strategy in the broader war is deep-seated. It is a product of faith.

Quotes by Rich Lowry

The war on drugs is being lost on a daily basis.

Quotes by Rhys Ifans

For me, 'Come and See' is, by a million miles, the best film about war that has ever been made. I would highly recommend, encourage and enforce anyone to watch it.

Quotes by Rhys Ifans

If you've got a camera, go to a war zone and tell a story.

Quotes by Rhys Ifans

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this page reference literature about war?
Yes. One quote reflects on reading novels that portrayed a world with a strong social fabric, noting: "People knew each other in 'War and Peace.'" It's a literary angle on the topic, rather than a historical or personal one. For more big-idea quotes, see Great quotes.
Is there a quote about the 1962 India-China border war?
Yes. One quote states plainly: "China invaded India, and there was a war between India and China in some of the disputed terrain in 1962, and India got hurt by that." It's a direct historical reference within the quote itself. Browse History quotes for more quotes rooted in real events.
Does this collection touch on the aftermath of World War I?
Yes. One quote describes how the end of the First World War had thrown Germany's youth into great turmoil, noting that the reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation. It's a sober historical observation.
Is there a quote that uses a chess metaphor to describe the war?
Yes - one quote compares the situation for Germany to an end game in chess in which she possessed one castle less than her adversary, adding that the loss of the war was as certain as the loss of an end game under those conditions. It's a vivid, strategic way of describing an outcome that felt inevitable. For more thought-provoking metaphors, see Life quotes.
What kinds of war-related quotes does this page bring together?
A mix of literary reflection, direct historical fact, and vivid metaphor - from a mention of 'War and Peace,' to the 1962 India-China border war, to World War I's aftermath in Germany, to a chess-based description of a war's inevitable loss. For more first-person reflections, see Me quotes.

Two entries look at Germany's condition in the aftermath of its 1918 defeat, one describing the disillusionment of a younger generation and the other comparing the loss to an inevitable endgame in chess. For more reflective lines, see Great or Life.