Archive

Quotes

The fear of war is worse than war itself.

—Seneca, c. 50

A dead enemy always smells good.

—Aulus Vitellius, 69

Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.

—Mao Zedong, 1938

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1773

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

—William Tecumseh Sherman, 1879

I have loved war too well.

—Louis XIV, 1715

War is sweet to those who don’t know it.

—Erasmus, 1508

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

—William Randolph Hearst, 1898

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

—Carl Sandburg, 1936

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

—John Donne, 1622

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

—Winston Churchill, 1939

I detest war. It spoils armies.

—Grand Duke Constantine of Russia, c. 1820

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

—Jonathan Swift, 1697