10,941 Quotes About War

15. Hence a wise general makes a point of foraging on the enemy. One cartload of the enemy's provisions is equivalent to twenty of one's own, and likewise a single picul of his provender is equivalent to twenty from one's own store.

There are situations that a nation may be in, in which peace or war, abstracted from every other consideration, may be politically right or wrong. When nothing can be lost by a war, but what must be lost without it, war is then the policy of that country; and such was the situation of America at the commencement of hostilities: but when no security can be gained by a war, but what may be accomplished by a peace, the case becomes reversed.

There is no glory in the sacrificing of oneself in the name of imperialism by order of elitist politicians. But this is what our young service members are led to believe.

What I could not support was "a dumb war, a rash war, a war based not on reason but on passion, not on principle but on politics".

Launching a nice little war to divert national attention was a gambit no less appealing to nineteenth-century politicians than it is to their present-day counterparts.

Governments always commit their entire populations when the demands grow heavy enough. By their passive acceptance, these populations become accessories to whatever is done in their name.

Tsar Alexander I was prone to tears and he did weep over Borodino, but not at Borodino, as Tolstoy would have it. This was definitely poetic licence. Alexander was never on the field at Borodino.

And so there was no single cause for war, but it happened simply because it had to happen

Why did nations turn so often to war in the belief that it was a sharp and quick instrument for shaping international affairs when again and again the instrument had proved to be blunt or unpredictable? This recurring optimism is a vital prelude to war. Anything which increases the optimism is a cause of war. Anything which dampens that optimism is a cause of peace.