Archive

Quotes

Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.

—Carl Sandburg, 1936

I went [to war] because I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want the glory or the pay; I wanted the right thing done.

—Louisa May Alcott, 1863

As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery.

—John Donne, 1622

I have loved war too well.

—Louis XIV, 1715

You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.

—Leon Trotsky

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

—Mao Zedong, 1938

Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

—Winston Churchill, 1939

War to the castles; peace to the cottages.

—Nicolas Chamfort, 1790

You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war. 

—William Randolph Hearst, 1898

War is the child of pride, and pride the daughter of riches.

—Jonathan Swift, 1697

A dead enemy always smells good.

—Aulus Vitellius, 69

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. War is hell.

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1879

I detest war. It spoils armies.

—Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, c. 1820