War Quotes
The quotes that launched a thousand Shmoops.
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War Quotes
Bloody wars have been waged over everything from civil rights to a shot pig. Click on any war quote below to see it in context and find out where it falls on Shmoop's pretentious scale. We'll give you details on who said it, when they said it, and in some cases, why on earth they thought it was okay to say it.
"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."Source: Blade Runner | Speaker: Roy Batty
"Anything worth dying for...is certainly worth living for."Source: Catch-22 | Author: Joseph Heller
"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."Source: Gone with the Wind | Author: Margaret Mitchell
"Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun."Source: Digging | Author: Seamus Heaney
"But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it."Source: Introduction to Poetry | Author: Billy Collins
"Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!"Source: Battle of Bunker Hill | Speaker: William Prescott
"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."Source: Coraline | Author: Neil Gaiman & G.K. Chesterton
"First rule of Fight Club is... you do not talk about Fight Club."Source: Fight Club | Speaker: Tyler Durden
"He who marches out of step hears another drum."Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Author: Ken Kesey
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."Source: Stars Wars Episode IV: A New Hope | Speaker: Princess Leia Organa
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."Source: Misquoted | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"Human beings can be awful cruel to one another."Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Author: Mark Twain
"I believe it is peace for our time."Source: Speech outside 10 Downing Street | Speaker: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
"I have not yet begun to fight."Source: Spoken on September 23, 1779 | Speaker: Captain John Paul Jones
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."Source: 1780 Letter | Author: John Adams
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good"Source: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Author: J.K. Rowling
"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars."Source: War and Peace | Author: Leo Tolstoy
"If you'd have been there, if you'd have seen it, I betcha you would have done the same!"Source: "Cell Block Tango" | Speaker: Prison Girls
"Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred"Source: The Charge of the Light Brigade | Author: Alfred Lord Tennyson
"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."Source: BBC Radio Broadcast | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Let's face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short."Source: Animal Farm | Author: George Orwell
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."Source: The Declaration of Independence | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"Man serves the interests of no creature except himself."Source: Animal Farm | Author: George Orwell
"Mankind must put an end to war—or war will put an end to mankind."Source: Address to the UN General Assembly (1961) | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast."Source: The Mourning Bride | Author: William Congreve
"Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you."Source: Game of Thrones | Speaker: Tyrion Lannister
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."Source: Speech to the House of Commons, August 20, 1940 | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die."Source: Speech to the 23rd Republican National Convention (June 1944) | Speaker: Herbert Hoover
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."Source: Problems of War and Strategy | Speaker: Mao Zedong
"See that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet."Source: The Gospel of Matthew | Speaker: Jesus of Nazareth
"She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together."Source: "A Girl I Knew" | Author: J.D. Salinger
"So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause."Source: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith | Speaker: Senator Padmé Amidala
"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting."Source: The Red Badge of Courage | Author: Stephen Crane
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."Source: Letter to Col. William S. Smith, November 13, 1787 | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places."Source: A Farewell to Arms | Author: Ernest Hemingway
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."Source: The Second Coming | Author: William Butler Yeats
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."Source: Pennsylvania Assembly | Author: Benjamin Franklin
"Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner.""Source: Ich bin ein Berliner Speech | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."Source: Speech to the Mayor and Councilmen of Atlanta (1864) | Speaker: William Tecumseh Sherman
"We are the champions, my friends, and we'll keep on fighting 'til the end."Source: We Are the Champions | Speaker: Queen
"We have met the enemy and they are ours."Source: Letter to William Henry Harrison | Author: Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry
"We must guard against […] unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."Source: Eisenhower's Farewell Address | Speaker: Dwight Eisenhower
"Wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there."Source: The Grapes of Wrath | Speaker: Tom Joad
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."Source: 1946 Letter | Author: Albert Einstein