There is no absolute answer of what the real purpose of the war is and was. Everyone will have an opinion, but no one will have an answer. Thought-Provoking war quotes will give you awareness and a better perspective.
If you’re searching for popular quotation that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of brilliant history quotes, powerful peace quotes, and racism quotes.
Top War Quotes
War is evil, but it is often the lesser evil. George Orwell
I appeal for cessation of hostilities, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad in essence. Mahatma Gandhi
Man becomes his most creative during war. Clint Eastwood
Nations who are proud of their guns, tanks, missiles etc. are deprived of humanity! Mehmet Murat İldan
I have never advocated war except as a means of peace. Ulysses S. Grant
It’s time for us to turn to each other, not on each other. Jesse Jackson
Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy. Alfred Adler
We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children. Jimmy Carter
In war, you win or lose, live or die and the difference is just an eyelash. Douglas MacArthur
No more war, war never again! Peace, it is peace, which must guide the destinies of people and of all mankind. Pope Paul VI.
A pint of sweat, saves a gallon of blood. George S. Patton
Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war. Albert Einstein
The most successful war seldom pays for its losses. Thomas Jefferson
You don’t liberate a country standing on the soil of another. Fadia Faqir
Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later. Benjamin Franklin
My religion is based on truth and nonviolence. Mahatma Gandhi
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Sun Tzu
There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy. George Washington
I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. Dwight D. Eisenhower
Peace is not achieved by controlling nations, but mastering our thoughts. John Harricharan
There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America. Barack Obama
If they want peace, nations should avoid the pin pricks that precede cannon shots. Napoleon Bonaparte
The only excuse for war is that we may live in peace unharmed. Marcus Tullius Cicero
Never, for the sake of peace and quiet, deny your own experience or convictions. Dag Hammarskjold
The first casualty when war comes is truth. Hiram Johnson
You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war. Albert Einstein
War is never a solution; it is an aggravation. Benjamin Disraeli
Bullets cannot be recalled. They cannot be uninvented. But they can be taken out of the gun. Martin Amis
If there is not the war, you don’t get the great general; if there is not a great occasion, you don’t get a great statesman; if Lincoln had lived in a time of peace, no one would have known his name. Theodore Roosevelt
Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime. Victor Hugo
There’s this romantic idea that’s built up around war. But the pragmatic view is there are tons of people of my generation who have lost their lives, lost their marriages, or lost their health as a consequence of being sent to wars which could have been avoided. Pete Buttigieg
Make no mistake the anti war voices long for us to lose any war they cannot prevent. Ralph Peters
War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. Thomas Mann
My personal opinion is that if someone writes honestly about war, it will inherently be anti war. Kevin Powers
What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party. Henry David Thoreau
The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it. Albert Einstein
Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. Ernest Hemingway
There is a higher court than courts of justice, and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts. Mahatma Gandhi
What charitable 1 percenters can’t do is assume responsibility America’s national responsibilities the care of its sick and its poor, the education of its young, the repair of its failing infrastructure, the repayment of its staggering war debts. Stephen King
Just war theory has been converted into a form of apologetics for whatever atrocities your favored state is carrying out. Noam Chomsky
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. John Stuart Mill
War is like a vacuum cleaner that sucks tax dollars out of your pocket and funnels the money directly into the pockets of the robber barons who own the weapons factories. Oliver Markus Malloy
When the rich wage war, it’s the poor who die. Jean Paul Sartre
People do not make wars; governments do. Ronald Reagan
It is not only the living who are killed in war. Issac Asimov
The means of defense against foreign danger historically have become the instruments of tyranny at home. James Madison
The first and most imperative necessity in war is money, for money means everything else men, guns, ammunition. Ida Tarbell
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country. Alexis de Tocqueville
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in the final sense a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. Dwight D. Eisenhower
War a massacre of people who don’t know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don’t massacre each other. Paul Valery
The executive has no right, in any case, to decide the question, whether there is or is not cause for declaring war. James Madison
War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory. Albert Pike
Though force can protect in emergency, only justice, fairness, consideration and cooperation can finally lead men to the dawn of eternal peace. Dwight D Eisenhower
We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars. Anatole Broyard
I was once asked why I don’t participate in anti war demonstrations. I said that I will never do that, but as soon as you have a pro peace rally, I’ll be there. Mother Teresa
The art of war is of vital importance to the state. It is a matter of life and death, a road either to safety or to ruin. Hence it is a subject of inquiry which can on no account be neglected. Sun Tzu
Dogs are our link to paradise. They don’t know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring it was peace. Milan Kundera
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. Albert Einstein
The greatest personalities that ever existed have been those who united human beings and put them on the road toward cooperation and effectiveness and peace. Those whom the world has held highest have helped to unite and not sever interconnectedness. They have not been the destroyers of differences but the harmonizer of differences. John Lovejoy Elliott
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it. Havelock Ellis
If you like war, be a nationalist. If you like peace, be a citizen of the world. Oliver Markus Malloy
If they are going to have war, they ought to take the old men and leave the young to propagate the race. Jeannette Rankin
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood. Aldous Huxley
The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood. Otto von Bismarck
Only in time of fear is government thrown back to its primitive and sole function of self defense and the many interests of which it is the guardian become subordinate to that. Jane Addams
In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons. Herodotus
Every good war film, if you want to use that phrase I don’t think it’s a good phrase, but if you want to use that phrase every good film, a first rate film about war, is an anti war movie. Michael Cimino
If it’s natural to kill, how come men have to go into training to learn how? Joan Baez
The greatest test of courage on the earth is to bear defeat without losing heart. R. G. Ingersoll
I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in. George McGovern
Courage is the first of human qualities because it is the quality which guarantees the others. Aristotle
The State thrives on war unless, of course, it is defeated and crushed expands on it, glories in it. Murray Rothbard
Once we have a war, there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war. Ernest Hemingway
I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word. Martin Luther King Jr.
In all history, there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful. Leo Tolstoy
A war is a horrible thing, but it’s also a unifier of countries. Clint Eastwood
What he meant, of course, was that there would always be wars, that they were as easy to stop as glaciers. I believe that, too. And even if wars didn’t keep coming like glaciers, there would still be plain old death. Kurt Vonnegut
War is the greatest plague that can afflict humanity, it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it. Martin Luther
War is what happens when language fails. Margaret Atwood
If we desire to avoid insult, we must be able to repel it; if we desire to secure peace, one of the most powerful instruments of our rising prosperity, it must be known, that we are at all times ready for War. George Washington
When a war breaks out, people say It’s too stupid, it can’t last long. But though a war may be too stupid, that doesn’t prevent its lasting. Albert Camus
I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. Barack Obama
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous conventions of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own. Aldous Huxley
