Powerful Inspirational Quotes About War

"We shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender."

- Winston Churchill

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting."

- Sun Tzu

"To win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill."

- Sun Tzu

"Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win."

- Sun Tzu

"War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives."

- Smedley Butler

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, your victory will not stand in doubt; if you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete."

- Sun Tzu

"Thus we may know that there are five essentials for victory: 1 He will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. 2 He will win who knows how to handle both superior and inferior forces.3 He will win whose army is animated by the same spirit throughout all its ranks. 4 He will win who, prepared himself, waits to take the enemy unprepared. 5 He will win who has military capacity and is not interfered with by the sovereign."

- Sun Tzu

"All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must seem inactive; when we are near, we must make the enemy believe we are far away; when far away, we must make him believe we are near."

- Sun Tzu

"If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

- Sun Tzu

"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."

- Sun Tzu

"To fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting."

- Sun Tzu

"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?"

- Mahatma Gandhi

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good man do nothing."

- Edmund Burke

"Peace cannot be kept by force; it can only be achieved by understanding."

- Albert Einstein

"Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction....The chain reaction of evil — hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars — must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation."

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The way of peace is the way of love."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"What the ancients called a clever fighter is one who not only wins, but excels in winning with ease."

- Sun Tzu

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind."

- Mahatma Gandhi

"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

"In warfare, there are no constant conditions. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent will succeed and win."

- Sun Tzu

"they'll give a war and nobody will come."

- Carl Sandburg

"Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die."

- Herbert Hoover

"War is a defeat for humanity."

- Pope John Paul II

"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

"The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission."

- John F. Kennedy

"I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell."

- William Tecumseh Sherman

"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons."

- Herodotus

"He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious."

- Sun Tzu

"The whole secret lies in confusing the enemy, so that he cannot fathom our real intent."

- Sun Tzu

"So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong, and strike at what is weak."

- Sun Tzu

"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

"Treat your men as you would your own beloved sons. And they will follow you into the deepest valley."

- Sun Tzu

"There is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare."

- Sun Tzu

"To know your Enemy, you must become your Enemy."

- Sun Tzu

"A leader leads by example not by force."

- Sun Tzu

"In order to know your enemy, you must become your enemy."

- Sun Tzu

"The way to achieve peace is not to be pacifist but to be anti-violent. To be pro-peace, you have to work for justice."

- Jim Wallis

"If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies."

- Moshe Dayan

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

- Rafiki

"The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing."

- Albert Einstein

"War is the continuation of politics by other means."

- Carl von Clausewitz

"War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus."

- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"The further a society drifts from the truth, the more it will hate those who speak it."

- George Orwell

"War is a series of catastrophes which result in victory."

- Albert Pike

"Until death itself comes, no calamity need be feared."

- Sun Tzu

"Hold out baits to entice the enemy. Feign disorder, and crush him."

- Sun Tzu

"Move swift as the Wind and closely-formed as the Wood. Attack like the Fire and be still as the Mountain."

- Sun Tzu

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones."

- Albert Einstein

"Be extremely subtle even to the point of formlessness. Be extremely mysterious even to the point of soundlessness. Thereby you can be the director of the opponent's fate."

- Sun Tzu

"Rouse him, and learn the principle of his activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself, so as to find out his vulnerable spots."

- Sun Tzu

"The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history."

- George Orwell

"In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

- Winston Churchill

"If we don't end war, war will end us."

- H. G. Wells

"War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace."

- Thomas Mann

"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man."

- Napoleon Hill

"We are all tourists in history, and irony is what we win in wars."

- Anatole Broyard

"All wars are civil wars, because all men are brothers."

- Francois Fenelon

"I am not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it."

- Michel Foucault

"Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent."

- Isaac Asimov

"If you don’t know history, then you don’t know anything. You are a leaf that doesn’t know it is part of a tree."

- Michael Crichton

"Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance."

- Sun Tzu

"When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard."

- Sun Tzu

"One may know how to conquer without being able to do it."

- Sun Tzu

"If it is to your advantage, make a forward move; if not, stay where you are."

- Sun Tzu

"Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt."

- Sun Tzu

"Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient."

- Sun Tzu

"In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them."

- Sun Tzu

"Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight."

- Sun Tzu

"Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength, from compelling our adversary to make these preparations against us."

- Sun Tzu

"An unjust peace is better than a just war."

- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"You can't say civilization don't advance... in every war they kill you in a new way."

- Will Rogers

"O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands."

- Sun Tzu

"The great object is that every man be armed."

- Patrick Henry

"The best weapon against an enemy is another enemy."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended."

- Sun Tzu

"If it were a fact, it wouldn't be called intelligence."

- Donald Rumsfeld

"The clever combatant looks to the effect of combined energy, and does not require too much from individuals."

- Sun Tzu

"The control of a large force is the same principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers."

- Sun Tzu

"The curse of mankind is that we suffer from too much consciousness."

- Friedrich Nietzsche

"Only the dead have seen the end of war."

- George Santayana

"Thus it is that in war the victorious strategist only seeks battle after the victory has been won, whereas he who is destined to defeat first fights and afterwards looks for victory."

- Sun Tzu

"If equally matched, we can offer battle; if slightly inferior in numbers, we can avoid the enemy; if quite unequal in every way, we can flee from him."

- Sun Tzu

"Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing."

- Sun Tzu

"Making no mistakes is what establishes the certainty of victory, for it means conquering an enemy that is already defeated."

- Sun Tzu

"There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it."

- Havelock Ellis

"Energy may be likened to the bending of a crossbow; decision, to the releasing of the trigger."

- Sun Tzu

"Success in warfare is gained by carefully accommodating ourselves to the enemy's purpose."

- Sun Tzu

"At first, then, exhibit the coyness of a maiden, until the enemy gives you an opening; afterwards emulate the rapidity of a running hare, and it will be too late for the enemy to oppose you."

- Sun Tzu

"If you know Heaven and know Earth, you may make your victory complete."

- Sun Tzu

"The skillful soldier does not raise a second levy, neither are his supply-wagons loaded more than twice."

- Sun Tzu

"The experienced soldier, once in motion, is never bewildered; once he has broken camp, he is never at a loss."

- Sun Tzu

"If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle."

- Sun Tzu

"If fighting is sure to result in victory, then you must fight, even though the ruler forbid it; if fighting will not result in victory, then you must not fight even at the ruler's bidding."

- Sun Tzu

"The quality of decision is like the well-timed swoop of a falcon which enables it to strike and destroy its victim."

- Sun Tzu

"The general who wins a battle makes many calculations in his temple ere the battle is fought. The general who loses a battle makes but few calculations beforehand."

- Sun Tzu

"War is what happens when language fails."

- Margaret Atwood

"War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength."

- George Orwell

"God created war so that Americans would learn geography."

- Mark Twain

"The object of war is not to die for your country but to make the other bastard die for his."

- George S. Patton

"You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war."

- Napoleon Bonaparte

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake."

- Jeannette Rankin

"When the rich wage war, it's the poor who die."

- Jean-Paul Sartre

"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

"I have not yet begun to fight!"

- John Paul Jones

"There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others."

- Niccolo Machiavelli

"It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it."

- Robert E. Lee

"The more you sweat in peace, the less you bleed in war."

- Norman Schwarzkopf

"The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars."

- William Westmoreland

"The two most powerful warriors are patience and time."

- Leo Tolstoy

"I have never advocated war except as a means of peace."

- Ulysses S. Grant

"To take a long and circuitous route, after enticing the enemy out of the way, and though starting after him, to contrive to reach the goal before him, shows knowledge of the artifice of deviation."

- Sun Tzu

"Let your rapidity be that of the wind, your compactness that of the forest."

- Sun Tzu

"In raiding and plundering be like fire, in immovability like a mountain."

- Sun Tzu

"Place your army in deadly peril, and it will survive; plunge it into desperate straits, and it will come off in safety."

- Sun Tzu

"Forestall your opponent by seizing what he holds dear, and subtly contrive to time his arrival on the ground."

- Sun Tzu

"Walk in the path defined by rule, and accommodate yourself to the enemy until you can fight a decisive battle."

- Sun Tzu

"War does not determine who is right — only who is left."

- Anonymous

"All warfare is based on deception."

"Forgiveness is not a gift to the person who has wronged you, but to yourself."