While the majority of the world experiences peace, there are still some places where wars continue to erupt. These military conflicts have created millions of refugees, consumed trillions of dollars and claimed hundreds of thousands of lives.
In the face of such conflicts, here are some of the best war quotes to help you find some solace.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. – George Orwell
War is a severe doctor; but it sometimes heals grievances. – Edward Counsel
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
Only the dead have seen the end of war. – Plato
War is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with other means. – Carl Von Clausewitz
War is what happens when language fails. – Margaret Atwood
Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. – Sun Tzu
One certain effect of war is to diminish freedom of expression. Patriotism becomes the order of the day, and those who question the war are seen as traitors, to be silenced and imprisoned. – Howard Zinn
Listen up – there’s no war that will end all wars. – Haruki Murakami
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. – Ernest Hemingway
War alone brings up to their highest tension all human energies and imposes the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have the courage to make it. – Benito Mussolini
Sometimes you have to pick the gun up to put the gun down. – Malcolm X
War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children. – Jimmy Carter
When the rich wage war, it is the poor who die. – Jean-Paul Sartre
There never was a good war, or a bad peace. – Benjamin Franklin
War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. – Thomas Hardy
A mind at peace does not engender wars. – Sophocles
War demands sacrifice of the people. It gives only suffering in return. – Frederic Clemson Howe
Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard. – Henry Ford
The nation having the strongest war footing can easily find an excuse for going to war. – Lewis F. Korns
War is mainly a catalogue of blunders. – Winston Churchill
The power of making war often prevents it. – Thomas Jefferson
War can only be abolished through war … in order to get rid of the gun it is necessary to take up the gun. – Mao Zedong
War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always. – Sophocles
The military don’t start wars. Politicians start wars. – William Westmoreland
A war undertaken without sufficient monies has but a wisp of force. Coins are the very sinews of battles. – Francois Rabelais
War hath no fury like a non-combatant. – C. E. Montague
Short of changing human nature … the only way to achieve a practical, livable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit out of war. – Richard Nixon
A righteous war is a legacy from heaven–oftentimes the handmaid of a nation’s liberty. – Edward Counsel
Peace is the short interval when nations toil to pay the costs of past and future wars. – Herbert V. Prochnow
See Also: Peace Quotes – Peaceful Quotation
War settles nothing. – Dwight D. Eisenhower
Armies are not bad things in themselves; it’s war that’s evil. – Juan Gomez-Jurado
Share these famous war quotes from philosophers, authors, and politicians and see what your friends have to say about them.