Quotes about war

His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. He can only be stopped by force. We have a clear conscience. We have done all that any country could do to establish peace.

A war is a disaster whether you win or you lose—it’s only a worse disaster if you lose.

Peacetime, though, felt like summertime. Even as you enjoyed it, you knew it wouldn’t last.

They wouldn’t understand no matter what, any more than they would understand what life in the trenches was like. Experience brought understanding. Nothing else came close.

There’s no such thing as glory, near as I can tell. If the machine guns didn’t kill it, the artillery did.

“Pretty damn soon, the Rebs’ll pack it in here, too, I expect,” Carlton said.

“Every blasphemy that passes your lips means a hotter dose of hellfire in the world to come,” McSweeney answered.”

I’ve seen enough hellfire right here on earth,” Carlton said. “The kind of the preachers go on about don’t worry me as much as it used to.”

When you lose, Sis, the last war’s never over and done with.

Some of those men were black, the new units going forward along with the white troops who have been in the field for years. The Negro soldiers charged straight at the U.S. trenches; they weren’t skilled in the fire-and-move tactics the veterans had learned by painful experience. And they went down in gruesome numbers. When they screamed, Bartlett couldn’t tell their voices from those of white men.

I’ll tell you, though, this whole business of war would be a hell of a lot more fun if you didn’t get shot.

They’d kill him or he’d kill them. War reduced everything to a brutal simplicity.

The bullet doesn’t care who shot it, only where it’s going.

The only people who love a war are those who have never fought in one.