War Quotes

War is the failure of every other option. These quotes do not glorify conflict — they examine its causes, costs, and consequences through the eyes of soldiers, leaders, pacifists, and survivors who understand what is really at stake.

“There are historic situations in which refusal to defend the inheritance of a civilization, however imperfect, against tyranny and aggression may result in consequences even worse than war.”

Reinhold Niebuhr

More War Quotes

“Winston Churchill aroused this nation in heroic fashion to save civilisation in World War Two. We have everything we need except political will, but political will is a renewable resource.”

Al Gore

“I'm actually reading 'World War Z' again! It's incredibly realistic and it's written as an oral history through interviews with different characters. Max Brooks wrote this book in so many different voices. There are about forty or so. It's incredible. When I finish 'World War Z' I'm going to go back and start again on the 'Game of Thrones' series.”

Nathan Fillion

“Thus, what is of supreme importance in war is to attack the enemy's strategy.”

Sun Tzu

“It has too often been too easy for rulers and governments to incite man to war.”

Lester B. Pearson

“With acting, you wanna see if you can get into trouble without knowing how you're gonna get out of it. It's like the exact opposite of war, where you need an exit strategy. When you're acting, you should get all the way into trouble with no exit strategy, and have the cameras rolling.”

John Cusack

“Yesterday, December seventh, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

Franklin D. Roosevelt

“My mother lived in Holland, and during World War II was incarcerated in a Japanese camp for three years.”

Jane Seymour

“There's no question that jihad historically means war.”

Pat Robertson

“I was a little girl in World War II and I'm used to being freed by Americans.”

Madeleine Albright

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.”

Otto von Bismarck

“One side-effect of the so-called war on terror has been a crisis of liberalism. This is not only a question of alarmingly illiberal legislation, but a more general problem of how the liberal state deals with its anti-liberal enemies.”

Terry Eagleton

“In our modern world of interdependent nations, hardly any state can wage war successfully without raising loans and buying war materials of every kind in the markets of other nations.”

Arthur Henderson

Other Categories

View all →