Quotes by theme

war

Quotes including the word “war”.

125 results
Alfred Adler

To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.

Aeschylus

In war, truth is the first casualty

Great the Alexander

Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war.

Thomas Aquinas

Beware the man of a single book.

Aristophanes

Men of sense often learn from their enemies. It is from their foes, not their friends, that cities learn the lesson of building high walls and ships of war.

Baudelaire

Let us beware of common folk, of common sense, of sentiment, of inspiration, and of the obvious.

Baudelaire

There are moments of existence when time and space are more profound, and the awareness of existence is immensely heightened.

de Simone Beauvoir

No one is more arrogant toward women, more aggressive or scornful, than the man who is anxious about his virility.

Brendan Behan

“I respect kindness in human beings first of all, and kindness to animals. I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer.

Heinrich Bell

If the dead could speak there would be no more war.

Henri Bergson

Europe is overpopulated, the world will soon be in the same condition, and if the self-reproduction of man is not rationalized... we' ll have war.

Brecht

Society cannot share a common communication system so long as it is split into warring factions.

Brecht

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Charles Bukowski

Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.

Robert Burns

Firmness in enduring and exertion is a character I always wish to possess. I have always despised the whining yelp of complaint and cowardly resolve.

W. Burroughs

Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war.

Amílcar Cabral

Always bear in mind that the people are not fighting for ideas, for the things in anyone’s head. They are fighting to win material benefits, to live better and in peace, to see their lives go forward, to guarantee the future of their children.

Caesar

Cowards die many times before their actual deaths.

Caesar

Fortune, which has a great deal of power in other matters but especially in war, can bring about great changes in a situation through very slight forces.

Calvino

Reading is a possession, a march toward a possession.

Albert Camus

Real generosity toward the future lies in giving all to the present.

Fidel Castro

I find capitalism repugnant. It is filthy, it is gross, it is alienating... because it causes war, hypocrisy and competition.

Chopin

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

Dante

O human race, born to fly upward, wherefore at a little wind dost thou so fall?

Diogenes

Dogs and philosophers do the greatest good and get the fewest rewards.

Walt Disney

We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we're curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths.

Umberto Eco

"Love flourishes in expectation. Expectation strolls through the spacious fields of Time towards Opportunity.

Umberto Eco

The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.

Einstein

I don't know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.

Exupery

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Ian Fleming

Love of life is born of the awareness of death, of the dread of it.

Anatole France

The whole art of teaching is only the art of awakening the natural curiosity of the mind for the purpose of satisfying it afterwards.

Galeano

Most of wars or military coups or invasions are done in the name of democracy against democracy.

Khalil Gibran

The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.

van Gogh,Vincent

Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.

Nadine Gordimer

Everyone ends up moving alone towards the self.

Hawking

We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly polluted and overcrowded planet.

Hawthorne

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.

Martin Heidegger

Man is not something fixed or completed, but a being constantly shaped through choices, possibilities, and awareness of life itself.”

Heraclitus

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.

Hermann Hesse

We are not going in circles, we are going upwards. The path is a spiral; we have already climbed many steps.

Nazim Hikmet

You are my drunkenness... I did not sober up, as if I can do that; I don't want to anyway. I have a headache, my knees are full of scars I am in mud all around I struggle to walk towards your hesitant light.”

Hobbes

When all the world is overcharged with inhabitants, then the last remedy of all is war, which provideth for every man, by victory or death.”

Horace

Think to yourself that every day is your last; the hour to which you do not look forward will come as a welcome surprise.

Victor Hugo

Freedom in art, freedom in society, this is the double goal towards which all consistent and logical minds must strive.

Victor Hugo

Civil war? What does that mean? Is there any foreign war? Isn't every war fought between men, between brothers?

Ibsen

To live is to war with trolls.”

Carl Jung

One looks back with appreciation to the brilliant teachers, but with gratitude to those who touched our human feelings. The curriculum is so much necessary raw material, but warmth is the vital element for the growing plant and for the soul of the child.

Franz Kafka

Anyone who cannot come to terms with his life while he is alive needs one hand to ward off a little his despair over his fate... but with his other hand he can note down what he sees among the ruins.

Franz Kafka

From a certain point onward there is no longer any turning back. That is the point that must be reached.

Kierkegaard

A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater. I think that's just how the world will come to an end: to general applause from wits who believe it's a joke

Kierkegaard

A man who as a physical being is always turned toward the outside, thinking that his happiness lies outside him, finally turns inward and discovers that the source is within him.

Kierkegaard

Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.

L. Martin King,

If you can't fly then run, if you can't run then walk, if you can't walk then crawl, but whatever you do you have to keep moving forward.

Arthur Koestler

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.

Srecko Kosovel

What is joy? The wish to live. The joy of life. Who care for awards!

Laozi

Life is a series of natural and spontaneous changes. Don't resist them - that only creates sorrow. Let reality be reality. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like.

Lautreamont

Sleep is a reward for some, a punishment for others. For all, it is a sanction.

Lenin

No mercy for these enemies of the people, the enemies of socialism, the enemies of the working people! War to the death against the rich and their hangers-on, the bourgeois intellectuals; war on the rogues, the idlers and the rowdies!

Vinci da Leonardo

Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”

Levi-Strauss

I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact.

Jack London

Life is a strange thing. Why this longing for life? It is a game which no man wins. To live is to toil hard and to suffer sore, till old age creeps heavily upon us and we throw down our hands on the cold ashes of dead fires. It is hard to live. In pain the babe sucks his first breath, in pain the old man gasps his last, and all his days are full of trouble and sorrow; yet he goes down to the open arms of death, stumbling, falling, with head turned backward, fighting to the last. And death is kind. It is only life and the things of life that hurt. Yet we love life and we hate death. It is very strange.

Luther

War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.

Nelson Mandela

As I walked out the door toward the gate that would lead to my freedom, I knew if I didn't leave my bitterness and hatred behind, I'd still be in prison.”

Thomas Mann

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace

Maupassant

Any government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck.

Maupassant

Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.

Fatima Mernissi

If there is one thing that the women and men of the late 20th century who have an awareness and enjoyment of history can be sure of, it is that Islam was not sent from Heaven to foster egotism and mediocrity.

Henry Miller

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.

Edna Milley

“My heart is warm with the friends I make, And better friends I'll not be knowing, Yet there isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going.

John Milton

Peace hath her victories No less renowned than war.

John Milton

Truth is as impossible to be soiled by any outward touch as the sunbeam.

Montesquieu

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

Jim Morrison

I'm interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that appears to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom.

George Orwell

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.

George Orwell

War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

George Orwell

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.

Bismarck von Otto

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

Bismarck von Otto

Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.

Bismarck von Otto

One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans (said in 1888).

Bismarck von Otto

People never lie so much as before an election, during a war, or after a hunt.

Octavio Paz

A society is defined as much by how it comes to terms with its past as by its attitude toward the future: its memories are no less revealing than its aims.

Jean Piaget

Every response, whether it be an act directed towards the outside world or an act internalized as thought, takes the form of an adaptation or, better, of a re-adaptation.

Plotinus

When we look outside of that on which we depend we ignore our unity; looking outward we see many faces; look inward and all is one head. If a man could but be turned about, he would see at once God and himself and the All.”

Plutarch

Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage.

Plutarch

“The poor go to war, to fight and die for the delights, riches, and superfluities of others.”

Plutarch

What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality.

Jackson Pollock

When I'm painting, I'm not aware of what I'm doing. It's only after a get acquainted period that I see what I've been about. I've no fears about making changes for the painting has a life of its own.

Antonio Porchia

We become aware of the void as we fill it.

Jacques Prevert

An orange on the table, your dress on the rug, and you in my bed, sweet present of the present, cool of night, warmth of my life.

Raymond Queneau

There have been only rare moments in history where individual histories were able to run their course without wars or revolutions.

Maurice Ravel

My intention here is to make it clear that not a single cell of my composition, here in regard to The Raven, is found by chance or intuition, that the composition moved towards perfection with the precision and inevitability of a mathematical equation.

Remarque

Life is a disease, brother, and death begins already at birth. Every breath, every heartbeat, is a moment of dying - a little shove toward the end.

Rilke

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.

Jose Rizal

I honor the father in his son, not the son in his father. Each one receives a reward or punishment for his deeds, but not for the acts of others

Jose Rizal

Cowardice rightly understood begins with selfishness and ends with shame.

Rolland

I find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in it even more so.

Gabrielle Roy

The main engagement of the writer is towards truthfulness; therefore he must keep his mind and his judgment free.

Sartre

When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.

Schopenhauer

The fruits of Christianity were religious wars, butcheries, crusades, inquisitions, extermination of the natives of America and the introduction of African slaves in their place.

Shakespeare

Cowards die many times before their deaths; the valiant never taste of death but once.

Bernard Shaw

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.

Mary Shelley

Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.

Upton Sinclair

But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.

Spinoza

Peace is not the absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition of benevolence, confidence, justice.

John Steinbeck

All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.

John Steinbeck

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

Igor Stravinsky

The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

Strindberg

Love between a man and a woman is a war.

Ramos Sucre

Women are war booty.

William Thackeray

Do not be in a hurry to succeed. What would you have to live for afterwards? Better make the horizon your goal; it will always be ahead of you.

Thucydides

Men who are capable of real action first make their plans and then go forward without hesitation while their enemies have still not made up their minds.

Thucydides

“The nation that will insist on drawing a broad line of demarcation between the fighting man and the thinking man is liable to find its fighting done by fools and its thinking done by cowards.

Leo Tolstoy

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.

Leon Trotsky

There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.

Vivaldi

I'm a coward. I succumbed to jealousy and now it eats my heart.

Vonnegut

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer to laugh, since there is less cleaning up to do afterward.

Washington

My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

Washington

To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.

Washington

Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

Walt Whitman

Keep your face always toward the sunshine - and shadows will fall behind you.

Durant Will

There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war.

L. Wittgenstein

A man will be imprisoned in a room with a door that's unlocked and opens inwards; as long as it does not occur to him to pull rather than push.

Wollstonecraft

And, perhaps, in the education of both sexes, the most difficult task is so to adjust instruction as not to narrow the understanding, whilst the heart is warmed by the generous juices of spring.

Stefan Zweig

Those whom fate has dealt hard knocks remain vulnerable for ever afterwards.