Quotes on War

I've been very sensitive for a long time to the repeated pattern, during economic hard times or after a war, of the United States' essentially unilaterally disarming.

Boys do not evaluate a book. They divide books into categories. There are sexy books, war books, westerns, travel books, science fiction. A boy will accept anything from a section he knows rather than risk another sort. He has to have the label on the bottle to know it is the mixture as before.

There are many terrorist states in the world, but the United States is unusual in that it is officially committed to international terrorism.

In a war without aim, you tend not to aim. You close your eyes, close your heart. The consequences become hit or miss in the most literal sense.

When you've married someone who's been at war, there is nothing you can do that compares to that level of selflessness and bravery.

What one Predator drone pilot described of his experience fighting in the Iraq war while never leaving Nevada: 'You're going to war for 12 hours, shooting weapons at targets, directing kills on enemy combatants. Then you get in the car and you drive home, and within 20 minutes you're sitting at the dinner table talking to your kids about their homework.'

I am not of Virginia blood; she is of mine.

When you cannot be deceived by men you will have realised the wisdom of strategy.

Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.

You bring me the deepest joy that can be felt by a man whose invincible belief is that Science and Peace will triumph over Ignorance and War, that nations will unite, not to destroy, but to build, and that the future will belong to those who will have done most for suffering humanity.

There can be no compromise with war; it cannot be reformed or controlled; cannot be disciplined into decency or codified into common sense.

There's no better way to test a person than to put them in the middle of a war. That's clearly going to show what kind of a character you're telling a story about.

Too often, U.N. peacekeepers face an impossible task in countries that are still at war and where there is no real peace to keep.

In politics as in religion, my tenets are few and simple. The leading one of which, and indeed that which embraces most others, is to be honest and just ourselves and to exact it from others, meddling as little as possible in their affairs where our own are not involved. If this maxim was generally adopted, wars would cease and our swords would soon be converted into reap hooks and our harvests be more peaceful, abundant, and happy.

People say, on the raft, you must have hallucinated. Baloney. We were sharper after 47 days than the day we started because our minds were empty of all the war and contamination; we had clean minds to fill with good thoughts. Every day we'd exercise our minds.

Their talk was endless, compulsive, and indulgent, sometimes sounding like the remains of the English language after having been hashed over by nuclear war survivors for a few hundred years.

My dear Excellency! I have not gone to war to collect cheese and eggs, but for another purpose.

Mistrust those in whom the urge to punish is strong.

When they remain in garrison, soldiers are maintained with fear and punishment; when they are then led to war, with hope and reward.

The anarch wages his own wars, even when marching in rank and file

When writing, I'm not thinking about war, even if I'm writing about it. I'm thinking about sentences, rhythm and story. So the focus, when I'm working, even if it's on a story that takes place at war, is not on bombs or bullets. It's on the story.