Quotes on Total War

Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.

It was by the sober sense of our citizens that we were safely and steadily conducted from monarchy to republicanism, and it is by the same agency alone we can be kept from falling back.

Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

We must carry the war into every corner the enemy happens to carry it, to his home, to his centers of entertainment: a total war. It is necessary to prevent him from having a moment of peace, a quiet moment outside his barracks or even inside; we must attack him wherever he may be, make him feel like a cornered beast wherever he may move. Then his moral fiber shall begin to decline, but we shall notice how the signs of decadence begin to disappear.

In matters of style, swim with the current; in matters of principle, stand like a rock.

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

Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

To be thrown upon one's own resources, is to be cast in the very lap of fortune.

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.

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

Only the dead have seen the end of war.

When the enemy is driven back, we have failed, and when he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded.

My first wish is, to see this plague of mankind banished from the earth, and the sons and daughters of this world employed in more pleasing and innocent amusements, than in preparing implements, and exercising them, for the destruction of mankind.

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never peril.

The desire for safety stands against every great and noble enterprise.

Duty and dereliction guide thee back to solitude.

Discipline is the soul of an army. It makes small numbers formidable; procures success to the weak, and esteem to all.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

The most persistent sound which reverberates through man's history is the beating of war drums.

Wars are just to those to whom they are necessary.