W Quotes
Browse famous quotes beginning with W. This page is a child index of the full Popular Quotes A-Z directory.
“Wars come and wars go but the world does not change: it will always forget an indebtedness which it thinks it expedient not to remember.”
Source: Miss Ogilvy finds herself
“Wars come from egotism and selfishness. Every macrocosmic or world war has its origin in microcosmic wars going on inside millions and millions of individuals.”
“Wars damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy. Soldiers never get over it.”
“Wars do not always begin with an abrupt, cymbal-crash rupture of conditions properly characterized as peace. There can be almost seamlessly incremental transitions.”
“Wars do not combust without warning. They begin as little fires over the horizon. Wars approach. A wise man watches for the smoke, and prepares to vacate the neighborhood, just like Ayrs and Jocasta. My worry is that the next war will be so big, nowhere with a decent restaurant will be left untouched.”
Source: Cloud Atlas (Enhanced Movie Tie-in Edition): A Novel
“Wars don't end by deaths," Malcom added, "but because someone stops killing.”
Source: Age of Empyre
“Wars don't end, he thought suddenly. They become stories, told to children. They become causes that are taken up by those who were not even born when the war started. But the don't end.
We are a fierce race, we men. We will give up even our short, precious lives for revenge---no, for justice. No wonder the immortals fear us.”
Source: The Heart of What Was Lost
“Wars don't end, he thought suddenly. They become stories, told to children. They become causes that are taken up by those who were not even born when the war started. But they don't end.
We are a fierce race, we men. We will give up even our short, precious lives for revenge---no, for justice. No wonder the immortals fear us.”
Source: The Heart of What Was Lost
“Wars don't bring lasting peace, only lasting death.”
“Wars don't happen on battlefields; they go on happening in people's hearts for generations and generations, and the ecological damage is unfathomably complex and dire.”
“Wars fought over a face like this,” he murmured like he was talking to himself, my heart stopped beating and his thumbs moved lightly across my cheeks. “A man would work himself into the ground for it, go down to his knees to beg to keep it, endure torture to protect it, take a bullet for it,” his eyes came to mine, “poison his brother to possess a face like this.”
Source: Knight
“Wars generally do not resolve the problems for which they are fought and therefore, in addition to causing horrendous damage, they prove ultimately futile.”
“Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.”
Source: Morning in the Burned House
“Wars have a way reinventing people. And making too many things disappear.
-Sonia”
Source: UnSouled
“Wars have always started over religion”
“Wars have been waged over millions of square miles, significantly larger than the British Empire at its peak. Historically, Islamic conquests stretched from southern France to the Philippines, from Austria to Nigeria, and from central Asia to New Guinea. The Muslim goal was to have a central government, first at Damascus, and then at Baghdad, later at Cairo, Istanbul, and other imperial centres. The local governors, judges, and other rulers were appointed by the central imperial authorities for far off colonies. Islamic law was introduced as the senior law, whether or not wanted by the local people. Arabic was introduced as the rulers’ language, while the local languages frequently disappeared. Then, two classes of residents were established. The native residents paid a tax that their rulers did not have to pay. In each case, these laws allowed the local conquered people less freedom than was given to Muslims.”
Source: We Are One
“Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.”
Source: Russia and the Eastern Question
“Wars have little to do with justice. Or valour or sacrifice or the other things traditionally associated with them. That's one thing I hadn't quite realised. War has been much misrepresented, believe me. It's had a disgracefully good press.”
Source: Moon Tiger
“Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.”
“Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened.”
“Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt.”
Source: Ezra Pound Speaking
“Wars make history seem deceptively simple. They provide clear turning points, easy distinctions.: before and after, winner and loser, right and wrong. True history, the past, is not like that. It isn't flat or linear. It has no outline. It is slippery, like liquid; infinite and unknowable, like space. And it is changeable: just when you think you see a pattern, perspective shifts, an alternate version is proffered, a long-forgotten memory resurfaces.”
Source: The Kate Morton Collection: The House at Riverton and The Forgotten Garden
“Wars make people rich - and they make a lot of people poor, and they take a lot of people's lives away from them.”
“Wars may be fought by decent men, but they're not won by them.”
Source: A Taste for Death
“Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.”
“Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men.”
“Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.”
“Wars may be started by the failings of humanity
But they are won
By the craft
Of the keen and intelligent minds that fight them”
Source: War What Comes After
“Wars might come and go, but the seven o'clock news lives forever.”
Source: Money and Class in America: Notes and Observations on the Civil Religion
“Wars never ended because one side was defeated. They ended because the enemies were reconciled. Anything else was just a postponement of the next round of violence.”
“Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.”
Source: Omnipotent Government: The Rise of the Total State and Total War
“Wars of aggression are the most barbarous of all human endeavors and are, more often than not, the instruments of insane tyrants who hear voices.”
Source: The Code for Global Ethics: Ten Humanist Principles
“Wars of nations are fought to change maps. But wars of poverty are fought to map change.”
“Wars of opinion, as they have been the most destructive, are also the most disgraceful of conflicts.”
Source: Lacon, Or, Many Things in a Few Words: Addressed to Those who Think
“Wars of small kingdoms and forgotten lands, what do chessmen dream of in the dark?”
“Wars, plagues, names upon tombs tell us only what happened. But history lies in the cracks between.”
Source: The Guest Book
“Wars produce many stories of fiction, some of which are told until they are believed to be true.”
Source: The Personal Memoirs Of Ulysses S. Grant
“Wars produce warlike societies, which in turn make the world more dangerous for other societies, which are thus recruited into being war-prone themselves.”
“Wars raged everywhere as men found new, inventive ways to kill even more of their race. It was like a contest, the many tribes of mankind competing to see who could commit the worst atrocities.”
Source: Ocean of Blood (The Saga of Larten Crepsley, Book 2)
“Wars results in immediate deaths and destruction, but the environmental consequences can last hundreds, often thousands of years. And it is not just war itself that undermines our life support system, but also the research and development, military exercises and general preparations for battle that are carried out on a daily basis in most parts of the world. The majority of this pre-war activity takes place without the benefit of civilian scrutiny and therefore we are unaware of some of what is being done to our environment in the name of 'security.”
Source: Planet Earth: The Latest Weapon of War
“Wars shatter so many lives. I think especially of children robbed of their childhood.”
Source: The Spirit of St Francis: Inspiring Words on Faith, Love and Creation
“Wars should be fought with words, not bombs, not weapons. And calm words. I think that wars should be fought over a chessboard and a cup of something to drink.”
“Wars should be over in three days or less...and the American people must be all for it from the outset.”
“Wars spring from unseen and generally insignificant causes, the first outbreak being often but an explosion of anger.”
“Wars such as those which have occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate”
“Wars survived leave lasting scars and genocides witnessed will never let you go.”
“Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.”
“Wars tend to be very public things, they are visible. There are correspondents traveling with the troops and you get daily dispatches.”
“Wars usually have the effect of speeding up the process of history.”
“Wars, wars, wars': reading up on the region I came across one moment when quintessential Englishness had in fact intersected with this darkling plain. In 1906 Winston Churchill, then the minister responsible for British colonies, had been honored by an invitation from Kaiser Wilhelm II to attend the annual maneuvers of the Imperial German Army, held at Breslau. The Kaiser was 'resplendent in the uniform of the White Silesian Cuirassiers' and his massed and regimented infantry...
reminded one more of great Atlantic rollers than human formations. Clouds of cavalry, avalanches of field-guns and—at that time a novelty—squadrons of motor-cars (private and military) completed the array. For five hours the immense defilade continued. Yet this was only a twentieth of the armed strength of the regular German Army before mobilization.
Strange to find Winston Churchill and Sylvia Plath both choosing the word 'roller,' in both its juggernaut and wavelike declensions, for that scene.”
Source: Hitch 22: A Memoir