Quotes on War

In strategy your spiritual bearing must not be any different from normal. Both in fighting and in everyday life you should be determined though calm. Meet the situation without tenseness yet not recklessly, your spirit settled yet unbiased.

If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers.

As everything in this world is but a sham, Death is the only sincerity.

Confront them with annihilation, and they will then survive; plunge them into a deadly situation, and they will then live. When people fall into danger, they are then able to strive for victory.

All men can see these tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.

If our soldiers are not overburdened with money, it is not because they have a distaste for riches; if their lives are not unduly long, it is not because they are disinclined to longevity.

If there is a Way involving the spirit of not being defeated, to help oneself and gain honour, it is the Way of Strategy.

Do not let your spirit be influenced by your body, or your body be influenced by your spirit. Be neither insufficiently spirited or over spirited. An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let the enemy see your spirit.

For them to perceive the advantage of defeating the enemy, they must also have their rewards.

A samurai will use a toothpick even though he has not eaten. Inside the skin of a dog, outside the hide of a tiger.

We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.

The last few centuries have seen the world freed from several scourges-slavery, for example; death by torture for heretics; and, most recently, smallpox. I am optimistic enough to believe that the next scourge to disappear will be large-scale warfare-killed by the existence and nonuse of nuclear weapons.

The terror created by weaponry has never stopped men from employing them.

One must expect a war between U.S.A. and U.S.S.R. which will begin with the total destruction of London. I think the war will last 30 years, and leave a world without civilised people, from which everything will have to build afresh - a process taking (say) 500 years.

Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

The scripture in times of disputes is like an open town in times of war, which serves in differently the occasions of both parties.

Men rush to arms for slight causes, or no cause at all, and once taken up there is no longer any respect for law, divine or human.

The air of England is too pure for a slave to breathe, and so everyone who breathes it becomes free. Everyone who comes to this island is entitled to the protection of English law, whatever oppression he may have suffered and whatever may be the colour of his skin.

Tell the men to fire faster and not to give up the ship; fight her till she sinks.

Strange, that I came into the world with nothing, and now I am going away with this stupendous caravan of sin! Wherever I look, I see only God... I have sinned terribly, and I do not know what punishment awaits me.

Desperate affairs require desperate remedies.