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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.

We can no longer apply the classic criteria to clearly determine whether and when we should use military force. We are waging war in Afghanistan, for example, but it's an asymmetrical war where the enemies are criminals instead of soldiers.

Quotes by Otto Schily

People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.

Quotes by Otto von Bismarck

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.

Quotes by Otto von Bismarck

Be polite; write diplomatically; even in a declaration of war one observes the rules of politeness.

Quotes by Otto von Bismarck

Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.

Quotes by Otto von Bismarck

My mom was a history teacher, so I couldn't really avoid history when I was growing up. But we're very light on American history. We don't really have great opportunities to study both the Civil War and the Revolution.

Quotes by Owain Yeoman

I have to experience all the ghastly, bottomless depths for life for myself; it's for that reason that I went to war, and for that reason I volunteered.

Quotes by Otto Dix

People were already beginning to forget, what horrible suffering the war had brought them. I did not want to cause fear and panic, but to let people know how dreadful war is and so to stimulate people's powers of resistance.

Quotes by Otto Dix

I knew that the Hague Convention prohibited the use of poison in war. I didn't know the details of the terms of the Convention, but I did know of that prohibition.

Quotes by Otto Hahn

I stopped acting when I was 19. The only time I acted again was during the war, when there were no other Nazis available.

Quotes by Otto Preminger

In Turkey, we have lived almost everything that could be lived; war and torture... The war concept was consumed to its limits. But there is only one way we have not tried: negotiations, peace, and talking.

Quotes by Osman Baydemir

If few can stand a long war without deterioration of soul, none can stand a long peace.

Quotes by Oswald Spengler

I say this as a Democrat, for whom the Republican domination of government threatens many values that I hold to be important to America's role as a light among nations. But there are no values that matter to me that...

Quotes by Orson Scott Card

I was born in '82 and there were these bizarre wars, explained through mass media in ways that made no sense. I remember watching the Gulf War through night vision. That was sold and propagated as a showbusiness moment for...

Quotes by Oneohtrix Point Never

Have you ever thought that war is a madhouse and that everyone in the war is a patient?

Quotes by Oriana Fallaci

War is something Arafat sends others to do for him. That is, the poor souls who believe in him. This pompous incompetent caused the failure of the Camp David negotiations, Clinton's mediation.

Quotes by Oriana Fallaci

Alas, nothing reveals man the way war does. Nothing so accentuates in him the beauty and ugliness, the intelligence and foolishness, the brutishness and humanity, the courage and cowardice, the enigma.

Quotes by Oriana Fallaci

When you have been born in a war like me, living in a war as a child, when you have been in wars as a war correspondent all your life - trust me! You develop a form of fatalism; you...

Quotes by Oriana Fallaci

I've always disliked kamikazes, that is, people who commit suicide in order to kill others. Starting with the Japanese ones from World War II. I never considered them Pietro Miccas who torch the powder and go up with the citadel...

Quotes by Oriana Fallaci

From the time of independences until the end of the Cold War, in spite of the participation of a considerable number of African states in the non-aligned movement, everyone in fact chose to align with one or another of the...

Quotes by Omar Bongo

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.