Quotessence
Home / Topics / Post War Quotes

Post War Quotes

Browse 59 quotes about Post War.

Related topics

Periods

Post War Quotes

“Most people coming out of a war feel lost and resentful. What had been a minute-to-minute confrontation with yourself, your struggle with what courage you have against discomfort, at the least, and death at the other end, ties you to the people you have known in the war and makes, for a time, all others seem alien and frivolous. Friends are glad to see you again, but you know immediately that most of them have put you to one side, and while it is easy enough to say that you should have known that before, most of us don't, and it is painful. You are face to face with what will happen to you after death.”

WarDeathChangeFriendsConfrontationPost War
Book:An Unfinished Woman: A Memoir
Create image

“With their pride of controlled selfhood, their inner discipline, such players made us a little ashamed of our glad acceptance of democratic values. We had been content to think of our time as the age of the little man. By the light shed from these giant contrasts, we felt (but never, I am afraid, admitted) that ours was the age of the dwarf. Such adventures in uniqueness were rare beyond the stage door.”

ActorsPost WarEnglish TheatreHeroic Acting
Book:He That Plays the King: A View of the Theatre
Create image

“In spite of the frightful pogroms which took place, first in Poland and then in unprecedented fashion in the Ukraine, and which cost the lives of thousands of Jews, the Jewish people considered the post-war period as a messianic era. Israel, during those years, 1919-1920, rejoiced in Eastern and Southern Europe, in Northern and Southern Africa, and above all in America.”

PeopleYearsFirstsWarAmericaFashionPeriodsCostEuropeJewIsraelErasPostsSpiteSouthernEasternUkraineUnprecedentedPolandPost WarSouthern Africa
Author:Denis Fahey
Create image

“The pre-war empire had been sufficiently informal and sufficiently cheap for Parliament to claim authority over it without having to concern itself too much about what this authority entailed. The post-war empire necessitated a much greater investment in administrative machinery and military force. This build-up of control had to be paid for, either by British taxpayers or by their colonists.”

WarForceGreaterToo MuchMilitaryAuthorityConcernClaimsPaidInvestmentBritishPostsEmpiresOver ItParliamentMachineryTaxpayersBritish HistoryAdministrativeMilitary ForcePost WarColonists
Author:Linda Colley
Create image

“In How to Be an American Housewife Margaret Dilloway creates an irresistible heroine. Shoko is stubborn, contrary, proud, a wonderful housewife and full of deeply conflicted feelings. I wanted to shake her, even as I was cheering her on, and this cunningly structured novel allowed me to do both. It also took me on two intricate journeys, from post-war Japan and the shadow of Nagasaki to contemporary California, and from motherhood to daughterhood and back again. A profound and suspenseful debut.”

TwoWarFeelingsWantedNovelWonderfulJourneyProudShadowProfoundMotherhoodContraryContemporaryPostsCaliforniaShakesJapanCheerStubbornIrresistibleHousewifeBack AgainHeroinesIntricateDebutPost War
Author:Margot Livesey
Create image

“When a new post-war generation has grown to puberty and to youth and to manhood and womanhood, it should read, and it should be realistically told, of the futility, the idiocy, the utter depravity of war. For that matter, this instruction could begin at the age of six with the taking of those toy guns out of those toy holsters and throwing them in the ash-cans where they belong.”

ShouldWarMatterAgeGenerationsYouthSixGunPostsThrowingInstructionToysAshesWomanhoodManhoodFutilityDepravityPubertyIdiocyPost WarToy Guns
Author:Edna Ferber
Create image

“the explanation of the ebb and flow of the women's movement ... is partly psychological. During those early post-war years when successes came thick and fast and were almost thrust upon us, the nation was still under the influence of the reconstruction spirit, when everything seemed possible ... A few years later the nation had reached the stage which follows a drinking bout. It was feeling ruefully in its empty pockets. It did not want to part with anything to anybody. Its head ached. Noble sentiments made it feel sick. It wanted only to be left alone.”

WantFeelsYearsMadeStillsWarFeelingsWantedSpiritPoliticsLeftNationsFeminismInfluenceStageMovementFlowEmptySickDrinkingNoblePsychologicalMade ItPostsExplanationPocketsSentimentsThickThrustLeft AloneReconstructionEbb And FlowPost WarEmpty Pockets
Author:Eleanor Rathbone
Create image

“In one sense, I have always felt glad to have had the war [World War II] in my childhood, because, as a result, nothing that has happened in the world since then has ever seemed quite so bad. On the other hand, I never entirely got over my feeling of being cheated when the promised era of peace in a wonderful "post-war world" failed to materialize. I could not understand how, after all that, people could ever even think of fighting again. And I still can't.”

PeopleThinkingWorldStillsWarFeelingsHandsFightingFeltResultsWonderfulHappenedChildhoodGladErasPostsWar Of The WorldsWorld War IiWorld War ICheatedPost War
Author:Ashleigh Brilliant
Create image

“I don't know if Britain ever really achieved that much glamour. We had post-war austerity rather than post-war prosperity, and our cultural products of the time include some pretty dour kitchen-sink dramas of the A Kind of Loving variety. (This kind of film seems disillusioned with the sixties before they've even really begun.)”

IfsKnowsKindWarSeemsFilmProductsDramaProsperityVarietyPostsKitchenBritainSixtyGlamourDisillusionedAusterityPost WarKitchen Sinks
Author:Quentin S. Crisp
Create image

“Democracy takes work. That's the thing we're really finding out, that, you know, in many ways, you know, the past two decades we've taken for granted all of the extraordinary achievements of the post-war generation. You know, building this global alliance structure that has kept the peace across the North Atlantic since World War II. Building all of these institutions, building all this remarkable technology. And people have privatized. You know, you can now, you don't have to go outdoors much, the whole world comes to you.”

PeopleKnowsWorldWayTwoWarWholePastTechnologyDemocracyTakenGenerationsBuildingAchievementFindingsInstitutionsStructureExtraordinaryDecadesWhole WorldGrantedPostsWar Of The WorldsRemarkableWorld War IiWorld War IAlliancesTaken For GrantedPost WarExtraordinary Achievement
Author:David Frum
Create image

“If you are going to abolish slavery, that opens up all these other questions: what system of labor is going to replace slave labor? What system of race relations is going to replace the race relations of slavery? Who is going to have power in the post-war South? The Emancipation Proclamation doesn't answer that question, but it throws [it] open.”

IfsWarAnswersRaceLaborRelationSlaverySlaveSouthPostsRace RelationsEmancipationAbolishProclamationPost WarEmancipation ProclamationSlave Labor
Author:Eric Foner
Create image

“That's a point that Dan Ellsberg has made for years. He said it's kind of like if you and I go into a grocery store to rob it, and I have a gun. The guy may give you the money in the cash register. I'm using the gun even if I don't shoot. Well that's nuclear weapons - essential to post-war deterrence - they cast a shadow over everything.”

IfsGivingYearsWellsKindMayMadeSaidWarGuyEssentialsWeaponsGunShadowCastsStoresNuclearPostsCashNuclear WeaponsGroceriesRegisterGrocery StoresPost WarDeterrence
Author:Noam Chomsky
Create image

“Though the poorest Americans voted for Hillary Clinton, many relatively wealthy people voted for Trump and generally it's a mistake to think that economics explains Trump. The US is doing relatively well, the economy has significantly recovered since 2008, unemployment rates are low. I would say rather that his appeal to the working class was cultural: "I'll bring back the kinds of jobs your fathers had," and, by implication, the whiter, simpler post-war world when America had no real economic competition.”

PeopleThinkingWorldWellsKindWarRealJobsAmericaFatherMistakeClassEconomyEconomicTrumpLowsEconomicsCompetitionClintonRatePostsAppealsWealthyWorking ClassUnemploymentImplicationsPoorestPost WarUnemployment RateEconomic Competition
Author:Anne Applebaum
Create image

“A particular type of film emerged from World War Two, with the Italian neorealist school. It was perfectly right for its time, which was as exceptional as the reality around us. Our major interest focused on that and on how we could relate to it. Later, when the situation normalized and post-war life returned to what it had been in peacetime, it became important to see the intimate, interior consequences of all that had happened.”

WorldTwoImportantWarRealitySchoolFilmInterestSituationHappenedParticularTypeMajorsConsequenceFocusedPostsRelateIntimateWar Of The WorldsItalianInteriorsExceptionalWorld War TwoPost War
Author:Michelangelo Antonioni
Create image

“We can see beyond the present shadows of war in the Middle East to a new world order where the strong work together to deter and stop aggression. This was precisely Franklin Roosevelt's and Winston Churchill's vision for peace for the post-war period.”

WorldWarTogetherOrderStrongVisionMiddlePeriodsShadowJewEastPostsWorking TogetherNew WorldMiddle EastAggressionCreepyFranklinNew World OrderWorld OrderConspiracy TheoryWorld GovernmentNwoOne World GovernmentPost War
Author:Dick Gephardt
Create image

“On the justification for the war, it wasn't related to finding any particular weapon of mass destruction. In our judgment, it was much more fundamental. It was the removing of a regime that was hostile, that clearly had the intention of constructing weapons systems. ... I think, frankly, that everybody knew the post-war situation was probably going to be more difficult than the war itself. Canada remains alienated from its allies, shut out of the reconstruction process to some degree, unable to influence events. There is no upside to the position Canada took.”

ThinkingWarProcessDifficultSituationInfluenceEventsPositionParticularDegreesFindingsJudgmentWeaponsMassDestructionFundamentalsRemainsIntentionPostsRelatedCanadaAlliesRegimesJustificationHostileWeapons Of Mass DestructionMass DestructionReconstructionPost War
Author:Stephen Harper
Create image