The final outcome of a war is often determined by the degree of initiative shown on each side.
War is not only a matter of equipment, artillery, group troops or air force; it is largely a matter of spirit, or morale.
The Russian people were just like us. They were victims of their own government.
War is one of the scourges with which it has pleased God to afflict men.
The old saying that war is a racket has taken on an even more shameful meaning.
There is peace more destructive of the manhood of living man than war is destructive of his material body.
The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.
Obviously, the greater the length of a war the higher is likely to be the number of casualties in it on either side.
The belief that we some day shall be able to prevent war is, to me, one with the belief in the possibility of making humanity really human.
War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.
An army that fought and won a war decisively finds it even more difficult to undergo change.
Waging war we understand, but not waging peace, or at any rate less consciously so.
So war is an extremely sad business, because the majority of people don't want to be in it.
Nothing is more confused than to be ordered into a war to die or to be maimed for life without the faintest idea of what's going on.
Anything that reduces war-related destruction should not be considered altogether immoral.
Nuclear war is such an emotional subject that many people see the weapons themselves as the common enemy of humanity.
During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.
The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else -- men, guns, ammunition.
A war is justified if you're willing to send your son. If you're not willing to send your son, then how do you send someone else's?
Preparation for war is a constant stimulus to suspicion and ill will.
War may make us great, but let it never be forgotten that peace only can make us both great and free.
Treachery has existed as long as there's been warfare, and there's always been a few people that you couldn't trust.
The lies the government and media tell are amplifications of the lies we tell ourselves. To stop being conned, stop conning yourself.
There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.
So much destruction in modern war takes place miles and miles away from the source of the destruction, the human being who has caused it.
War violates the natural order of things, in which children bury their parents; in war parents bury their children.
We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.
The real peril of war lies not in military defeat. It lies in war itself, whether we win or lose.
Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women laughing at them.
In any war, the first casualty is common sense, and the second is free and open discussion.
They're out there, this appalling idea that there are companies that profit -- not just profit but profit enormously -- through war.
I suspect that war will become obsolete only when something worse supercedes it.
No person can escape Einsteinian relativity, and no soldier or veteran can escape the trauma of war's dislocation.
The first lesson is that you can't lose a war if you have command of the air, and you can't win a war if you haven't.
Rules are for children. This is war, and in war the only crime is to lose.
We all want a world without war, without conflict, without human suffering.
We know now that in modern warfare, fought on any considerable scale, there can be no possible economic gain for any side. Win or lose, there is nothing but waste and destruction.
If we are to be destroyed we will do it ourselves by warfare with thermonuclear weaponry.
War is society's dirty work, usually done by kids cleaning up failures perpetrated by adults.
The definition of a modern approach to war is the acknowledgement of individual lives lost.
Everybody knows that love is better than hate, and peace is better than war.
Even with the best intentions, you can have a nuclear war, a nuclear holocaust, through miscalculation, through accidents.
The key lesson of the 1930s is that appeasement leads directly to war.
