World War Quotes – Reflective Statements on Historical Events

"The war [i.e., the American Civil War of 1861-1865] would never have been possible without the sinister influence of the Jesuits."

Abraham Lincoln

"In times of war, there is a level of information control in reporting that is abhorrent in the case of traditional wars. In the case of a pandemic, however, one must take less democratic measures from one moment to the next [...] Over the past two years, with the outbreak of the pandemic, we have seen that the way our world is organized is outdated. Two aspects are affected by this: communication and global governance. In terms of communication, we immediately used the term “war” because it is a war, but we have not implemented a communication policy in any country that is appropriate for a war [...] I believe that in this pandemic, or at least in future global health disasters, we need to find a system that preserves freedom of expression but reconciles it with information rationed from above."

Mario Monti

"The statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting the blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception."

Mark Twain

"All through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance period the popes kept Italy in turmoil and bloodshed for their own family and territorial advantages, and they kept all Europe in turmoil, for two centuries after the Reformation,—in fact, just as long as they could,—in the wars of religion . . . Their whole policy is based on stirring up hatred and promoting conflicts from which they hope to draw worldly advantage . . . Popes and their Jesuitical agents have been and are the instigators of wars, and while the world is having real pain, Rome is having champagne."

Jeremiah J. Crowley

"Luxury destroys more efficiently than war."

Juvenal

"World Peace begins in the kitchen."

Vegane Weisheiten

"The world is so vast that there is room in it for all mistakes."

Rudolf Augstein

"The world has always gone through periods of madness so as to advance a bit on the road to reason."

Hermann Broch

"The responsibility for a war becomes all the harder to bear the larger the armies, the costs of war, and the economic losses suffered by both belligerents become. Therefore, strong standing armies are, in this respect as well, the best guarantee of peace, and high military budgets an insurance premium against war."

Eduard von Hartmann

"Wars in old times were made to get slaves. The modern implement of imposing slavery is debt."

Ezra Pound

"I once saw a photograph of a large herd of wild elephants in Central Africa Seeing an airplane for the first time, and all in a state of wild collective terror... As, however, there were no journalists among them, the terror died down when the airplane was out of sight."

Bertrand Russell

"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron."

Eisenhower

"The only way to win World War III is to prevent it."

Eisenhower

"We live in a world where we have to hide to make love, while violence is practiced in broad daylight."

John Lennon

"In some ways, certain books are more powerful by far than any battle."

Henry A. Wallace

"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich."

Peter Ustinov

"They are longing for a war with Iran. Iran is no more a harm to us than was Iraq or Afghanistan. They invented an enemy, they tell lies, lies, lies. The New York Times goes along with their lies, lies, lies. And they don't stop. When the public that's lied to 30 times a day it's apt to believe the lies, is not it?"

Gore Vidal

"Seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary people do not usually know what this connection means for the kind of people they are becoming and for the kind of history-making in which they might take part."

Charles Wright Mills