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Ww2 Quotes

Browse 141 quotes about Ww2.

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Ww2 Quotes

“Icarus made wings out of wax to escape a prison. But when he was outside for the first time in years there was the sun hanging up in the sky above him and he thought it was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. He flew closer and closer and his wings started to melt, but he didn’t give a good goddamn. He kept flying up until he couldn’t fly anymore, and his eyes were probably burning, and his skin was probably burning, but still he didn’t care. And then his wings melted all the way and he fell miles and miles into the ocean and brained himself on a rock, that poor stupid asshole. And I’ll tell you what: I’m no better. I’m no fucking better.”

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Book:The Thirteen Letters
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“The Doctor: Amazing. Nancy: What is? The Doctor: 1941. Right now, not very far from here, the German war machine is rolling up the map of Europe. Country after country, falling like dominoes. Nothing can stop it, nothing. Until one tiny, damp little island says "No. No, not here." A mouse in front of a lion. You're amazing, the lot of you. I don't know what you do to Hitler, but you frighten the hell out of me.”

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Author:Steven Moffat
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“Sitting down on a crate, Helen felt them, felt the vibrancy they had left behind like twilight after the sun is gone. She tried to picture their faces, their voices, but the details already blurred. They were slipping away from her, for they were never hers to keep. Turning her eyes to the ocean, Helen thought of all those boatloads of children on the water, needing somewhere warm and safe, and yet the ocean hadn’t listened to her plea. Everything she’d asked the universe had been ignored, snubbed. As she watched the waves, she tried to find peace in their steady heartbeat, but none came. The only thing she felt was betrayed. Betrayed and so utterly lonely.”

ChildrenLonelyBetrayalIgnoredRefugeesSingle LifeWw2World War TwoEvacuationFoster Parents
Book:The Ocean's Daughter :
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“There have been many plagues in the world as there have been wars, yet plagues and wars always find people equally unprepared. [...] When a war breaks out people say: 'It won't last, it's too stupid.' And war is certainly too stupid, but that doesn't prevent it from lasting. Stupidity always carries doggedly on, as people wold notice if they were not always thinking about themselves. In this respect, the citizens of Oran were like the rest of the world, they thought about themselves, in other words, they were humanists: they did not believe in pestilence. A pestilence does not have human dimensions, so people tell themselves that it is unreal, that it is a bad dream which will end. But it does not always end and, from one bad dream to the next, it is people who end, humanists first of all because they have not prepared themselves.”

WarMetaphorStupidityPlagueWw2PestilenceGuerrePeste
Book:The Plague
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“In the vast expanse of the Pacific, island hopping emerged as a stroke of strategic brilliance, enabling the Allied forces to bypass heavily fortified Japanese strongholds while securing key strategic points. This nimble and audacious approach not only conserved precious resources but also provided crucial bases for launching further offensives. Island hopping reshaped the trajectory of the Pacific War, illustrating the power of adaptability and innovation in the face of formidable adversaries.”

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Author:Ian W. Toll
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“That time will have come when our prison, which though extensive is nonetheless cramped and filled with suffocatingly stale air, has opened-that is, when the war raging at present has come to an end, one way or the other. And how that "or the other" sets me in terror of both myself and the awful straits into which fate has squeezed the German heart! For in fact I have only "the other" in mind; I am relying on it, counting solely on it, against my conscience as a citizen. After all, never-failing public indoctrination has made sure that we are profoundly aware of the crushing consequences, in all their irrevocable horror, of a German defeat, so that we cannot help fearing it more than anything else in the world. And yet there is something that some of us fear-at certain moments that seem criminal even to ourselves, whereas others fear it quite frankly and permanently-fear more than a German defeat, and that is a German victory. I hardly dare ask myself to which of these two persuasions I belong. Perhaps to a third, in which one yearns for defeat constantly and consciously, but with unrelenting agony of conscience.”

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Book:Doctor Faustus
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“I did not want a war, nor did I bring it about. I did everything to prevent it by negotiations. After it had broken out, I did everything to assure victory. Since the three greatest powers on earth, together with many other nations, were fighting against us, we finally succumbed to their tremendous superiority. I stand up for the things that I have done, but I deny most emphatically that my actions were dictated by the desire to subjugate foreign peoples by wars, to murder them, to rob them, or to enslave them, or to commit atrocities or crimes. The only motive which guided me was my ardent love for my people, its happiness, its freedom, and its life. And for this I call on the Almighty and my German people to witness. (31 August 1946)”

WarHistoryGuiltWorld War IiDiplomacyWwiiWorld War 2Ww2Nuremberg Trials
Book:Trial of the Major war Criminals: before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 November 1945-1 October 1946
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“That evening we sat in the courtyard of the hotel once more, watching the sun sink below the western isles. I told Alexi what had happened that day. I fancied I could glimpse the grey stone wall of Lismore House on its island hilltop, the red light of the setting sun glinting from the windows, and from there the wasted frame of Jonathan Blake gazing out across the sea, on nothing, his boy waiting for him to die. But it was my fantasy, simply the image on my mind, like the image burned on to your eyes when you have stared too long at the sun, the passing footprint of a creature long gone.”

RomanceNovelMysterySuspenseAuthorWw2NorwayPb NorthLeaving Pimlico
Book:Leaving Pimlico
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“Others, however, would look over the children as if they were produce. They’d only speak to the nearest officer, never lowering their eyes to the young ones. Instead, they looked down their noses as though to distance themselves. “I’ll take these,” Helen would see them mouth, waving a finger above the small heads. It was a moment the children would have branded on their minds, Helen was sure of it, and the pain of it turned her stomach to lead.”

ChildrenTraumaWorld War IiWorld War 2Foster ChildrenRefugeesJudging OthersWw2EvacuationChild Evacuation
Book:The Ocean's Daughter :
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“There are so few people left alive from back then, you may as well be talking to them about the Black Death. Nobody recalls the shite in the 30s and that were fucking horrible. For Christ's sake, nobody wants to remember the shite in the 80s. It's all forgotten and swept under the rug by the newspapers and the BBC. They get nostalgic about the music, but they never want to mention the misery. It's all shite. As for the bloody Second World War, the politicians only talk about it when they need an excuse to go pissing about in one of those fucking Muslim countries.”

MemoryNostalgiaPoliticiansRememberingWw2Forgetting The Past
Book:Harry's Last Stand: How the world my generation built is falling down, and what we can do to save it
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“Making history was never the aim of the Norwegian saboteurs, nor of the British sappers who were sent before them. After the war, the sacrifice of the British Royal Engineers and RAF crews of the ill-fated Operation Freshman was not forgotten. Thirty-seven bodies were recovered and buried at gravesites in Norway. Bill Bray’s headstone reads, "To live in the hearts of those that loved me is not to die.”

WarHistorySacrificeSabotageWw2
Book:The Winter Fortress: The Epic Mission to Sabotage Hitler's Atomic Bomb
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“I was on one of my world 'walkabouts.' It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew up]. There I found the picture of 'the Father.' It was a real, gigantic Saltwater Crocodile (whose picture is now featured on page 1 of TEETH). From that moment, 'the Father' began to swim through the murky recesses of my mind. Imagine! I thought, men confronting the world’s largest reptile on its own turf! And what if they were stripped of their firearms, so they must face this force of nature with nothing but hand weapons and wits? We know that neither whales nor sharks hunt individual humans for weeks on end. But, Dear Reader, crocodiles do! They are intelligent predators that choose their victims and plot their attacks. So, lost on its river, how would our heroes escape a great hunter of the Father’s magnitude? And what if these modern men must also confront the headhunters and cannibals who truly roam New Guinea? What of tribal wars, the coming of Christianity and materialism (the phenomenon known as the 'Cargo Cult'), and the people’s introduction to 'civilization' in the form of world war? What of first contact between pristine tribal culture and the outside world? What about tribal clashes on a global scale—the hatred and enmity between America and Japan, from Pearl Harbor, to the only use in history of atomic weapons? And if the world could find peace at last, how about Johnny and Katsu?”

ActionAdventureHistoricalWarriorJapanAustraliaWorld War IiAmerican HistoryWwiiWorld War 2Ww2CannibalTribalSouth PacificHeadhunterThe PacificCrocodile AttackBiggest CrocodileLargest CrocodileNurse Romance
Book:Teeth
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“Whether my feelings were right or not, every day I felt relieved he was wounded. I was relieved he limped because he slept in my arms at night. I was relieved he had nothing more important to do than study or fish because I saw him every morning when I woke up. I couldn't tell him. I could never tell him, because the fact that he was not out there with all the other boys risking their lives for our country, for the world, was killing him. Every day it was killing him. But he was brave.”

BraveryInjuryReliefPeterWw2Wounded SoldierPiper
Book:Song of the Storm Petrel
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“You can do anything you put your mind to doing.”

GermanyWorld War IiWomanhoodFemininityWorld HistoryWwiiFolklorePolandWorld ViewWw2AustriaGertrudeAdolf HitlerNational SocialismGreenwichHitler YouthRobertSandorCtNsdapBdmBund Der ArtamanenBund Deutscher MaedelCountry Service CampFarmers HarvestGiersdorfGuardian Of The CountryHirschbergJelenia GóraJmJungmaedelJungmaedeldienstKasperleKerschnerKleinzellLandjahr LagerLeague Of German GirlsLinzLower Silesian VoivodeshipNeiderschlesienNeo PaganOdal RunePodgórzynReisalpeWalpurgis NightWandervőgelWeltanschauung
Author:Gertrude Kerschner
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“He shuddered at the idea of digging beneath the surface. It would be stifling, hot, filthy, and dangerous. The ferrets also occasionally commandeered a heavy truck, loaded it with men and material, and drove it, bouncing along, around the outside perimeter of the camp. They believed the weight would cause any underground tunnel to collapse. Once, more than a year earlier, they'd been right. He remembered the fury on Colonel MacNamara's face when the long days and nights of hard work were so summarily crushed.”

TunnelsWw2ConfinementPowClaustrophobiaPrisoner Of WarEscape Freedom
Book:Hart's War
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“They came here on Sunday, 30th June, 1940, after bombing us two days before. They said they hadn't meant to bomb us; they mistook our tomato lorries on the pier for army trucks. How they came to think that strains the mind. They bombed us, killing some thirty men, women, and children - one among them was my cousin's boy. He had sheltered underneath his lorry when he first saw the planes dropping bombs, and it exploded and caught fire. They killed men in their lifeboats at sea. They strafed the Red Cross ambulances carrying our wounded. When no one shot back at them, they saw the British had left us undefended. They just flew in peaceably two days later and occupied us for five years.”

WarOccupationBombingWw2
Book:The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society
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“And as for returning to work as a reporter—something she’d given considerable thought to before taking over her father’s inquiry agency—the Sydney newspapers had dismissed most of their women reporters home once the men started to return from the war, or else confined them to the social pages, or covering the Easter Show, which was a bit too steep a downgrade for Billie after she’d chased Nazi activity across Europe, built a good portfolio of published articles, and worked alongside the likes of Lee Miller and Clare Hollingworth. No, she wouldn’t last in that kind of work. It was an imperfect world, and her chosen profession was decidedly imperfect, but for now she had a hint of that spark again, that sense of doing something that mattered to someone.”

Women EmpowermentWw2Pi1940sCrime NovelPrivate EyeTara Moss
Book:The War Widow
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