Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak. Sun Tzu, The Art of War
The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. ibid.
Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt. ibid.
To know your enemy, you must become your enemy. ibid.
When one treats people with benevolence, justice, and righteousness, and reposes confidence in them, the army will be united in mind and all will be happy to serve their leaders. ibid.
Who wishes to fight must first count the cost. ibid.
Rouse him, and learn the principle of his activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself, so as to find out his vulnerable spots. ibid.
There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed. ibid.
There has never been a protracted war from which a country has benefited. ibid.
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. ibid.
All warfare is based on deception. Hence, when we are able to attack, we must seem unable; when using our forces, we must appear 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. ibid.
He who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. Albert Einstein
I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. I am willing to fight for peace. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war. Albert Einstein
May God have mercy for my enemies because I won’t. George Patton
If we don’t end war, war will end us. H G Wells
Why do we electrocute men for murdering an individual and then pin a purple heart on them for mass slaughter of someone arbitrarily labelled enemy? Sylvia Plath
It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it. Robert E Lee
All wars are sacred, to those who have to fight them. If the people who started wars didn’t make them sacred, who would be foolish enough to fight? But, no matter what rallying cries the orators give to the idiots who fight, no matter what noble purposes they assign to wars, there is never but one reason for a war. And that is money. All wars are in reality money squabbles. But so few people ever realize it. Their ears are too full of bugles and drums and the fine words from stay-at-home orators. Sometimes the rallying cry is ‘Save the Tomb of Christ from the Heathen!’ Sometimes it’s ‘Down with Popery!’ and sometimes ‘Liberty!’ and sometimes ‘Cotton, Slavery and States’ Rights!’ Margaret Michell, Gone with the Wind
A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy. Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means
War is not nice. Barbara Bush
Man has no right to kill his brother. It is no excuse that he does so in uniform: he only adds the infamy of servitude to the crime of murder. Percy Bysshe Shelley
There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but boys, it is all hell. William Tecumseh Sherman
I confess, without shame, that I am sick and tired of fighting – its glory is all moonshine; even success the most brilliant is over dead and mangled bodies, with the anguish and lamentations of distant families, appealing to me for sons, husbands, and fathers ... it is only those who have never heard a shot, never heard the shriek and groans of the wounded and lacerated ... that cry aloud for more blood, more vengeance, more desolation. William Tecumseh Sherman, letter May 1865
War means fighting, and fighting means killing. Nathan Bedford Forrest
They went with songs to the battle, they were young.
Straight of limb, true of eyes, steady and aglow.
They were staunch to the end against odds uncounted,
They fell with their faces to the foe.
They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.
At the going down of the sun and in the morning,
We will remember them. Laurene Binyon, The Times September 1914 ‘Ode to Remembrance, For the Fallen’
Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori [Lovely and honourable it is to die for one’s country] Horace, Odes
It wasn’t the war to end all wars ... war can effect change, that war can fulfil ambitions, that war can work. The First World War: War Without End, BBC 2003
Hear the words I sing –
War’s a horrid thing.
So I sing sing sing
Ding-a-ling-a-ling. Blackadder Goes Forth: Plan F – Goodbyeee, Baldrick’s war poem, BBC 1989
Why can’t we just stop, sir? We can’t we just say no more killing; let’s all go home? Why would it be stupid just to pack it in, sir, why? ibid.
In war, whichever side may call itself a victor, there are no winners, but all are losers. Neville Chamberlain
No-one can guarantee success in war but only deserve it. Winston Churchill, letter to Lord Wavell 26th November 1940
I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of people upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war. George V, message read at Terlincthun Cemetery, Boulogne 13th May 1922
Do not speak to me of rules. This is war. This is not a game of cricket. The Bridge on the River Kwai 1957 starring Alec Guinness & William Holden & Jack Hawkins & Ann Sears & Sessue Hayakawa & James Donald & Geoffrey Horne & Heihachiro Okawa & Keiichiro Katsumoto et al, director David Lean
Goebbels: Do you want total war?
Mob: Yes!
We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. We have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youths our hearts were touched with fire. Oliver Wendell Holmes
There is nothing puzzling ... about America’s gratuitously aggressive foreign policy or about the oligarchs’ successful efforts to drag the Republic into five wars. What an aggressive foreign policy accomplishes by slow degrees, a state of war accomplishes in a trice. Overnight [war] kills reform, overnight it transforms insurgents into traitors and the Republic into an imperilled realm. Overnight it strangles free politics, distracts and overawes the citizenry. Overnight it blasts public hope. Walter Karp
How steep the price in every war. It is the risk of death which sets apart the world of these men, who are our soldiers. Vietnam news report
If the reporter’s obligation is to bring us all the truths of war, the first truth is tearing of flesh. Mark Daniels, Enemy Image, 2005
They [Royal Family] give their consent to any war going. Royal Babylon *****
The fact that war is the word we use for almost everything – on terrorism, drugs, even poverty – has certainly helped to desensitize us to its invocation; if we wage wars on everything, how bad can they be? Glen Greenwald, A Tragic Legacy