Quotes about war

This enterprise was doomed, but we do what we can and do what we must. So a young farmer with wife and children decides to go home. Good! He shows a sense that you and I will never understand. They will sing songs about us, but he will ensure that there are people to sing them. He plants. We destroy.

It would be a fine thing if war could be conducted as a game where no lives were lost. At the end of a battle combatants could meet [...] and drink and talk.

There is only one way to survive in war, and that is by being willing to die. You will find soon that swordsmen can be downed by untutored savages who would slice their fingers if asked to carve meat. And why? because the savage is willing. Worse, he may be a baresark.

Well, who decides who has won or lost? It's not like Avondale any more. That was easy. We charged. They ran. We captured their cannon. Now, that was a victory. Now, we just charge each other, kill each other, and argue about who won.

“You are the leader, Gaise. Men always tend to agree with the leader. It is the nature of things.”

“This is not a game, Father.”

“Of course it is: the oldest game in the world. You have proved yourself in battle, leading men in cavalry charges. This game is different. This game is unlikely to be won by a single heroic charge. This will be like the wolf pack hunting the stag. This will be about planning, movement, wearing down the enemy, bringing him to bay at exactly the point where he is at his weakest. This will be about subtlety and deception. Winter Kay is an excellent strategist. He thinks he is the wolf. He is right. We are the stag. To win you must make him the stag.”

‘Is the war coming to Eldacre, my lord?’ asked Ramus, as he settled into the chair.

'I fear it is. A more stupid and wasteful business there never was. Fields will not be planted, food will run low, tax revenues will dry up — save from the makers of swords and munitions.'

War is for men, for honor and glory.

Cry 'Havoc!,' and let slip the dogs of war.

It was a game he had often played with the other children, a game of good guys and bad guys, a harmless pasttime that used up their contained energy and ended only when they all lay posed in freakish postures on the round. He had never recognized it before as a game of war.

Overwhelmed by pain, he lay there in the fearsome stench for hours, listened to the men and animals die, and learned what warfare meant.

A religious war, the vilest form an essentially vile business can take.

The good book says that he that lives by the sword shall perish by the sword, said the black. [...]

The good book does indeed count war an evil, said Irving. Yet there's many a bloody tale of war inside it.

It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the way it was and will be. That way and not some other way.