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War Quotes

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War Quotes

“I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself. When Anne Sexton admonished me, "We are all writing God's poem," I took it to mean there should be no competition between writers because we are all involved in a common project, a common prayer. But to Gore's and Norman's generation, particularly those male writers who served in the second world war, the prizefighter paradigm remains.”

WorldShouldWritingMeanWarHardHatePrayerCommonGenerationsInvolvedProjectsRemainsCompetitionMalesWar Of The WorldsParadigmGoreSecond World WarSelf Hate
Author:Erica Jong
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“So a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps, life has a peace-time quality, into which war-like events intrude. But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war, every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains.”

YearsLongHas BeensWarLife IsQualityEventsMonthsLong TimeRemainsPrisonThreatBombsTraitorAnnouncements
Book:The Four-Gated City
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“In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable ... in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.”

PeopleKnowsWarReasonFactsPastRememberCoursesEnjoyHorrorCapableSpeciesSoldierGreat MenAllowingBrutalShieldsSentimentality
Author:Doris Lessing
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“Even more ominous ... is the fact that since the Second World War a new kind of intellectual has emerged in large numbers. ... he is only minimally interested in the proper intellectual significance of images and objects. Such people are not really intellectuals, but visuals ... A visual is more interested in style than in content ... A visual does not feel a rioting crowd being machine-gunned by the police, he simply sees a brilliant news photograph.”

PeopleWorldFeelsKindDoeWarFactsNumbersStyleObjectsNewsIntellectualMachinesPolicePhotographCrowdsBrilliantWar Of The WorldsVisualsSignificanceLarge NumbersSecond World WarOminousRioting
Author:John Fowles
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“In the various states of society, armies are recruited from very different motives. Barbarians are urged by the love of war; the citizens of a free republic may be prompted by a principle of duty; the subjects, or at least the nobles, of a monarchy, are animated by a sentiment of honor; but the timid and luxurious inhabitants of a declining empire must be allured into the service by the hopes of profit, or compelled by the dread of punishment.”

MayDifferentWarStatesPrinciplesSubjectsMilitaryDutyCitizensHonorArmyProfitVariousPunishmentMotiveEmpiresSentimentsRepublicDreadCompelledMonarchyAnimatedBarbariansLuxurious
Book:EDWARD GIBBON Premium Collection: Historiographical Works, Memoirs & Letters: Including
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“Barring love and war, few enterprises are undertaken with such abandon, or by such diverse individuals, or with so paradoxical a mixture of appetite and altruism, as that group of avocations known as outdoor recreation. It is, by common consent, a good thing for people to get back to nature. But wherein lies the goodness, and what can be done to encourage its pursuit?”

PeopleWarDoneLyingIndividualCommonKnownGroupsGoodnessGood ThingsPursuitEnterpriseAbandonGet BackAppetiteDiverseAltruismConsentMixturesRecreationParadoxicalLove And WarOutdoor Recreation
Book:A Sand County Almanac, and Sketches Here and There
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“By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement ( and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain?”

KnowsMeanDoeWarNightCertainKnowingGoes OnArmyNotionNeighborhoodEngagementGreat Army
Book:The Landmark Thucydides
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“Those women who had gone out with Germans were grabbed and treated very badly, often shaved totally bald so that everyone could see who they were. Some were taken prisoners. There had been so much suffering during the war because of the betrayal of those collaborators, so many killed and hurt because of what they had done to families, that the mood for revenge against the traitors was very high. It was not right, but it was understandable.”

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Author:Diet Eman
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“There I was out in the barn playing midwife to a pregnant mare. I remember sitting there, spinning yarn in the light of a little oil lamp, a city girl who knew nothing about farming, sitting on the deel beside that mother in pain, already beginning the birthing process. All around me there was darkness and perfect silence, except for the mother's pain. It was as if the war didn't exist in those hours.”

IfsLittlesWarLightPainRememberMotherGirlProcessHoursPerfectCitiesSilenceDarknessSittingOilPregnantLampsFarmingSpinningBarnsMidwifeYarnBirthingMaresCity Girl
Author:Diet Eman
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“There various news I heard of love and strife,Of peace and war, health, sickness, death, and life,Of loss and gain, of famine and of store,Of storms at sea, and travels on the shore,Of prodigies, and portents seen in air,Of fires and plagues, and stars with blazing hair,Of turns of fortune, changes in the state,The fall of favourites, projects of the great,Of aid mismanagements, taxations new:All neither wholly false, nor wholly true.”

WarStatesTurnsFallStarsLossFireHeardAirSeaHairProjectsNewsGainsFortuneVariousStormStoresAidsSicknessLife And DeathShoreStrifeTaxationPlagueFamineBlazingProdigiesMismanagementPortents
Book:The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope: In Three Volumes Complete : with His Last Corrections, Additions, and Improvements, Together with All His Notes, as They Were Delivered to the Editor a Little Before His Death : Together with the Commentary and Notes of Mr. Warburton
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“After any disturbance (such as two world wars coinciding with a period of growing economic and monetary incomprehensibility) we find our old concepts inadequate and look for new ones. But it unfortunately happens that the troubled times which produce an appetite for new ideas are the least propitious for clear thinking.”

ThinkingWorldLooksTwoIdeasWarHappensClearGrowingEconomicProducePeriodsConceptsWar Of The WorldsAppetiteNew IdeasInadequateMonetaryDisturbanceTwo WorldsClear ThinkingTroubled Times
Author:Rebecca West
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“Christ and the life of Christ is at this moment inspiring the literature of the world as never before, and raising it up a witness against waste and want and war. It may confess Him, as in Tolstoi's work it does, or it may deny Him, but it cannot exclude Him; and in the degree that it ignores His spirit, modern literature is artistically inferior. In other words, all good literature is now Christmas literature.”

WorldWantMayDoeWarMomentsSpiritLiteratureChristModernDegreesWasteDenyWitnessWorking ItInferiorsModern LiteratureGood Literature
Book:The Friendly Fire
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“Outcasts of war, misfits, rebellious souls, Seekers of some vague kingdom in the stars - They hide out in the hills and stir up trouble, Call themselves prophets, too, and prophesy, That something new is coming to the world, The Lord knows what! Well, it's a long time coming, And, meanwhile, we're the wheat between the stones.”

KnowsWorldWellsLongWarSoulStarsLordTroubleLong TimeStonesKingdomsHillsProphetSomething NewVagueSeekersRebelliousWheatOutcastMisfits
Author:Stephen Vincent Benet
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“Hemans gallows ought to be the fate of all such ambitious men who would involve their country in civil wars, and all the evils in its train that they might reign & ride on its whirlwinds & direct the Storm The free people of these United States have spoken, and consigned these wicked demagogues to their proper doom.”

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Author:Andrew Jackson
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“War is a culture, bellicosity is addictive, defeat for a community that imagines itself to be history's eternal victim can be as intoxicating as victory. How long will it take for the Serbs to realize that the Milosevic years have been an unmitigated disaster for Serbia, the net result of Milosevic's policies being the economic and cultural ruin of the entire region, including Serbia, for several generations? Alas, one thing we can be sure of, that will not happen soon.”

YearsLongHas BeensWarHappensCultureRealizingCommunityResultsImagineGenerationsOne ThingEconomicPolicyVictoryEternalVictimIncludingDefeatDisasterRuinsRegionsAlasSerbia
Author:Susan Sontag
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“Keynes was chief economic adviser to the British government and largely responsible for keeping the British economy afloat at a time when more than half of our gross national product, and all of our foreign exchange, was being spent on the war. I was lucky to be present at one of his rare appearances in Cambridge, when he gave a lecture with the title "Newton, the Man." Four years later he died of heart failure, precipitated by overwork and the hardships of crossing the Atlantic repeatedly in slow propeller-driven airplanes under wartime conditions.”

MenYearsHeartWarGovernmentHalfEconomyFourEconomicConditionsHe ManProductsLuckyDiedResponsibleAppearanceBritishDrivenChiefsTitlesHardshipFour YearsAirplaneGrossLecturesNewtonCrossingsAdviserCambridgeWartimeOverworkKeynesBritish GovernmentHeart FailurePropellerForeign ExchangeBritish Economy
Author:Freeman Dyson
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“A large body of people, sufficient to make a nation, have come to the conclusion that they will have a government of a certain form. Who denies them the right? Standing with the principles of '76 behind us, who can deny them the right? ... I maintain on the principles of '76 that Abraham Lincoln has no right to a soldier in Fort Sumter. ... You can never make such a war popular. ... The North never will endorse such a war.”

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Author:Wendell Phillips
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“In tracking down and eliminating terrorists, we need to change our metaphor from a "war on terror" - exactly what, pray tell, is that? - to the mind-set of Interpol tracking down master criminals through intense global cooperation among nations, or the FBI stalking the Mafia, or local police determined to quell street gangs without leveling the entire neighborhood in the process.”

NeedsMindWarNationsProcessStreetsMastersPrayingPoliceDown AndMetaphorTerrorDeterminedCriminalsTerroristIntenseLocalsNeighborhoodCooperationGangMafiaFbiStalkingWar On TerrorNeed A ChangeEliminatingMind SetTracking
Author:Bill Moyers
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