Quotes about war

But success in a military operation always feels short-lived. You shoulder your rifle and move on from there to the next battle.

You have a tendency to think of wars as being fought in arenas set aside for fighting. But when you go through these farms and little towns, you realize wars are fought in people's backyards, stores, streets, and cities. It was all so very real then. It's real to me today.

We all know that war destroys mankind, and in spite of their differences in race, creed, and religion, women all across the world despise war because its fruit is nothing but destruction.

Children, everybody, here's what to do during war: In a time of destruction, create something. A poem. A parade. A community. A school. A vow. A moral principle. One peaceful moment. (Epilogue)

Humans are basically good. That's why it takes so much training to march march march kill kill kill kill. ("Earth" p269)

Linda wrote in her Ph.D. dissertation: "Vietnam duty provided the most unambiguous source of antiwar sentiment." War causes peace. (p227)

Whatever there is when there isn't war has to be invented. What do people do in peace? Peace has barely been thought. (p306)

As if we should not be scandalized

by surprise bombing over any city at night,

bombs scandalizing the sanctity of night.

There was no readiness for soldiering in this truck, no stern and cocky welcoming of challenges. They sounded - oh, Mother of God - they sounded like children.

It had been designed for “peacekeeping,” which meant that it had been fitted out from stem to stern with the most hideous weapons of war that the human mind could conceive.

A long time ago humans talked of terraforming Mars and Venus, but we never did it. Just too busy blowing ourselves up, I guess, ever to get round to it.

War was senseless. And yet war came creeping steadily closer.