A ''just war'' is hospitable to every self-deception on the part of those waging it, none more than the certainty of virtue, under whose shelter every abomination can be committed with a clear conscience.
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.
A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war.
All war represents a failure of diplomacy.
America is addicted to wars of distraction.
Anyone who has ever looked into the glazed eyes of a soldier dying on the battlefield will think hard before starting a war.
Are wars… anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated — there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.
As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have it's fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.
Blunders are an inescapable feature of war, because choice in military affairs lies generally between the bad and the worse.
Cry ''havoc!'' and let loose the dogs of war, that this foul deed shall smell above the earth with carrion men, groaning for burial.
Every gun that is fired, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.
Force, and fraud, are in war the two cardinal virtues.
Frankly, I'd like to see the government get out of war altogether and leave the whole field to private industry.
From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war.
Hell and damnation, life is such fun with a ragged greatcoat and a Jerry gun!
Hence that general is skilful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skilful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
Here dead lie we because we did not choose to live and shame the land from which we sprung. Life, to be sure, is nothing much to lose; but young men think it is, and we were young.
How is the world ruled and led to war? Diplomats lie to journalists and believe these lies when they see them in print.
I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed, there would be no more wars.
I do not know with what weapons World War 3 will be fought, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones.