Best 17621 quotes in «war quotes» category

When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end.

When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening.

When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems, excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed. "C'est grand!"* say the historians, and there no longer exists either good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good, not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of some special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que c'est grand, and his soul is tranquil. peating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule il n'y a qu'un pas.("From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step.") And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness. For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.

When I think of war, I see blood. Pain and suffering. Nothing good comes from war. But there is good. There will be an outcome. One side will find peace, solace. While the other will end in bitter loss. There are two sides to the coin of war.

When I was a child, I watched in horror as TV screens in Azerbaijan showed the aftermath of a brutal event: dead women, children and elderly, mutilated bodies, frozen corpses scattered across the ground. This shocking footage was taken at the site of the Khojaly massacre. 613 Azerbaijani civilians, including up to 300 children, women and elderly, were ruthlessly murdered.

When I was drafted into the army in April 1984, I was a nineteen-year-old boy. The club where they took us was a distribution centre. Officers came there from various military units and picked out the soldiers they wanted. My fate was decided in one minute. A young officer came up to me and asked, “Do you want to serve in the commandos, the Blue Berets?” Of course I agreed. Two hours later I was on a plane to Uzbekistan (a Soviet republic in Central Asia), where our training base was located. During the flight, I learned most of the soldiers from this base were sent to Afghanistan. I wasn’t scared. I wasn’t surprised. At that point I didn’t care anymore because I understood that it is impossible to change anything. ‘To serve in the Soviet army is the honourable duty of Soviet citizens” – as it’s written in our Constitution. And no one gives a damn whether you want to fulfil this “honourable duty” or not. But then I didn’t know anything about Afghanistan. Up until 1985, in the press and on television, they told us that Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan were planting trees and building schools and hospitals. And only a few knew that more and more cemeteries were being filled with the graves of eighteen- to twenty-year-old boys. Without the dates of their death, without inscriptions. Only their names on black stone … At the base we were trained and taught to shoot. We were told that we were being sent to Afghanistan not to plant trees. And as to building schools, we simply wouldn’t have the time … Three and a half months later, my plane was landing in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan … We were taken to a club on base. A few minutes later, officers started to come by and choose soldiers. Suddenly, an officer with a smiling face and sad eyes burst in noisily. He looked us over with an appraising glance and pointed his finger at me: “Ah ha! I see a minesweeper!” That’s how I became a minesweeper. Ten days later, I went on my first combat mission.

When I was twenty they told me to swear loyalty to the King, a person who acts in the capacity because his father and grandfather did the same before him. I took the oath because they forced my to, otherwise I wouldn't have done it. Then they sent me to kill people I didn't know who were dressed rather like I was. One day they said to me: "Look, there's one of your enemies, fire at him," and I fired, but missed. But he fired and wounded me. I don't know why they said it was a glorious wound.

When last did you thank God? When last did you appreciate him? Some people are just busy praying for more things they need God to do. The best way to pray is by thanking God first for the things He has already done in your life. For the remaining job in your life, He knows how to finish it.

When I write to please everybody, it falls flat. When I write what I know, fearlessly, It won't please everybody, but it doesn't fall flat.

When men reject reason, they have no means left for dealing with one another — except brute, physical force.

When next the devil attack you apply your break; resist the devil and he will flew from you. The bible didn't say you should run from the devil but resist him.

When our ancestors picked up weapons in the jungle, it was necessity - when their children picked up weapons, it was tradition - but when we pick up weapons, it is stupidity.

When nations resort to arms, the human spirit is like a bird that cannot stand to hear its own song.

When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteoousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders'.

When our wars are determined not by the threat of Nazism or racism or Communism but by the influence on policy-makers of those those who stand to reap financial benefits from the use of these arms - that, Charlie, is my biggest fear for this country.

When people of different religions or countries harm people as a means to create peace, it’s out of the compulsion to make all colors the same. This is also why people think that war is a logical avenue towards creating peace. People who do not have or know inner peace perpetuate these shards of illusions. Thus, they are projecting their fragmented concepts of peace out onto the world.

When the conflict deepens, none will have peace either.

When the bombs fell, it wasn't a war; it was an obliteration. No one had any idea who shot first or why.

When the clouds over the land rise like a mountain, a long with it's wishes, it can never cover the errors and mistakes made by Kings.

When the common soldiers are too strong and their officers too weak, the result is INSUBORDINATION.

When the fight ends you can afford to relax. That’s the worst part. Winner or loser you have again eyes to see around you. Blood, butchered bodies, bodies pierced by arrows. You stir inside, your heart tightens, the feeling of loss wells up. The sense of smell is the next thing to revive, adding a new dimension of pain. I closed the eyes of the last cadet, blue eyes, unseeing, his body, so small, almost a child, the youngest cadets were all gone, their faces surprised in death. Cold lips never able again to kiss a girl. It’s then that the emptiness swallows you and you mourn inside. Damn you, Scharon. No! Damn you, Travellers.

When the officers are too strong and the common soldiers too weak, the result is COLLAPSE.

When there is so much broken about the world we currently live in, one cracked person is easy enough to excuse or ignore.

When the outlook is bright, bring it before their eyes; but tell them nothing when the situation is gloomy.

When there was sunshine followed by calm winds in the summer, the water of these rivers reflected many shiny ripples, and in the sunset, transformed into quiet, silver coloured watercourses.

When the tumult of war shall cease, and the tempest of present passions be succeeded by calm reflection, or when those, who, surviving its fury, shall inherit from you a legacy of debts and misfortunes, when the yearly revenue scarcely be able to discharge the interest of the one, and no possible remedy be left for the other, ideas far different from the present will arise, and embitter the remembrance of former follies.

When the world is to come to it's final destruction the powerful will always reason of peaceful nuclear programs which in my own words is a shameful chapter to start when the world has already been destroyed.

When they killed him, Mother wouldn't hold her peace, so they slit her throat. I was stupid then, being only nine, and I fought to save them both. But the thorns held me tight. I've learned to appreciate thorns since. The thorns taught me the game. They let me understand what all those grim and serious men who've fought the Hundred War have yet to learn. You can only win the game when you understand that it IS a game. Let a man play chess, and tell him that every pawn is his friend. Let him think both bishops holy. Let him remember happy days in the shadows of his castles. Let him love his queen. Watch him loose them all.

When the war ends Perish enemies and friends When all is said and all is done Everyone has lost Just time has won

When the wounded were screaming, you dreamed of sharing a little house somewhere, of an ordinary life, of a family line, connection. All around him, men were walking silently with their thoughts, reforming their lives, making resolutions. If I ever get out of this lot... They could never be counted, the dreamed-up children, mentally conceived on the walk into Dunkirk, and later made flesh.

When they think about Africa, they think about War, Poverty, Hunger and Diseases.

When this all started, when the US of A got into this war and the Supreme Court decided what the hell, let's send women to, everyone wondered what effect it would have. Could women fight my girl Rio has a shiny Silver Star, A fistful of Purple Hearts, and a notched M1 that say yes. Could the men fight alongside women, or would the simple creatures be too distracted by feminine curves? Well, I won't spend a long night in a hole with Luther gear, who has never been a gentleman but he is a good soldier and he never made a pass at me. Possibly he was distracted by the artillery garage coming down on our heads. Possibly was that I hadn't showered in ... God only knows how long you have to ask my fleas. We were not a man and a woman in that hole we were too scared little babies screaming and cursing and so we could be grateful for the warmth of our own piss running down our legs. It was not a romantic evening.

When those who had been evicted went back to where they came from, they found their villages had disappeared under great dams and dusty quarries. Their homes were occupied by hunger-and policemen. The forests were filling up with armed guerrillas. They found that the wars from the edge of India, in Kashmir, Nagaland, Manipur, had migrated to its heart. People returned to live on city streets and pavements, in hovels on dusty construction sites, wondering which corner of this huge country was meant for them.

When two sides who consider each other enemies converge in armed struggle, for the moment they are no longer enemies. They are fellow human beings who face the same two choices that their ancestors did for centuries before them: to destroy each other or to prosper together.

When they writes up the history of this war,’ said Nell’s mother. ‘I hope they tells about the wives and the children starving to death!’. ‘They won’t,’ said Nell, gloomy socialist. ‘It’ll be all “Our Boys”, and everyone enlisting and people doing without chauffeurs to help the war effort.

When time furtively slips like sand through the fingers and our memory becomes tired and lazy, we recognize we are at war. We are at war with forgetfulness. ("The past was her best friend" )

When weak, act strong.

When two warring people face each other, the war of words jumps beyond the subject. The subject remains no more central to the arguments.

When was it that they who dwell upon the earth have not sinned in thy sight? or what people have so kept thy commandments? Thou shall find that you all by name had kept thy precepts; but not the heathen.

When we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away...

When we ourselves are not truly in a place of peace and we go out and try to create peace in the world, it becomes a fragmented and sometimes even corrupt form of peace. This happens because only peace can create peace, and unless we are the embodiment of it, we are projecting our bias of what peace should look like onto other people’s lives. To be at peace means to accept reality as is. Embodying peace is, in fact, the very essence of what it means to be free, as well as offering this freedom to others.

When we fight wars, money is no object. When we choose peace, we ration every penny.

When we focus on material things above internal qualities, it usually leads to wars, such as World War 1 and 2

When we neared the orchard a flock of birds lit from its outer rows. They hadn't been there long. The branches shook with their absent weight and the birds circled above in the riddy mackerel sky, where they made an artless semaphore. I was afraid, I smelled copper and cheap wine. The sun was up, but a half-moon hung low on the opposite horizon, cutting through the morning sky like a figure from a child's pull-tab book. We were lined along the ditch up to our ankles in a soupy muck. It all seemed in that moment to be the conclusion of a poorly designed experiment in inevitability. Everything was in its proper place, waiting for a pause in time, for the source of all momentum to be stilled, so that what remained would be nothing more than detritus to be tallied up. The world was paper-thin as far as I could tell. And the world was the orchard, and the orchard was what came next. But none of that was true. I was only afraid of dying.

When you are at war with yourself, who is winning? There is no good that comes from attacking yourself from within. Your demons that haunt your mind can’t be removed through force. You must work with your demons: change them through time, learn to ignore them, stop letting them control your life. Battling internally is only going to hurt you more in the long run. The best way to get past your demons is to continue living despite their presence and resolve the cause of their being. This war you are fighting is just going to leave your mind unsettled, in pain, and in no better position than it was before. This war helps no one.

When you are stressed and challenged by hardships just smile through it as frowning won’t help in changing the situation

When you are dealing with an invisible enemy, use most resources as shield, and a bit as a bait.

When you do away with God you become your own god, because you recognise no greater power in the universe than yourself.

When you come against your better

When you feel weak in spirit, think about the agreements you made with yourself about how to live an honourable life. We all have them, but unfortunately the contracts are often written in invisible ink when they should be signed in blood.