View Full Version : 15 Famous Quotes About War
Interesting find here (http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/homework/?article=15FamousQuotesAboutWar>1=10584). The following entry from the list is particularly poignant, IMO.
You no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.
--Jeannette Rankin (1880-1973), U.S. legislator.
Any others that folks care to share?
SteveMetz
11-11-2007, 09:05 PM
Interesting find here (http://encarta.msn.com/encnet/departments/homework/?article=15FamousQuotesAboutWar>1=10584). The following entry from the list is particularly poignant, IMO.
Any others that folks care to share?
War! huh-yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
Edwin Starr
Motown singer
historyguy99
11-11-2007, 09:33 PM
"Don't be a fool and die for your country. Let the other sonofabitch die for his."
"A good plan, violently excuted now, is better than a perfect plan next week."
General George S. Patton
Ken White
11-11-2007, 10:12 PM
Ad Bellum Pace Parati
SWJED
11-11-2007, 10:45 PM
War! huh-yeah
What is it good for?
Absolutely nothing
Uh-huh
Edwin Starr
Motown singer
Did you know that the original title (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(Edwin_Starr_song)) for Leo Tolstoy's book War and Peace was War, What Is It Good For?
SteveMetz
11-11-2007, 10:53 PM
Did you know that the original title (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(Edwin_Starr_song)) for Leo Tolstoy's book War and Peace was War, What Is It Good For?
Not that there's anything WRONG with that.
Rob Thornton
11-11-2007, 10:54 PM
and here is the visual to go with it
Ken White
11-11-2007, 11:00 PM
Too good to pass up... :D :D
SteveMetz
11-11-2007, 11:32 PM
"We have to take our possessions and flee. I'm very good at that. I was the men's freestyle fleeing champion two years in a row."
Boris Grushenko
War means killing and the way to kill is to get there the first with the most men.
Nathan Bedford Forrest
slapout9
11-12-2007, 02:55 AM
"You ain't cheatin..then you ain't tryin" Platoon motto by SFC Crews 2nd Plt. Bravo Co. 2/504 PIR, 82nd Airborne Division, 1973:)
Schmedlap
11-12-2007, 03:32 AM
"My logisticians are a humorless lot... they know that if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay." - Alexander the Great
“I am not ordering you to attack. I am ordering you to die. In the time it takes us to die, other forces and commanders can come and take our place.” – Mustafa Kemal, 25 April 1915, organizing the successful defense of Ari Burnu during the Gallipoli campaign of WWI
“You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.” – Sir Charles Napier, British General in India
"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials - after the fact." Robert E. Lee, 1863
"But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other." - John Stuart Mill
Uboat509
11-12-2007, 05:21 AM
"It appears we have appointed our worst generals to command forces, and our most gifted and brilliant to edit newspapers! In fact, I discovered by reading newspapers that these editor/geniuses plainly saw all my strategic defects from the start, yet failed to inform me until it was too late. Accordingly, I'm readily willing to yield my command to these obviously superior intellects, and I'll, in turn, do my best for the Cause by writing editorials - after the fact." Robert E. Lee, 1863
I wish that General Petraeus had said this. It seems to ring all the more true now.
SFC W
"Rünnak on parim kaitse"
"Attack is the best defense"
No one here knows who said it, but some claim it was originally quoted by Eisenhower.
Mark O'Neill
11-12-2007, 09:13 AM
My Lord,
If I attempted to answer the mass of futile correspondence which surrounds me, I should be debarred from the serious business of campaigning...
So long as I retain an independent position, I shall see no officer under my command is debarred by attending to the futile driveling of mere quill-driving from attending to his first duty, which is and always has been to train the private men under his command that they may without question beat any force opposed to them in the field.
- Letter to the Secretary of State for War during the Peninsular Campaign
Rob Thornton
11-12-2007, 12:01 PM
"There are plenty of hard working men who are dead, but not many lucky ones, but you know - the harder I work, the luckier I get"
"There are no lessons learned, only lessons available"
LTC(R) Darryl D. Schoening 1/24th IN
Both of those have stuck with me - Semper Paratus. Best, Rob
Gian P Gentile
11-12-2007, 12:19 PM
Did you know that the original title (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_(Edwin_Starr_song)) for Leo Tolstoy's book War and Peace was War, What Is It Good For?
Yeah, Elaine on a Seinfeld episode did a very funny riff on Tolstoy and Starr too.
How about this one:
Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning...
"War Pigs" by Black Sabbath
SteveMetz
11-12-2007, 01:33 PM
"I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead -- not sick, not wounded -- dead."
Woody Allen
J Wolfsberger
11-12-2007, 01:36 PM
'Gentlemen:
Whilst marching to Portugal to a position which commands the approach to Madrid and the French forces, my officers have been diligently complying with you request which has been sent to HM ship from London to Lisbon and then by dispatch rider to our headquarters.
We have enumerated our saddles, bridles, tents, and tent poles, and all manner of sundry items for which His Majesty's government holds me accountable. I have dispatched reports on the character, wit, spleen of every officer. Each item and every farthing has been accounted for, with two regrettable exceptions for which I beg you indulgence.
Unfortunately, the sum of one shilling and ninepence remains unaccounted for in one infantry battalion's petty cash and there has been a hideous confusion as to the number of jars of raspberry jam issued to one cavalry regiment during a sandstorm in western Spain. This reprehensive carelessness may be related to the pressure of circumstances since we are at war with France, a fact which may have come as a bit of a surprise to you gentlemen in Whitehall.
This brings me to my present purpose, which is to request elucidation of my instructions from His Majesty's Government, so that I may better understand why I am dragging an army over these barren plains. I construe that perforce it must be one of two alternative duties, as given below. I shall pursue one with the best of my ability but I cannot do both.
1. To train an army of uniformed British clerks in Spain for the benefit of the accountants and copy-boys in London, or perchance
2. To see to it that the forces of Napoleon are driven out of Spain.
Your most obedient servant,
Wellington
Rank amateur
11-13-2007, 12:06 AM
Generals gathered in their masses,
just like witches at black masses.
Evil minds that plot destruction,
sorcerers of death's construction.
In the fields the bodies burning,
as the war machine keeps turning...
"War Pigs" by Black Sabbath
Dylan is better (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWkWSLEW-Ds)
A little balance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH4-tOqLH94)
SteveMetz
11-13-2007, 12:49 AM
Private Joker: How can you shoot women or children?
Door Gunner: Easy! Ya just don't lead 'em so much!
slapout9
11-13-2007, 01:14 AM
Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men,who believe themselves to be quite exempt from intellectual influence,are usually the slaves of some defunct economist.-John Maynard Keynes
Gian P Gentile
11-13-2007, 02:33 AM
Dylan is better (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWkWSLEW-Ds)
A little balance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH4-tOqLH94)
Agree. At a memorial ceremony at Falcon in early 2006 for a soldier from a different battalion than mine a group of his platoon buddies were musicians and played Dylan's "Knockin' on Heavens Door." It struck a middle ground between Dylan's original version and the remake by GnR years later. As they were playing i glanced over at my CSM and tears were gently rolling down his cheeks. I lost it too.
Every time i hear that song on the radio, especially these lines,
"Mama, put my guns in the ground
I can't shoot them anymore.
That long black cloud is comin' down
I feel like I'm knockin' on heaven's door."
I think back to that memorial ceremony and that great fallen infantrymen and his buddies singing a memorial song to him.
gian
JeffC
11-13-2007, 02:49 AM
Private Joker: How can you shoot women or children?
Door Gunner: Easy! Ya just don't lead 'em so much!
Oh my. You HAD to go there, didn't you:
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Private Joker, why did you join my beloved Corps!
Private Joker: Sir, to kill, sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: So you're a killer!
Private Joker: Sir, yes sir!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Then let me see your war face!
Private Joker: [nervously] Sir?
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: You got a war face! AHHHHHHHHHHH! That's a war face, let me see your war face!
Private Joker: Ahhhh!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Bull####, you didn't convince me, let me see your REAL war face!
Private Joker: AHHHHHHHHHHH!
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: You don't scare me! Work on it!
Private Joker: Sir, yes sir!
-------------------------
Gunnery Sergeant Hartman: Today... is Christmas! There will be a magic show at zero-nine-thirty! Chaplain Charlie will tell you about how the free world will conquer Communism with the aid of God and a few marines! God has a hard-on for marines because we kill everything we see! He plays His games, we play ours! To show our appreciation for so much power, we keep heaven packed with fresh souls! God was here before the Marine Corps! So you can give your heart to Jesus, but your ass belongs to the Corps! Do you ladies understand?
Rank amateur
11-13-2007, 12:50 PM
"I only went because I was drafted."
My father in law.
Gian P Gentile
11-13-2007, 01:34 PM
"Sir, there is a fine line between hard and stupid."
Advice given by countless non-commissioned officers to their officers.
Steve Blair
11-13-2007, 02:23 PM
Home, far away. From the war, a chance to live again
Home, far away. But the war, no chance to live again
Iron Maiden - Paschendale
"We fight, get beat, rise, and fight again."
Gen. Nathanael Greene
J Wolfsberger
11-13-2007, 02:30 PM
If you are able,
save them a place
inside of you
and save one backward glance
when you are leaving
for the places they can
no longer go.
Be not ashamed to say
you loved them,
though you may
or may not have always.
Take what they have left
and what they have taught you
with their dying
and keep it with your own.
And in that time
when men decide and feel safe
to call the war insane,
take one moment to embrace
those gentle heroes
you left behind.
Major Michael Davis O'Donnell
1 January 1970
Dak To, Vietnam
BRUZ_LEE
11-13-2007, 02:48 PM
War in our days is more and more no longer a true fight but a mere extermination by technical means.
Carl Jaspers.
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Plato
A few that I like:
"The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it."
George Orwell
"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events."
Winston Churchill (this should have been read in 2001 and 2002)
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
John Adams
"The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war that we know about peace, more about killing that we know about living."
GEN Omar Bradley
"War and culture, those are the two poles of Europe, her heaven and hell, her glory and shame, and they cannot be separated from one another. When one comes to an end, the other will end also and one cannot end without the other. The fact that no war has broken out in Europe for fifty years is connected in some mysterious way with the fact that for fifty years no new Picasso has appeared either."
MILAN KUNDERA
slapout9
11-14-2007, 12:45 AM
Well since there have been some tunes posted here I will have to just get into that. This is what used to be called protest music...but the Lady has a voice... so for your cultural enhancement and listening pleasure.
Joan Baez-Marching Up To Freedom Land
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-np4Ke4o94E
Mondor
11-14-2007, 10:07 PM
Me: Uncle Bobby, why don't you have a passport?
Uncle Bobby: Because the last time I went overseas people tried to kill me.
Me: But Uncle Bobby, that was Vietnam.
Uncle Bobby: Yep, but I'm not taking any more chances.
Bodhi
11-15-2007, 12:54 AM
Dylan is better (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWkWSLEW-Ds)
A little balance (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH4-tOqLH94)
Gotta go with Gian P. Gentile over Rank Amateur on this one. Dylan is better solely if you're in the dentist's office, riding an elevator, or in the frozen foods section of Publix. Tough to go against Sabbath especially when Dylan's weapon of choice was a simple acoustic guitar while Iommi wielded an axe...
...although after later reading Gentile's tribute to his fallen comrade, I definitely can see why he later agreed with RA...
slapout9
11-15-2007, 01:38 AM
The Soul Patrol
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD48dJWZ5Zs
slapout9
11-15-2007, 01:43 AM
I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwqdBkaWsTA&feature=related
Rank amateur
11-15-2007, 01:51 AM
Gotta go with Gian P. Gentile over Rank Amateur on this one. Dylan is better solely if you're in the dentist's office, riding an elevator, or in the frozen foods section of Publix. Tough to go against Sabbath especially when Dylan's weapon of choice was a simple acoustic guitar while Iommi wielded an axe...
...although after later reading Gentile's tribute to his fallen comrade, I definitely can see why he later agreed with RA...
Dylan for lyrics only. Ozzy rules.
Ender
11-16-2007, 07:04 AM
"He is best who is trained in the severest school." -Thucydides
"Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore, do not take lightly the perils of war." -Thucydides
Terror can be endured so long as man simply ducks; but, it kills if a man thinks about it. -Erich Maria Remarque
"To whom much is given, much is expected." Luke 12:48
"The price of greatness is responsibility." -Winston Churchill
"There is small risk a general will be regarded with contempt by those he leads, if, whatever he may have to preach, he shows himself best able to perform." -Xenophon
"Fast is fine, but accuracy is everything." -Xenophon
TROUFION
11-16-2007, 10:44 PM
I... I don't know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean...
he'll see everything. He'll see the big board!
Gian P Gentile
11-16-2007, 11:46 PM
I... I don't know exactly how to put this, sir, but are you aware of what a serious breach of security that would be? I mean...
he'll see everything. He'll see the big board!
Is this an implicit movie trivia question? Well I will take it as such:
General Buck Turgidson speaking to President Merken Muffley in the War Room
Is this an implicit movie trivia question? Well I will take it as such:
General Buck Turgidson speaking to President Merken Muffley in the War Room
Gian,
Anyone who knows his Dr. Strangelove can't be all bad. :D I take back any snide comments I may have made in the past about your posts here and in the MSM.
Gian P Gentile
11-17-2007, 03:34 AM
It is all good.
Strangelove for me is the greatest war movie of all time; Kubrick at his most very best even better in my mind (though some may legitmately disagree) than Full Metal Jacket.
This is a really good thread you started; i keep getting kicks out of it, and those kicks dont "just keep getting harder to find."
So what 60s rock group did that lyric?
good to hear from you
gian
slapout9
11-17-2007, 02:15 PM
For your cultural enhancement and listening pleasure... Paul Revere and the Raiders ...http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2xYl2hswY4
slapout9
11-17-2007, 02:30 PM
Major Kong aka Slim Pickens prepares his crew for "Nuckery combat toe to toe with the Russkies."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=45TQQtNGBk0&feature=related
Major Kong, as they close the gap to their target, conducts additional readiness training with his B-52 crew:
"Survival kit contents check. In them you'll find: one forty-five caliber automatic; two boxes of ammunition; four days' concentrated emergency rations; one drug issue containing antibiotics, morphine, vitamin pills, pep pills, sleeping pills, tranquilizer pills; one miniature combination Russian phrase book and Bible; one hundred dollars in rubles; one hundred dollars in gold; nine packs of chewing gum; one issue of prophylactics; three lipsticks; three pair of nylon stockings. Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. "
Gian P Gentile
11-17-2007, 10:33 PM
...Shoot, a fella' could have a pretty good weekend in Vegas with all that stuff. "
Clasic line as is Slapout's Major Kong on the ruskies.
How about this one: "Shoot it you twit!! I cant do that, its private property." As the world is coming to an end Colonel Batgwano is worried about answering to the head of the Coca Cola Company.
We could go on like this for days.
gg
"Well, boys, we got three engines out, we got more holes in us than a horse trader's mule, the radio is gone and we're leaking fuel and if we was flying any lower why we'd need sleigh bells on this thing... but we got one little budge on them Rooskies. At this height why they might harpoon us but they dang sure ain't gonna spot us on no radar screen!"
We could go on for days. We should go on for days.
Isn't it curious, I always root for the '52 crew to get through even though it means the end of the world. I also root for Mandrake to succeed. Cognitive dissonance I guess.
Always enjoy a good poke at the Russkies (http://www.anvari.org/shortjoke/Funny4/2614_u-s-astronaut-complaints-about-the-russian-space-station-10-they-get-angry-when-you-call-them-astro-russkies.html).
10. They get angry when you call them "Astro-Russkies"
9. It's powered by a donkey on a treadmill
8. There ain't nothing messier than zero-gravity borscht
7. The inflight movie always stars Yakov Smirnoff
6. They're constantly bragging that "Chekov could've beaten the crap
out of Captain Kirk"
5. Ever since accident, they can't shut off the left turn signal
4. Russian Tang tastes even worse than American Tang *
3. When they get mad at you, they kick-dance you right in the head
2. Russian idea of a balanced meal: half a potato and a pint of vodka
1. The d*&* thing smells like cabbage
Stu-6
11-19-2007, 02:17 AM
“Don't be too proud of this technological terror you've constructed.” Darth Vader
I think it is strangely appropriate.
davidbfpo
01-18-2016, 07:44 AM
I don't recall this thread, which started and was last updated in 2007. So having spotted the below quote provided by Outlaw09 on the Syria thread, I have re-opened the thread.
All the business of war, and indeed all the business of life,
is to endeavor to find out what you don't know by what you do. By the
Duke of Wellington
A Google search found a list including this quote, but not the context and oddly the website is devoted to Napoleon, ah well.:wry:
Link:http://www.napoleonguide.com/aquotes_welli.htm
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