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War
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“May the conscience and the common sense of the peoples be awakened, so that we may reach a new stage in the life of nations, where people will look back on war as an incomprehensible aberration of their forefathers!”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semireligious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed.”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) first seen 1955 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Apr 1955) unfinished address he was writing prior to death.
“Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?”
Albert Einstein (1879–1955) said by 1955 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Essentially, this war...is a great race-conflict, a conflict of Teuton and Slav, in which certain other nations, England, France and Belgium, have been led into cooperation with the Slav. ... The conflict of Germany and Russia has been produced not by this or that diplomatic incident, but by primitive passions expressing themselves in the temper of the two races.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: War: The Offspring of Fear (1914), quoted in Ray Monk, Bertrand Russell: The Spirit of Solitude, 1872-1921 (1996), p. 373 and Daniel Pick, War Machine: The Rationalisation of Slaughter in the Modern Age (1996), p. 152
“Of all evils of war the greatest is the purely spiritual evil: the hatred, the injustice, the repudiation of truth, the artificial conflict.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Justice in War-Time (1916), p. 27
“Ever since the war began, I have felt that I could no longer go on being a pacifist, but I have hesitated to say so, because of the responsibility involved. If I were young enough to fight myself, I should do so, but it is more difficult to urge others. Now, however, I feel that I ought to announce that I have changed my mind.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1931 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Kingsley Martin (June 1940), quoted in Kingsley Martin, Editor: A Second Volume of Autobiography, 1931-45 (1968), p. 207
“Science seems to be at war with itself.... Naive realism leads to physics, and physics, if true, shows naive realism to be false. Therefore naive realism, if true, is false; therefore it is false.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1940 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth (1940), Introduction, p. 15
“Either we must have war against Russia, before she has the atom bomb, or we will have to lie down and let them govern us. ... Anything is better than submission.”
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech quoted in The Observer (21 November 1948), quoted in Robert Skildesky, Oswald Mosley (1981), p. 542 and Martin Ceadel, Thinking about Peace and War (1987), p. 52
“As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar, it will cease to be popular.”
Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A letter to a friend (1916)
“The enthronement in office of a Socialist Government will be a serious national misfortune such as has usually befallen great States only on the morrow of defeat in war. It will delay the return of prosperity; it will check enterprise and impair credit; it will open a period of increasing political confusion and disturbance.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to a correspondent shortly before the Labour Party formed its first government (17 January 1924), quoted in The Times (18 January 1924), p. 14
“The rescue of India from ages of barbarism, tyranny, and internecine war and its slow but ceaseless forward march to civilisation constitute upon the whole the finest achievement of our history.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Article for the Daily Mail (16 November 1929), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (1976), p. 356
“Jellicoe was the only man on either side who could lose the war in an afternoon.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1916 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The World Crisis, 1916-1918 Part I: Chapter V (Jutland: The Preliminaries), Churchill, Butterworth (1927), pp. 112
“War arises from both sides feeling they have a hope of victory.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The King's Twenty-Five Years. III. The Coronation and the Agadir Crisis. The Evening Standard, 4 May 1935
“We cannot tell whether Hitler will be the man who will once again let loose upon the world another war in which civilisation will irretrievably succumb, or whether he will go down in history as the man who restored honour and peace of mind to the Great Germanic nation.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1935 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935)
“I am trying to marshal all the forces I can to prevent this coming war, and to strengthen Britain.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Guy Fleetwood Wilson (13 November 1936), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (1976), p. 800
“It is a strange thing that certain parts of the world should now be wishing to revive the old religious war. There are those non-God religions Nazism and Communism . . . I repudiate both and will have nothing to do with either... They are as alike as two peas. Tweedledum and Tweedledee were violently contrasted compared with them. You leave out God and you substitute the devil.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Manchester Guardian (26 January 1937) speech at Leeds Chamber of Commerce
“I do not believe in a major war this year because the French army at present is as large as that of Germany and far more mature. But next year and the year after may carry these Dictator-ridden countries to the climax of their armament and of their domestic embarrassments. We shall certainly need to be ready then.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Lord Linlithgow (23 September 1937), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (1976), p. 870
“The story of the human race is war. Except for brief and precarious interludes, there has never been peace in the world; and before history began, murderous strife was universal and unending.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1937 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Mankind is Confronted by One Supreme Task, News of the World, 14 November 1937
“Everything is overshadowed by the impending trial of will-power which is developing in Europe. I think we shall have to choose in the next few weeks between war and shame, and I have very little doubt what the decision will be.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1922 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to David Lloyd George (13 August 1938), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (1976), p. 962
“War is horrible, but slavery is worse, and you may be sure that the British people would rather go down fighting than live in servitude.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview with Kingsley Martin for the New Statesman (7 January 1939)
“Everyone can see how communism rots the soul of a nation. How it makes it abject in peace and proves it abominable in war.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have differed and quarrelled in the past but now one bond unites us all—to wage war until victory is won, and never to surrender ourselves to servitude and shame, whatever the cost and the agony must be.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Broadcast (19 May 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (1983), p. 364
“When this war is won by this nation, as it surely will be, it must be one of our aims to work to establish a state of society where the advantage and privileges which hitherto have been enjoyed only by the few shall be far more widely shared by the many and the youth of the nation as a whole.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech to Harrow School (18 December 1940), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Finest Hour: Winston S. Churchill, 1939–1941 (1983), p. 950
“'In war-time,' I said, 'truth is so precious she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.'”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1943 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Discussion of Operation Overlord with Stalin at the Teheran Conference (November 30, 1943); in The Second World War, Volume V : Closing the Ring (1952), Chapter 21 (Teheran: The Crux), p. 338
“The most dangerous moment of the War, and the one which caused me the greatest alarm, was when the Japanese Fleet was heading for Ceylon and the naval base there. The capture of Ceylon, the consequent control of the Indian Ocean, and the possibility at the same time of a German conquest of Egypt would have closed the ring and the future would have been black.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Remarks on the April 5, 1942) Easter Sunday Raid on Colombo, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) on 5 April 1942. From a conversation at the British Embassy, Washington D.C. in 1946, as described by Leonard Birchall, RCAF, in Battle for…
“When I was a young subaltern in the South African War, the water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable we had to put a bit of whiskey in it. By diligent effort I learned to like it.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Aboard the Presidential train during the journey to Fulton, Missouri (March 4, 1946); quoted in Conflict and Crisis by Robert Donovan, University of Missouri Press (1996), p. 190
“The salvation of the common people of every race and of every land from war or servitude must be established on solid foundations and must be guarded by the readiness of all men and women to die rather than submit to tyranny.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Speech at Zurich University (September 19, 1946) (partial text) ().
“Historians are apt to judge war ministers less by the victories achieved under their direction than by the political results which flowed from them. Judged by that standard, I am not sure that I shall be held to have done very well.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by Robert Boothby in Robert Boothy, Recollections of a Rebel (1978), pp. 183–84.
“My ability to persuade my wife to marry me [was] quite my most brilliant achievement ... Of course, it would have been impossible for any ordinary man to have got through what I had to go through in peace and war without the devoted aid of what we call, in England, one's better half.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As cited in Churchill by Himself (2008), ed. Langworth, PublicAffairs, p. 511,
“In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1948 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948) Moral of the Work, p. ix
“The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1949 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Second World War, Volume II: Their Finest Hour (1949) Chapter XXX (Ocean Peril). p. 529
“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1950 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: On the Soviet Union's failure to form a united Balkan front against Hitler ; in The Second World War, Volume III: The Grand Alliance (1950) Chapter 20 (The Soviet Nemesis)
“This was one of the heaviest blows I can recall during the war....It was a bitter moment. Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1942 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Fall of Tobruk, 20 June 1942.
“Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) first seen 1952 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In The Second World War, Volume V : Closing the Ring (1952) Chapter 12 (Island Prizes Lost).
“Thus ended the great American Civil War, which upon the whole must be considered the noblest and least avoidable of all the great mass conflicts of which till then there was record.”
Winston Churchill (1874–1965) said by 1965 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the art of war were nothing but the art of avoiding risks, glory would become the prey of mediocre minds.... I have made all the calculations; fate will do the rest.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) first seen 1813 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Statement at the beginning of the 1813 campaign, as quoted in The Mind of Napoleon (1955) by J. Christopher Herold, p. 45
“The Princes of this house have abandoned their capital, not like soldiers of honour who cede to the circumstances and setbacks of the war, but like the perjured who are pursued by their own remorse.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Changing from the defensive to the offensive, is one of the most delicate operations in war.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is a serious game in which a man risks his reputation, his troops, and his country. A sensible man will search himself to know whether or not he is fitted for the trade.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is only one favorable moment in war; talent consists in knowing how to seize it.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In war, theory is all right so far as general principles are concerned; but in reducing general principles to practice there will always be danger. Theory and practice are the axis about which the sphere of accomplishment revolves.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The art of war consists in being always able, even with an inferior army, to have stronger forces than the enemy at the point of attack or the point which is attacked.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gentleness, good treatment, honor the victor and dishonor the vanquished, who should remain aloof and owe nothing to pity — In war, audacity is the finest calculation of genius.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In civil war it is not given to every man to know how to conduct himself. There is something more than military prudence necessary; there is need of sagacity and the knowledge of men.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War is a lottery in which nations ought to risk nothing but small amounts.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In war one must lean on an obstacle in order to overcome it.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In war, character and opinion make more than half of the reality.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In war, groping tactics, half-way measures, lose everything.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In war, luck is half in everything.”
Napoleon (1769–1821) said by 1821 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source