Aphorisms Galore!

War and Peace

74 aphorisms  ·  one comment

Aphorisms in This Category

tiny.ag/piklxjab  ·   Fair (223 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.

Victor Hugo, in Success and Failure and War and Peace

tiny.ag/ognqp9t4  ·   Fair (102 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

Aldous Huxley, in Science and Religion and War and Peace

tiny.ag/qgj3ivvu  ·   Fair (151 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

You should never wear your best trousers when you go out to fight for freedom and liberty.

Henrik Ibsen, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/jaishdmt  ·   Fair (178 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

War hath no fury like a non-combatant.

Charles Edward Montague, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/9pd1qmsc  ·   Fair (914 ratings)  ·  submitted 1999

One moment on the battlefield is worth a thousand years of peace.

Benito Mussolini, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/ucs9vnd3  ·   Fair (829 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

John Stuart Mill, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/4kgkvwyo  ·   Fair (170 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

I believe that Ronald Reagan will someday make this country what it once was... an arctic wilderness.

Steve Martin, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/5i2ylath  ·   Fair (313 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Military justice is to justice what military music is to music.

Groucho Marx, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/l9ib3pad  ·   Fair (323 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms.

Groucho Marx, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/aolzpl1x  ·   Fair (158 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The superpowers often behave like two heavily armed blind men feeling their way around a room, each believing himself in mortal peril from the other, whom he assumes to have perfect vision. Each tends to ascribe to the other side a consistency, foresight and coherence that its own experience belies. Of course, even two blind men can do enormous damage to each other, not to speak of the room.

Henry Kissinger, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/r3davdhl  ·   Fair (427 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

In war, there is no substitute for victory.

Douglas MacArthur, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/ry32bjva  ·   Fair (823 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Catch-22 (paperback)

The enemy is anybody who's going to get you killed, no matter which side he's on.

Joseph Heller, Catch-22, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/ldizacqu  ·   Fair (337 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Foundation (paperback)

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Isaac Asimov, Foundation (Salvor Hardin), in War and Peace and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/e87wmjqg  ·   Fair (558 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/5mrm7cdg  ·   Fair (3018 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The Greek Way (paperback)

It was a Roman who said it was sweet to die for one's country. The Greeks never said it was sweet to die for anything. They had no vital lies.

Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way, in Life and Death and War and Peace

tiny.ag/rkg7iuvl  ·   Fair (230 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The graveyards are full of indispensable men.

Charles de Gaulle, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/xm0eggq6  ·   Fair (195 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

David Friedman, in War and Peace

tiny.ag/lgkszg2d  ·   Fair (431 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin, in Law and Politics and War and Peace

tiny.ag/b5zelloy  ·   Fair (531 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

Edward Everett, in War and Peace and Wisdom and Ignorance

tiny.ag/onprshw2  ·   Fair (346 ratings)  ·  submitted 1997

All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power.

Ralph Waldo Emerson, in War and Peace