Sourced and curated.

The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum Est · 1918

★ 6.9

There are no atheists in the fox holes.

William Thomas Cummings

1943

★ 6.9

Political literature

War is not merely a political act, but also a real political instrument, a continuation of political commerce, a carrying out of the same by other means.

Karl Von Clausewitz

On War · 1833

★ 6.8

Historical literature

If the Persians hide the sun, the battle will be in shade rather than sunlight.

Herodotus

430 BC

★ 6.3

Carthage must be destroyed.

Cato the Elder

Plutarch, Plutarch's Lives · 149 BC

★ 6.3

Song · Protest song · Soul music

War! What is it good for? Absolutely nothing.

Edwin Starr

War · 1970

★ 6.3

War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to face it.

Benito Mussolini

1932

★ 6.1

Speech

In war, indeed, there can be no substitute for victory.

Douglas MacArthur

1951

★ 6.1

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,- My friend, you would not tell with such high zest To children ardent for some desperate glory, The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori.

Wilfred Owen

Dulce et Decorum Est · 1920

★ 6.0

Film · Psychological drama (film) · War (film) · Psychological drama · War

Terminate...with extreme prejudice.

Civilian

Apocalypse Now · 1979

★ 5.4

There are no warlike peoples-just warlike leaders.

Ralph J. Bunche

1950

★ 5.3

Film · Biography (film) · War (film) · Biography · War

Americans traditionally love to fight. All real Americans love the sting of battle.

George S. Patton

Patton · 1969

★ 5.3

Speech · Military speech

Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men. It is the spirit of the men who follow and of the man who leads that gains the victory.

General George S. Patton

1933

★ 5.2

Autobiography and memoir

To say that war is madness is like saying that sex is madness: true enough, from the standpoint of a stateless eunuch, but merely a provocative epigram for those who must make their arrangements in the world as given.

John Updike

Self-Consciousness · 1989

★ 5.1

God has pity on kindergarten children. He has less pity on school children. And on grownups he has no pity at all, he leaves them alone, and sometimes they must crawl on all fours in the burning sand to reach the first-aid station covered with blood.

Yehuda Amichai

God Has Pity on Kindergarten Children · 1955

★ 5.0

Philosophical literature

Make war that we may live in peace.

Aristotle

The Nicomachean Ethics · 322 BC

★ 4.9

Laws are silent in time of war.

Cicero

Pro Milone · 52 BC

★ 4.8

War is to man as motherhood is to woman.

Benito Mussolini

1934

★ 4.5

Essay · Political literature

Warfare... Is just an invention, older and more widespread than the jury system, but none the less an invention.

Margaret Mead

1940

★ 4.5

I doubt whether any of these people, with their academic or dogmatic hatred of war, detest it as much as I do. They probably have not seen the bodies rotting on the ground and smelled the stench of decaying human flesh...What separates me from the pacifists is that I hate the Nazis more than I hate war.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

1943

★ 4.4

Film · Comedy (film) · Comedy

Wars, conflict - it's all business. One murder makes a villain; millions, a hero. Numbers sanctify, my good fellow!

Henri Verdoux

Monsieur Verdoux · 1947

★ 4.4

Eternal peace is a dream, and not even a beautiful one, and war is a link in God's world order. In him, the noblest virtues of man, courage and renunciation, devotion to duty and willingness to sacrifice, unfold with the institution of life. Without the war, the world would become bogged down in materialism.

Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

1880

★ 4.3

Biography · Historical literature

Hail Caesar, those who are about to die salute you.

Suetonius

★ 3.9

Film · Action (film) · Thriller (film) · Action · Thriller

Yes, the purpose of war is to serve a political end, but the true nature of war is to serve itself.

Hunter

Crimson Tide · 1995

★ 3.9

Historical literature

No one is stupid enough to prefer war to peace; in peace sons bury their fathers and in war fathers bury their sons. However, I suppose the god must have wanted this to happen.

Herodotus

Histories · 430 BC

★ 3.8

Play

He is wise who tries everything before arms.

Terence

The Eunuch · 161 BC

★ 3.8

Play · Tragedy (play)

Let me have war, say I. It exceeds peace as far as day does night. It's sprightly waking, audible, and full of vent. Peace is a very apoplexy, lethargy; mulled, deaf, sleepy, insensible.

William Shakespeare

Coriolanus · 1616

★ 3.8

For what can war, but endless war still breed?

John Milton

1674

★ 3.8

Personal journal

God is on the side not of the heavy battalions, but of the best shots.

Voltaire

1750

★ 3.8

To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace.

George Washington

1790

★ 3.8

Pamphlet · Political literature

No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.

James Madison

1795

★ 3.8

War, at the best, is terrible, and this war of ours, in its magnitude and in its duration, is one of the most terrible.

Abraham Lincoln

1864

★ 3.8

Film · Black comedy (film) · War (film) · Black comedy · War

You're talking about mass murder, General, not war!

President Merkin Muffley

Dr. Strangelove · 1964

★ 3.8

Film · Black comedy (film) · War (film) · Black comedy · War

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!

President Merkin Muffley

Dr. Strangelove · 1964

★ 3.8

Film · War (film) · War

I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy; we fought ourselves. And the enemy...was in us.

Chris

Platoon · 1986

★ 3.8

Film · War (film) · War

I am in a world of shit, yes, but I am alive and I'm not afraid.

Private Joker

Full Metal Jacket · 1987

★ 3.8

Novel · Satire

Even in those cities which seem to enjoy the blessings of peace, and where the arts flourish, the inhabitants are devoured by envy, cares and anxieties, which are greater plagues than any experienced in a town when it is under siege.

Voltaire

Candide · 1759

★ 3.7

I must study Politicks and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematicks and Philosophy.

John Adams

1780

★ 3.7

Four things greater than all things are,— Women and Horses and Power and War.

Rudyard Kipling

1890

★ 3.7

Play

When the rich wage war it's the poor who die.

Jean-Paul Sartre

1951

★ 3.7

Historical literature

Dead battles, like dead generals, hold the military mind in their dead grip, and Germans, no less than other peoples, prepare for the last war.

Barbara Tuchman

The Guns of August · 1962

★ 3.7

In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.

Dwight D. Eisenhower

1962

★ 3.7

North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

Richard Nixon

1969

★ 3.7

Film · War (film) · War

Nobody asks to be a hero...it just sometimes turns out that way.

Eversmann

Black Hawk Down · 2001

★ 3.7

Presocratic fragment · Fragment · Philosophical literature

War is father of all and king of all. Some he reveals as gods, other as men; some he makes slaves, other free.

Heraclitus

★ 3.7

We are mad, not only individually, but nationally. We check manslaughter and isolated murders; but what of war and the much vaunted crime of slaughtering whole peoples?

Seneca

★ 3.6

Now tell us all about the war, And what they kill'd each other for.

Robert Southey

1805

★ 3.6

Newspaper

You think you are dying for your country; you die for the industrialists.

Anatole France

1922

★ 3.6

Play

War is like love, it always finds a way.

Bertolt Brecht

1939

★ 3.6

War is the greatest of all agents of change. It speeds up all processes, wipes out minor distinctions, brings realities to the surface. Above all, war brings it home to the individual that he is not altogether an individual. It is only because they are aware of this that men will die on the field of battle.

George Orwell

1941

★ 3.6

Personal journal

After each war there is a little less democracy to save.

Brooks Atkinson

1951

★ 3.6

Magazine

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

Henry Kissinger

1969

★ 3.6

What if someone gave a war & Nobody came? Life would ring the bells of Ecstasy and Forever be Itself again.

Allen Ginsberg

Graffiti 12th Cubicle Men's Room Syracuse Airport · 1973

★ 3.6

Novel · Western literature

War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

Cormac McCarthy

Blood Meridian; or The Evening Redness in the West · 1985

★ 3.6

War, he sung, is Toil and Trouble; Honour, but an empty Bubble. Never ending, still beginning, Fighting still, and still destroying; If the World be worth thy winning, Think, O think it worth enjoying.

John Dryden

1697

★ 3.5

Essay

Among the calamities of war may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages.

Samuel Johnson

1758

★ 3.5

But war's a game, which, were their subjects wise, Kings would not play at.

William Cowper

The Winter Morning Walk · 1785

★ 3.5