"Battles are sometimes won by generals; wars are nearly always won by sergeants and privates."
-F.E. Adcock, British classical scholar
The purpose of all war is peace.
- Saint Augustine, 354-430
"To have good soldiers, a nation must always be at war."
- Napoleon Bonaparte
"Laws are inoperative in war"
- Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 B.C.): Pro Milone.
"War is the continuation of policy(politics) by other means."
- Karl von Clausewitz
Or
"It is clear that war is not a mere act of policy but a true political instrument, a continuation of political activity by other means"
This is from a translated version of "On War" from 1976
"War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to the military."
- Georges Clemenceau
"I don't know whether war is an interlude during peace, or peace is an interlude during war."
- Georges Clemenceau
"I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity."
-General Dwight D. Eisenhower
"War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it. "
- Desiderius Erasmus,
Dutch humanist, ca. 1466–1536
"The most disadvantageous peace is better than the most just war"
- Desiderius Erasmus
"The God of War hates those who hesitate."
- Euripides, 480-406 b.c.
Greek tragic dramatist
"The essence of war is violence. Moderation in war is imbecility"
-British Sea Lord John Fisher
"It is war that shapes peace, and armament that shapes war."
- Thomas Fuller
"He who stays on the defensive does not make war, he endures it"
- Field Marshal Colmar Baron von der Goltz, 1883
"If men make war in slavish obedience to rules, they will fail."
- Ulysses S. Grant
"War is the mother of everything."
-Heraclitus, Greek philosopher (535-475BC)
"In peace sons bury fathers, but war violates the order of nature, and fathers bury sons."
-Heroditus, greek historian c. 484-425 B.C.
"In war, only the simple succeeds."
-Field Marshal Paul Von Hindenburg
"It is well that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it."
- General Robert E. Lee
"War is an art and as such is not susceptible of explanation by fixed formula"
- General George Patton Jr
Wars may be fought with weapons, but they are won by men.
- General George Patton Jr
"Si vis pacem, para bellum"
("If you want peace, prepare for war!")
- Flavius Vegetius Renatus (ca 390 AD),
Roman military strategist
From "Epitoma rei militaris" (a summary of military matters)
"Cry 'Havoc' and let slip the dogs of War."
- William Shakespeare ("Julius Caesar")
War is cruelty. There's no use trying to reform it, the crueler it is the sooner it will be over.
-William Tecumseh Sherman
So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.
-Sun Tzu, "The Art of War"
"The art of war is, in the last result, the art of keeping one’s freedom of action"
- Xenophon, Greek historian (c. 430-355 BC)
