W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“War is an option of difficulties.”
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth a war, is much worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice, — is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.”
Source: Principles of Political Economy
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.”
“War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice; a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their own free choice - is often the means of their regeneration.”
Source: Thoughts on parliamentary reform. Recent writers on reform. Bain's psychology. A few words on non-intervention. The contest in America. Austin on jurisprudence. Plato
“War is an unmitigated evil. But it certainly does one good thing. It drives away fear and brings bravery to the surface.”
Source: Gandhi on Non-violence
“War is an unpredictable beast. Once unleashed, it runs like a rabid dog, ravening friend or foe alike. It can drag on for years, a slow attrition of nerve and fortitude, or be over in one brilliant flash, an extravagant conflagration of flame and blood and waste.”
Source: The Fathomless Caves: Book Six of the Witches of Eileanan
“War is and always has been a brutal exercise that destroys lives, families and communities. It is never something for which we hope.”
“War is as much a punishment to the punisher as it is to the sufferer.”
“War is at best barbarism.”
“War is awful. Nothing, not the valor with which it is fought nor the nobility of the cause it serves, can glorify war. War is wretched beyond description and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality. Whatever is won in war, it is loss the veteran remembers.”
“War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you.”
Source: Chapterhouse: Dune
“War is being reminded that you are completely at the mercy of death at every moment, without the illusion that you are not. Without the distractions that make life worth living.”
“War is big business. It's a lot of money going to and fro, and unfortunately a lot of angst, and a lot of fear, and a lot of doubt. And eventually a lot of wonderful people, like soldiers, like men and women that are out there trying to do the best they can, they come back being wounded on many levels.”
“War is blind to the history of humanity.”
“War is both intensely horrible and exquisitely pleasurable. It is horrible because of the danger and suffering that soldiers and civilians endure, and the unavoidable guilt that comes with killing. It is pleasurable because -like all pleasures- it is something that benefited our ancient ancestors who were victors in the bloddy struggle for resources.”
Source: The Most Dangerous Animal: Human Nature and the Origins of War
“War is both the product of an earlier corruption, and a producer of new corruptions.”
“War is brutish, inglorious, and a terrible waste... The only redeeming factors were my comrades' incredible bravery and their devotion to each other. Marine Corps training taught us to kill efficiently and to try to survive. But it also taught us loyalty to each other - and love. That espirit de corps sustained us.”
“War is business for these people. That is why they will never support peace negotiants but can fund and support you with weapons.”
“War is but a terrestrial test of hope. The country or the people who have adopted values that maximize the resources and hopes of its peoples best will inevitably become the victor. The more a nation conquers neighboring peoples the more the people of that conquering nation come to feel that they deserve to dominate their fellow men and the more they will see their nation's values as the true guiding lights of humanity. The supremacy of those winning values then lives on and the values are written up and loaded in our histories and go on to be retold in stories, passed down to give future generations hope. Eventually, when those values cease to be effective, they'll lose out to the values of another newer nation and history will continue on, a new era unfolding. This, I declare, is the form of human progress.”
Source: Everything Is F*cked: A Book About Hope
“War is by definition the indiscriminate killing of huge numbers of people for ends that are uncertain. Think about means and ends, and apply it to war. The means are horrible, certainly. The ends, uncertain. That alone should make you hesitate. . . . We are smart in so many ways. Surely, we should be able to understand that in between war and passivity, there are a thousand possibilities.”
“War is by no means something glamorous, and I don't think that should ever be forgotten.”
“War is capitalism with the gloves off and many who go to war know it but they go to war because they don't want to be a hero.”
“War is capitalism with the gloves off.”
“War is catastrophe. It breaks families in irretrievable pieces. But those who are gone are not necessarily lost.”
Source: Salt to the Sea
“War is chaos. It always has been. But technology makes it worse. It changes the fear. At the Institute, I feared men. I feared what Titus and the Jackal could do to me. You see death coming there and can at least struggle against it. Here you don't have such luxury. Modern war is fearing the air, the shadows, fearing the silence. Death will come and I won't even see it.”
Source: Golden Son
“War is chaotic and when you start having a larger scale film and you have a lot of safety protocols and choreography, I would imagine it becomes more difficult.”
“War is cinema, and cinema is war”
“War is coming, and it will not confine itself to an hour.”
Source: War Hour
“War is cruel to the people, and terrible to the conquered.”
“War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle.”
Source: The Complete Works of Gilbert Parker
“War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.”
“War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.”
“War is death's feast.”
Source: The poetical works of George Herbert
“War is death. If we are to engage in war, then we should have to stare it straight in the face and call it by its rightful name.”
“War is delightful for those who don't know it”
“War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.”
“War is deprivation created by men”
“War is devastating, and it leaves its scars for generations.”
“War is elective. It is not an inevitable state of affairs. War is not the weather.”
“War is ever the folly of the ignorant. But I have seen much to convince me some wars must be fought, to the bitterest end if need be.”
Source: Queen of Fire
“War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.”
“War is evitable if conditions are such that the costs of making war are higher than the benefits.”
“War is expensive, peace is free.”
Source: High Voltage Habib: Gospel of Undoctrination
“War is expensive, peace is free, yet war is petty, peace is priceless.”
Source: High Voltage Habib: Gospel of Undoctrination
“War is Expensive (The Sonnet)
War is expensive, peace is free,
Yet war is petty, peace is priceless.
War is childish, peace is for adults,
Yet war is complex, peace is child's play.
War is for fools, peace is for the sage,
Yet sages sustain war, deeming peace foolish.
War is strain on the brain, peace only needs love,
Yet intellectuals justify war, calling peace rubbish.
War is good for maintaining control over the people,
Hence imperialists peddle war in the name of justice.
But all imperialists are the fault of the civilians,
All wars are a failure of our civilized citizenship.
No war is tougher than the civilians of the world.
Exercise that potential to abolish all imperial gall.”
Source: High Voltage Habib: Gospel of Undoctrination
“War is failure of diplomacy.”
“War is far worse. At least where politics is going on, there are usually nice hors d’oeuvres.”
Source: Warbreaker
“War is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free.”
Source: Fragments
“War is fear cloaked in courage.”
“War is food and drink and disease and patience and anger and hate and cold and stealth and terror as well as sweet silver and bitter iron and the glitter of arms in the sun or under the moon.”
Source: The Dread Wyrm