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Great War Quotes

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Great War Quotes

“In any case, the bayonet isn't as important as it used to be. It's more usual now to go into the attack with hand-grenades and your entrenching tool. The sharpened spade is a lighter and more versatile weapon - not only can you get a man under the chin, but more to the point, you can strike a blow with a lot more force behind it. That's especially true if you can bring it down diagonally between the neck and the shoulder, because then you can split down as far as the chest. When you put a bayonet in, it can stick, and you have to give the other man a hefty kick in the guts to get it out.”

IfsMenGivingImportantWarHandsUsedForceBehindsCasesWeaponsToolsSticksBlowStrikesShouldersUsed To BeKicksNecksGutsChestsUsualSplitsChinsLightersGreat WarSpadesVersatileGrenadeBayonets
Author:Erich Maria Remarque
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“Judging from the way they sat and goggled at the drag on the stage it was obvious that they were indulging in delightful fantasies that brought to them substantial memories of the girls they had left behind in London or Manchester. As the Quartermaster Captain lisped after performing before a particularly rapt audience: 'I bet there were more standing pricks than snotty noses tonight'. Astonishingly, I suspect he was right. We probably helped to keep the home fires of passion burning.”

WayWarHomeGirlPassionLeftMemoriesBehindsFantasyAudienceFireStageJudgingStandingObviousLondonBurningNosesPerformingSatTonightSuspectsDragCaptainsDelightfulLeft BehindManchesterGreat War
Author:Eric Hiscock
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“Yet when we achieved, and the new world dawned, the old men came out again and took our victory to remake it in the likeness of the former world they knew. Youth could win, but had not learned to keep: and was pitiably weak against age. We stammered that we had worked for a new heaven and a new earth, and they thanked us kindly and made their peace.”

MenWorldMadeWarAgeEarthWinningHeavenYouthVictoryWeakFormerOld ManNew WorldRemakesGreat WarNew Earth
Book:The Collected Works of Lawrence of Arabia (Unabridged): Seven Pillars of Wisdom + The Mint + The Evolution of a Revolt + Complete Letters (Including Translations of The Odyssey and The Forest Giant)
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“War can so easily be gilt with romance and heroism and solemn national duty and patriotism and the like by persons whose superficial literary and oratorical talent covers an abyss of Godforsaken folly.”

PersonsWarRomanceTalentDutyFollyHeroismSuperficialAbyssSolemnGreat War
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
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“Once lead this people into war, and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight, you must be brutal and ruthless, and the spirit of ruthless brutality will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street.”

PeopleMenWarSpiritFightingForgetStreetsHe ManBeatsCourtCongressToleranceBrutalRuthlessPolicemenBrutalityGreat WarFiber
Book:Wilson, Volume V: Campaigns for Progressivism and Peace, 1916-1917
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“Our way of getting an army able to fight the German army is to declare war on Germany just as if we had such an army, and then trust to the appalling resultant peril and disaster to drive us into wholesale enlistment.”

IfsWayWarAbleFightingArmyDisasterGermanyPerilGreat WarWholesale
Book:The Collected Works of George Bernard Shaw: Plays, Novels, Articles, Lectures, Letters and Essays: Pygmalion, Mrs. Warren’s Profession, Candida, Arms and The Man, Man and Superman, Caesar and Cleopatra, Androcles And The Lion, The New York Times Articles on War, Memories of Oscar Wilde and more
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“I wish those people who write so glibly about this being a holy war and the orators who talk so much about going on, no matter how long the war lasts and what it may mean, could see a case of musterd gas - the poor things burnt and blistered all over with great musterd coloured suppurating blisters, with blind eyes, all sticky and stuck together, and always fighting for breath, with voices a mere whisper, saying their throats are closing and they know they will choke.”

PeopleKnowsWritingMayMeanLongWarMatterEyeTogetherLastsFightingWishVoicePoorCasesHolyBreathsBlindMereStuckGasThroatClosingChokeGreat WarOratorsStickyHoly WarBlind EyesBlistersAlways FightingMustard Gas
Author:Vera Brittain
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“Some men of the line regiment who had appeared on our right started running back. I shouted out to them to halt, but they took no notice. I pulled out my revolver and very nearly shot at them, but I thought it wouldn't do any good, as they all had their backs to me so would have thought that anyone hit was hit by a German bullet. If I ran after them my men might think I was running away. So I took my men on!”

IfsThinkingMenWarMightRunningLinesShotsRanRunning AwayBulletsHaltGreat WarRunning BackRevolver
Author:William St Leger
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“At 8 o'clock in the morning a dense throng of workers - almost 10,000 - assembled in the square, which the police had already occupied well ahead of time. Karl Liebknecht's voice then rang out: 'Down with the War! Down with the Government!' The police immediately rushed at him. For the first time since the beginning of the war open resistance to it had appeared on the streets of the capital. The ice was broken.”

FirstsWellsWarGovernmentVoiceMorningStreetsBrokenFirst TimePoliceWorkersResistanceIceClockSquaresGreat WarDenseAhead Of Time
Author:Paul Frolich
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“The storm lashes us, out of the confusion of grey and yellow the hail of splinters whips forth the childlike cries of the wounded, and in the night shattered life groans painfully into silence. Our hands are earth, our bodies clay and our eyes pools of rain. We do not know whether we are still alive.”

KnowsStillsWarBodyHandsEyeEarthNightSilenceAliveCryRainStormConfusionYellowPoolWoundedGreyClayShatteredWhipsChildlikeHailGreat WarLashesSplinters
Book:All Quiet on the Western Front: A Novel
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“As a result of continuous work with these highly toxic substances, our minds were so numbed that we no longer had any scruples about the whole thing. Anyway, our enemies had by now adopted our methods and as they became increasingly successful in this mode of warfare we were no longer exclusively the aggressors, but found ourselves more and more at the receiving end.”

MindWarEndsWholeFoundResultsEnemySuccessfulMethodSubstanceToxicReceivingWarfareAdoptedGreat WarScruplesAggressors
Book:My life: the autobiography of a scientist
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“Until the dead are buried they change somewhat in appearance each day. The color change in Caucasian races is from white to yellow, to yellow-green, to black. If left long enough in the heat the flesh comes to resemble coal-tar, especially where it has been broken or torn, and it has quite a visible tarlike iridescence. The dead grow larger each day until sometimes they become quite too big for their uniforms, filling these until they seem blown tight enough to burst. The individual members may increase in girth to an unbelievable extent and faces fill as taut and globular as balloons.”

IfsMayLongHas BeensWarSometimesEnoughBigsSeemsFacesIndividualLeftGrowsBlackWhiteRaceColorBrokenMembersIncreaseGreenAppearanceFleshHeatVisibleEach DayBuriedYellowUniformsCoalTornUnbelievableFillingBalloonsGreat WarCaucasianGirth
Book:Death in the Afternoon
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“And so he [the Jew] advances on his fatal road until another force comes forth to oppose him, and in a mighty struggle hurls the heaven-stormer back to Lucifer. Germany is today the next great war aim of Bolshevism. It requires all the force of a young missionary idea to raise our people up again, to free them from the snares of this international serpent.”

PeopleIdeasWarTodayYoungNextForceHeavenStruggleAimRaisesInternationalJewGermanyMissionarySerpentGreat WarLuciferSnaresMein KampfBolshevism
Author:Adolf Hitler
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“There never was a good war or a bad revolution.”

WarPeaceRevolutionLibertarianAnti WarAntiwarWorld War IVietnam WarPoor RichardMaking PeacePeace WarGreat WarVeterans DayBeing At PeaceMake Peace Not WarPeace And HarmonyGulf WarInternational PeacePeace Not WarJust WarGreat LibertarianHonoring VeteransPeace And SecurityHonoring Our VeteransGreat Veterans DayWaging WarHonoring Veterans Memorial DayWar VeteranVeteran AppreciationHorror Of WarWar HeroPeace Of HeartVeterans Day AppreciationGood WarBringing PeaceCauses Of WarPeace And UnityTug Of WarEndless WarPolitics And WarPreparing For WarDeclaring WarPreventive WarWar CryPeace Sign
Book:The Fool's Progress: An Honest Novel
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“It has been estimated that of the world Jew population of approximately fifteen millions, no fewer than five million are in the United States. Twenty-five percent of the inhabitants of New York are Jews. During the Great War we bought off this huge American Jewish public by the promise of the Jewish National Home in Palestine, held by Ludendorff to be the master stroke of Allied propaganda as it enabled us not only to appeal to Jews in America but to Jews in Germany as well.”

WorldWellsHas BeensWarStatesHomeAmericaUnitedMillionsUnited StatesFiveNew YorkMastersHugePromisePercentTwentiesPopulationJewAppealsPropagandaGermanyFewerFifteenStrokesPalestineTwenty FiveGreat WarJewish National
Author:Sidney Robertson Cowell
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“The First World War killed fewer victims than the Second World War, destroyed fewer buildings, and uprooted millions instead of tens of millions - but in many ways it left even deeper scars both on the mind and on the map of Europe. The old world never recovered from the shock.”

WorldWayMindFirstsWarLeftMillionsBuildingEuropeVictimDeeperDestroyedWar Of The WorldsShockMapsScarFewerSecond World WarGreat WarOld WorldFirst World War
Book:The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922
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“What you people who weren't yet born can never know is what it meant to sleep in cities under silent falls of snow when all night long the only sounds you heard were dogs that parked at trains that passed so far away they took a short cut through your dreams and no one even woke. It was the war that changed that. It was. After the Great War for Civilization - sleep was different everywhere.”

PeopleKnowsLongDifferentWarDreamNightFallSoundBornSleepCitiesCuttingHeardDogChangedCivilizationTrainSilentSnowYour DreamsFar AwayAll NightGreat WarShort Cuts
Author:Timothy Findley
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“In later years, it was common, and I was guilty in this respect, to question the motives of those who joined the new British armies at the outbreak of the Great War, but it must, in their honour and fairness to their memories, be said that they were motivated by the highest purpose, and died in their tens of thousands in Flanders and Gallipoli, believing that they were giving their lives in the cause of human liberty everywhere, including Ireland.”

GivingYearsBelieveHumansSaidWarPurposeCausesMemoriesCommonLibertyHistoryHighestArmyDiedIncludingBritishGuiltyMotiveHonourMotivatedIrelandFairnessGreat WarOutbreaksFlandersBritish ArmyGallipoli
Author:Sean Lemass
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