Archive

Quotes

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

—Benjamin Franklin, 1773

War is the child of pride, and pride the daughter of riches.

—Jonathan Swift, 1697

Don’t talk to me about naval tradition. It’s nothing but rum, sodomy, and the lash.

—Winston Churchill, 1939

A dead enemy always smells good.

—Aulus Vitellius, 69

War to the castles; peace to the cottages.

—Nicolas Chamfort, 1790

Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer.

—William Cecil, Lord Burghley, c. 1555

As peace is of all goodness, so war is an emblem, a hieroglyphic, of all misery.

—John Donne, 1622

The fear of war is worse than war itself.

—Seneca, c. 50

You furnish the pictures, and I’ll furnish the war. 

—William Randolph Hearst, 1898

I have loved war too well.

—Louis XIV, 1715

I went [to war] because I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want the glory or the pay; I wanted the right thing done.

—Louisa May Alcott, 1863

Sometime they’ll give a war and nobody will come.

—Carl Sandburg, 1936

War is sweet to those who don’t know it.

—Erasmus, 1508