Logo - Feel The Words

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.

Following the end of the Cold War, there was much discussion concerning the point of NATO. In the event, it was reinvented as a means of reducing Russia's reach on its western frontiers and seeking to isolate it. Its former...

Quotes by Martin Jacques

Although one of the key justifications for the Vietnam war was to prevent the spread of communism, the U.S. defeat was to produce nothing of the kind: apart from the fact that Cambodia and Laos became embroiled, the effects were...

Quotes by Martin Jacques

The U.S. might enjoy overwhelming military advantage, but its relative economic power, which in the long run is almost invariably decisive, is in decline. The interregnum after the Cold War, far from being the prelude to a new American age,...

Quotes by Martin Jacques

One of the extraordinary features of the Blair government has been its slavish support for the central tenets of Bush's foreign policy - above all, the war in Iraq. During the Cold War, the Wilson government resisted the suggestion that...

Quotes by Martin Jacques

Labour was always aligned with the U.S. during the Cold War, but the ignominious implosion of communism reinforced the belief that no alternative to the prevailing common sense was possible.

Quotes by Martin Jacques

Before World War II, Modernist architects sometimes had to resort to custom fabrication or outright fakery to achieve the machine imagery advocated by the Bauhaus after its initial, Expressionist, phase. Stucco masqueraded as reinforced concrete; rivets were used for decoration.

Quotes by Martin Filler

I followed the war wherever I could reach it.

Quotes by Martha Gellhorn

I found out about the Spanish war because I was in Germany when it began.

Quotes by Martha Gellhorn

Then somebody suggested I should write about the war, and I said I didn't know anything about the war. I did not understand anything about it. I didn't see how I could write it.

Quotes by Martha Gellhorn

After the desperate years of their own war, after six years of repression inside Spain and six years of horror in exile, these people remain intact in spirit. They are armed with a transcendent faith; they have never won, and...

Quotes by Martha Gellhorn

Can any of us even imagine, after Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt suggesting we negotiate a resolution or that we could simply prosecute those involved? Of course it is unimaginable. We are right to be in the Middle East, and we...

Quotes by Marsha Blackburn

Yes, what has happened is we have moved from responding to these terrorist attacks as acts of civil disobedience to getting to the point after September 11 that we said, no, this is not just civil disobedience, this is an...

Quotes by Marsha Blackburn

This is now a global war on terror and, indeed, it is important, it is imperative that we win in the battles in Afghanistan and that we win in the battles in Iraq. And as the gentleman from Georgia has...

Quotes by Marsha Blackburn

It is probably true that I would not have had as many children or mothers in my books without being a mother with children. It is definitely true that I would not have written about the Civil War without having...

Quotes by Marly Youmans

What is more immoral than war?

Quotes by Marquis de Sade

I'm not an expert on the Middle East or terrorism or the use of military force or politics. It's all I can do to know a little bit about how to help people raise their kids and what to do...

Quotes by Mark Vonnegut

I didn't like the '60s because it was too important what people who had nothing to do with the war thought about it.

Quotes by Mark Vonnegut

If you cut down the forest, you know what happens: The whole of Asia turns into a desert. Without water, you're talking civil unrest, war, mud slides - the whole bloody lot.

Quotes by Mark Shand

Violence is for mugs. War is for mugs.

Quotes by Mark Roberts

Unfortunately, Democrats don't want to wage a war on poverty or improve program integrity; they prefer talking points.

Quotes by Mark Meadows

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.