140+ Powerful War Quotes to Reflect on Courage, Conflict, and Sacrifice
War, while a source of immense suffering, has historically served as a stark reminder of humanity’s capacity for resilience, innovation, and the pursuit of peace. It often prompts nations and individuals to reflect on the value of diplomacy, cooperation, and understanding. From the aftermath of war, societies have sometimes emerged stronger, more unified, and more committed to preventing future conflicts. In its lessons, war teaches us the irreplaceable worth of peace and the strength found in reconciliation and rebuilding.
- “You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.”
- “War is the business of barbarians.”
- “War is a poor chisel to carve out tomorrow.”
- “We must concentrate not merely on the negative expulsion of war but the positive affirmation of peace.”
- “I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality… I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word.”
- “The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
- “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”
- “It is not enough to say we must not wage war. It is necessary to love peace and sacrifice for it.”
- “One of the greatest casualties of the war in Vietnam is the Great Society… shot down on the battlefield of Vietnam.”
- “Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies—or else? The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.”
- “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.”
- “I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.”
- “It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.”
- “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
- “I do not believe that civilization will be wiped out in a war fought with the atomic bomb. Perhaps two-thirds of the people of the earth will be killed.”
- “There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.”
- “You say it is the good cause that hallows even war? I say unto you: it is the good war that hallows any cause.”
- “War has always been the grand sagacity of every spirit which has grown too inward and too profound; its curative power lies even in the wounds one receives.”
- “We make war that we may live in peace.”
- “When the tyrant has disposed of foreign enemies by conquest or treaty, and there is nothing more to fear from them, then he is always stirring up some war or other, in order that the people may require a leader.”
- “Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.”
- “Demoralize the enemy from within by surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination. This is the war of the future.”
- “Whoever lights the torch of war in Europe can wish for nothing but chaos.”
- “Generals think war should be waged like the tourneys of the Middle Ages. I have no use for knights; I need revolutionaries.”
- “Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.”
- “Weapons are an important factor in war, but not the decisive one; it is man and not materials that counts.”
- “War can only be abolished through war, and in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun.”
- “War is so unjust and ugly that all who wage it must try to stifle the voice of conscience within themselves.”
- “War on the other hand is such a terrible thing, that no man, especially a Christian man, has the right to assume the responsibility of starting it.”
- “In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”
- “A war between Europeans is a civil war.”
- “A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society and a more elevated humanity at which I am aiming – a society without kings, a humanity without barriers.”
- “Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime.”
- “Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn’t every war fought between men, between brothers?”
- “As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”
- “To hold a pen is to be at war.”
- “In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.”
- “When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.”
- “Politics is almost as exciting as war, and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times.”
- “No one can guarantee success in war, but only deserve it.”
- “In war as in life, it is often necessary when some cherished scheme has failed, to take up the best alternative open, and if so, it is folly not to work for it with all your might.”
- “A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.”
- “War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.”
- “I am never going to have anything more to do with politics or politicians. When this war is over I shall confine myself entirely to writing and painting.”
- “Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.”
- “Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.”
- “To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.”
- “War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.”
- “In war, you can only be killed once, but in politics, many times.”
- “When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.”
- “War is a contagion.”
- “Don’t forget what I discovered that over ninety percent of all national deficits from 1921 to 1939 were caused by payments for past, present, and future wars.”
- “More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars – yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments.”
- “Our national determination to keep free of foreign wars and foreign entanglements cannot prevent us from feeling deep concern when ideals and principles that we have cherished are challenged.”
- “Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.”
- “Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.”
- “If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name.”
- “War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil.”
- “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.”
- “Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.”
- “The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it.”
- “All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.”
- “War is war. The only good human being is a dead one.”
- “War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.”
- “Oceania was at war with Eurasia; therefore Oceania had always been at war with Eurasia.”
- “There is hardly such a thing as a war in which it makes no difference who wins. Nearly always one side stands more or less for progress, the other side more or less for reaction.”
- “War is a way of shattering to pieces… materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and… too intelligent.”
- “Serious sport is war minus the shooting.”
- “The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.”
- “Probably the battle of Waterloo was won on the playing-fields of Eton, but the opening battles of all subsequent wars have been lost there.”
- “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
- “No body can be healthful without exercise, neither natural body nor politic, and certainly, to a kingdom or estate, a just and honourable war is the true exercise.”
- “When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die.”
- “When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.”
- “Total war is no longer war waged by all members of one national community against all those of another. It is total… because it may well involve the whole world.”
- “Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it we have always to combat with ourselves.”
- “In order for a war to be just, three things are necessary. First, the authority of the sovereign. Secondly, a just cause. Thirdly, a rightful intention.”
- “How is it they live in such harmony the billions of stars – when most men can barely go a minute without declaring war in their minds about someone they know.”
- “War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.”
- “Strike against war, for without you no battles can be fought!”
- “Even philosophers will praise war as ennobling mankind, forgetting the Greek who said: ‘War is bad in that it begets more evil than it kills.'”
- “Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.”
- “When you go to war as a boy, you have a great illusion of immortality. Other people get killed, not you… Then, when you are badly wounded the first time, you lose that illusion, and you know it can happen to you.”
- “Wars are caused by undefended wealth.”
- “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.”
- “I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes.”
- “The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
- “They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
- “For a war to be just three conditions are necessary – public authority, just cause, right motive.”
- “In modern war… you will die like a dog for no good reason.”
- “Telling us to obey instinct is like telling us to obey ‘people.’ People say different things: so do instincts. Our instincts are at war… Each instinct, if you listen to it, will claim to be gratified at the expense of the rest.”
- “John Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.”
- “It is not only the living who are killed in war.”
- “Dalton’s records, carefully preserved for a century, were destroyed during the World War II bombing of Manchester. It is not only the living who are killed in war.”
- “There is so much that must be done in a civilized barbarism like war.”
- “War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means.”
- “Many intelligence reports in war are contradictory; even more are false, and most are uncertain.”
- “War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.”
- “War is the domain of physical exertion and suffering.”
- “Everything in war is very simple. But the simplest thing is difficult.”
- “The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.”
- “Politics is the womb in which war develops.”
- “War is the province of danger.”
- “War is the continuation of politics by other means.”
- “To secure peace is to prepare for war.”
- “War is not merely a political act but a real political instrument, a continuation of political intercourse, a carrying out of the same by other means.”
- “War is not an exercise of the will directed at an inanimate matter.”
- “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace.”
- “We prefer world law in the age of self-determination to world war in the age of mass extermination.”
- “It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.”
- “Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes… can no longer be of concern to great powers alone.”
- “War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.”
- “Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.”
- “Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both.”
- “The world knows that America will never start a war. This generation of Americans has had enough of war and hate… we want to build a world of peace where the weak are secure and the strong are just.”
- “The peasant must always be helped technically, economically, morally and culturally. The guerrilla fighter will be a sort of guiding angel who has fallen into the zone, helping the poor always and bothering the rich as little as possible in the first phases of the war.”
- “It is important to emphasize that guerrilla warfare is a war of the masses, a war of the people. The guerrilla band is an armed nucleus, the fighting vanguard of the people. It draws its great force from the mass of the people themselves.”
- “We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house.”
- “Life on Earth is at the ever-increasing risk of being wiped out by a disaster, such as sudden global nuclear war, a genetically engineered virus or other dangers we have not yet thought of.”
- “War is just when it is necessary; arms are permissible when there is no hope except in arms.”
- “War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.”
- “There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”
- “I started to make a study of the art of war and revolution and, whilst abroad, underwent a course in military training. If there was to be guerrilla warfare, I wanted to be able to stand and fight with my people and to share the hazards of war with them.”
- “Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose – and you allow him to make war at pleasure.”
- “In my view of the present aspect of affairs, there is no need of bloodshed and war. There is no necessity for it. I am not in favor of such a course, and I may say in advance, there will be no blood shed unless it be forced upon the government. The government will not use force unless force is used against it.”
- “My child, you are going to be a great king; do not imitate me in the taste I have had for building, or in that I have had for war; try, on the contrary, to be at peace with your neighbors.”
- “My court was divided between peace and war according to their various interests, but I considered only their reasons.”
- “The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected.”
- “Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy’s strategy.”
- “In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good.”
- “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”
- “Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory.”
- “Secret operations are essential in war; upon them the army relies to make its every move.”
- “There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare.”
- “Quickness is the essence of the war.”
- “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”
- “There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited.”
- “The art of war teaches us to rely not on the likelihood of the enemy’s not coming, but on our own readiness to receive him; not on the chance of his not attacking, but rather on the fact that we have made our position unassailable.”
- “If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”
- “Morality is contraband in war.”
- “The first time I saw nitroglycerine was in the beginning of the Crimean War. Professor Zinin in St. Petersburg exhibited some to my father and me, and struck some on an anvil to show that only the part touched by the hammer exploded without spreading.”