Best War Quotes of All Time – Famous War Quotes and Sayings

Best War Quotes

  • “The military don’t start wars. Politicians start wars.” ―William C. Westmoreland
  • “Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.” ―Martin Luther King Jr.
  • “War is merely the continuation of politics by other means.” ―Carl von Clausewitz
  • “War does not determine who is right – only who is left.” ―Bertrand Russell
  • “All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.” ―John Steinbeck
  • “These men are worth your tears. You are not worth their merriment.” ―Wilfred Owen
  • “Well, politics is war, and in war, truth is the first casualty.” ―Jeff Greenfield
  • “Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die.” ―Herbert Hoover
  • “How can you have a war on terrorism when war itself is terrorism?”― Howard Zinn
  • “Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.” ―Alice Walker
  • “How much energy they put into harming each other. How little into saving.” ―Suzanne Collins
  • “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.” ―Howard Zinn
  • “The world is full enough of hurts and mischances without wars to multiply them.” ―J.R.R. Tolkien
  • “Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.” ―Ernest Hemingway
  • “I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, Mother, what was war?”― Eve Merriam

Famous Quotes about War

  • “It doesn’t make a damned bit of difference who wins the war to someone who’s dead.” ―Joseph Heller
  • “Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat.” ―Jean-Paul Sartre
  • “You must learn to end the wars in your world by ending them in your minds.” ―Barbara Marciniak
  • “It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.” ―Robert E. Lee
  • “You can’t hammer in a nail with words…” “No, but you can start a war with them.” ―Ben Galley
  • “‘Peace?’ said Vetinari. ‘Ah, yes, defined as period of time to allow for preparation for the next war.” ―Terry Pratchett
  • “War grows out of desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.” ―Napoleon Hill
  • “I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.” ―George S. McGovern
  • “…the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.” ―George Orwell
  • “The folly of war is that it can have no natural end except in the extinction an entire people.” ―Joyce Carol Oates
  • “It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets.” ―Voltaire
  • “There is only one way to win a war which has begun: To stop it immediately; that is the way!”― Mehmet Murat ildan
  • “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” ―G.K. Chesterton
  • “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” ―Albert Einstein
  • “There is a savage beast in every man, and when you hand that man a sword or spear and send him forth to war, the beast stirs.” ―George R.R. Martin
  • “One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once ‘The Unnecessary War’.” ―Winston S. Churchill
  • “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy?”― Mahatma Gandhi
  • “Frankly, our ancestors don’t seem much to brag about. I mean, look at the state they left us in, with the wars, the broken planet. Clearly, they didn’t care about what would happen to the people who came after them.” ―Suzanne Collins
  • “Have we raised the threshold of horror so high that nothing short of a nuclear strike qualifies as a ‘real’ war? Are we to spend the rest of our lives in this state of high alert with guns pointed at each other’s heads and fingers trembling on the trigger?”― Arundhati Roy

Funny Quotes About War

  • “God created war so that Americans would learn geography.” ―Mark Twain
  • “I’d start a war just to illustrate the value of peace.” ―Jarod Kintz
  • “We are going to have peace even if we have to fight for it.” ―Dwight D. Eisenhower
  • “This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.” ―Clint Eastwood
  • “I would rather make love than war, but only because condoms kill millions of lives more enjoyably.” ―Jarod Kintz
  • “No two countries that both had McDonald’s had fought a war against each other since each got its McDonald’s.” ―Thomas L. Friedman

Short War Quotes and Sayings

  • “Violence begets violence.”
  • “After the war, aid.” ―Greek Proverb
  • “Don’t go looking for trouble.” ―Aesop (c.620-560 BC)
  • “War ends nothing.” ―Zairean (on war and peace)
  • “The first casualty of war is innocence.” ―Platoon
  • “A bad peace is worse than war.” ―Tacitus
  • “United we stand; divided we fall.” ―Aesop (c.620-560 BC)
  • “War is what happens when language fails.” ―Margaret Atwood
  • “No soldier ever really survives a war.” ―Audie Murphy
  • “A true soldier does not admit defeat before the battle.”
  • “Happy nations have no history.” ―Belgian (on war and peace)
  • “Only the dead have seen the end of war.” ―Plato
  • “They won the war but lost the peace.” ―Jonathan Maberry
  • “How is it possible to have a civil war?”― George Carlin
  • “If we don’t end war, war will end us.” ―H.G. Wells
  • “Religion isn’t the cause of wars, it’s the excuse.” ―Jasper Fforde
  • “When the rich wage war it’s the poor who die.” ―Jean-Paul Sartre
  • “You don’t spread democracy with a barrel of a gun.” ―Helen Thomas

War Sayings and Quotes

  • “Sometimes I think war is God’s way of teaching us geography.” ―Paul Rodriguez
  • “War does not determine who is right, war determines who is left.” ―Unknown
  • “The spider and the fly can’t make a bargain.” ―Jamaican (on buying and selling)
  • “War is sweet to those who haven’t experienced it.” ―Latin (on war and peace)
  • ‘’Love is like war….easy to start… difficult to end… and impossible to forget.” ―Unknown
  • “May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I won’t.” ―General George Patton Jr.
  • “One might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.” ―N. Rogers (1662)
  • “You can’t have peace any longer than your neighbor pleases.” ―Dutch (on war and peace)
  • “God grant me a good sword and no use for it.” ―Polish (on war and peace)
  • “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” ―Jimi Hendrix
  • “If you can read this, thank a teacher. If you can read this in English, thank a soldier.” ―Bumper Sticker
  • “The object of war is not to die for your country, but to make the other bastard die for his.” ―General Patton
  • “The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.” ―GK Chesterton