Page 1 of 3 123 LastLast
Results 1 to 20 of 50

Thread: 15 Famous Quotes About War

  1. #1
    Council Member wm's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    On the Lunatic Fringe
    Posts
    1,237

    Default 15 Famous Quotes About War

    Interesting find here. 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?

  2. #2
    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Carlisle, PA
    Posts
    1,488

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by wm View Post
    Interesting find here. 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

  3. #3
    Council Member historyguy99's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    california
    Posts
    16

    Default

    "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

  4. #4
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    8,060

    Default Pardon my Latin...

    Ad Bellum Pace Parati

  5. #5
    Small Wars Journal SWJED's Avatar
    Join Date
    Sep 2005
    Location
    Largo, Florida
    Posts
    3,989

    Default War...

    Quote Originally Posted by SteveMetz View Post
    War! huh-yeah
    What is it good for?
    Absolutely nothing
    Uh-huh

    Edwin Starr
    Motown singer

    Did you know that the original title for Leo Tolstoy's book War and Peace was War, What Is It Good For?

  6. #6
    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Carlisle, PA
    Posts
    1,488

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by SWJED View Post
    Did you know that the original title for Leo Tolstoy's book War and Peace was War, What Is It Good For?
    Not that there's anything WRONG with that.

  7. #7
    Council Member Rob Thornton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Fort Leavenworth, KS
    Posts
    1,510

    Default

    and here is the visual to go with it
    Attached Images Attached Images

  8. #8
    Council Member Ken White's Avatar
    Join Date
    May 2007
    Location
    Florida
    Posts
    8,060

    Default Tolstoy used that??? Who knew?

    Too good to pass up...

  9. #9
    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Carlisle, PA
    Posts
    1,488

    Default

    "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

  10. #10
    Registered User
    Join Date
    Nov 2007
    Posts
    2

    Default A Southern Quote

    War means killing and the way to kill is to get there the first with the most men.

    Nathan Bedford Forrest

  11. #11
    Council Member slapout9's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2005
    Posts
    4,818

    Default

    "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

  12. #12
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Oct 2007
    Posts
    1,444

    Default I had a few of my favorites readily available...

    "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

  13. #13
    Council Member Uboat509's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jul 2006
    Location
    CO
    Posts
    681

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Schmedlap View Post
    "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

  14. #14
    Council Member Stan's Avatar
    Join Date
    Dec 2006
    Location
    Estonia
    Posts
    3,817

    Default

    "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.

  15. #15
    Council Member Mark O'Neill's Avatar
    Join Date
    Feb 2007
    Location
    Canberra, Australia
    Posts
    307

    Default One from Wellington

    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

  16. #16
    Council Member Rob Thornton's Avatar
    Join Date
    Oct 2006
    Location
    Fort Leavenworth, KS
    Posts
    1,510

    Default Two from a former "Deuce Four" CDR

    "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

  17. #17
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Sep 2007
    Location
    West Point New York
    Posts
    267

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by SWJED View Post
    Did you know that the original title 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

  18. #18
    Council Member SteveMetz's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Carlisle, PA
    Posts
    1,488

    Default

    "I will not eat oysters. I want my food dead -- not sick, not wounded -- dead."

    Woody Allen

  19. #19
    Council Member J Wolfsberger's Avatar
    Join Date
    Jan 2007
    Location
    Michigan
    Posts
    806

    Default Another one from the Iron Duke

    '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
    John Wolfsberger, Jr.

    An unruffled person with some useful skills.

  20. #20
    Council Member
    Join Date
    Aug 2007
    Posts
    567

    Default

    Quote Originally Posted by Gian P Gentile View Post
    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


    A little balance
    Last edited by Rank amateur; 11-13-2007 at 12:08 AM.

Bookmarks

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •