Aphorisms Galore!

War and Peace

74 aphorisms  ·  one comment

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/2cctxyhg  ·  submitted 1997

If we fight a war and win it with H-bombs, what history will remember is not the ideals we were fighting for but the methods we used to accomplish them. These methods will be compared to the warfare of Genghis Khan who ruthlessly killed every last inhabitant of Persia.

Hans A. Bethe, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/sxpzikiy  ·  submitted 1997

To save your world you asked this man to die;
Would this man, could he see you now, ask why?

W. H. Auden, "Epitaph for an Unknown Soldier", in War and Peace

tiny.ag/fiog0z7u  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Alliance: In international politics, the union of two thieves who have their hands so deeply inserted into each others' pockets that they cannot separately plunder a third.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in Law and Politics and War and Peace

tiny.ag/ghcdyyrg  ·  submitted 1997

The Devil's Dictionary (paperback)

Cannon: An instrument used in the rectification of national boundaries.

Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/zl0ikbnv  ·  submitted 1997

Coward: one who, in a perilous emergency, thinks with his legs.

Ambrose Bierce, in Vice and Virtue and War and Peace

tiny.ag/rh5oemag  ·  submitted 1997

Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.

Sun Tzu, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/rb8m34k9  ·  submitted 1999

All warfare is based on deception.

Sun Tzu, The Art Of War, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/4vs8cciz  ·  submitted 1997

Remember, to them it is us who are the enemy.

N. F. Simpson, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/qk0rnn17  ·  submitted 1997

When the rich make war it's the poor that die.

Jean-Paul Sartre, in War and Peace and Wealth and Poverty

tiny.ag/hdyoy0ri  ·  submitted 1999 by Chris Daniels

I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded... I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed... I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, (Chautauqua, New York, August 14, 1936), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/crui0h1u  ·  submitted 1997

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, (inaugural speech, 1944), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/v6pxskz7  ·  submitted 1999 by Dr Nathan Rozenfarb

Close the book and open your heart.

Nathan Rozenfarb, (on religious conflicts), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/snhswbdj  ·  submitted 1997

Patriotism is the willingness to kill and be killed for trivial reasons.

Bertrand Russell, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/pyjfe6sb  ·  submitted 1997

I once played a sheriff who thought he could do the job without a gun. I was dead in twenty-seven minutes of a thirty minute show.

Ronald Reagan, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/aij5p9qp  ·  submitted 1997

Another victory like that and we are done for.

Pyrrhus, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/mkv04ioy  ·  submitted 1997

War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men.

Cardinal Richelieu, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/r3davdhl  ·  submitted 1997

In war, there is no substitute for victory.

Douglas MacArthur, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/la65dtiv  ·  submitted 1998

It was involuntary. They sank my boat.

John F. Kennedy, (comment when asked about his heroism), in War and Peace

tiny.ag/kxyqnliw  ·  submitted 1997

Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.

John F. Kennedy, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/aolzpl1x  ·  submitted 1997

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency, foresight and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, even two blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

Henry Kissinger, in War and Peace