War Quotes

We have a very daring and skillful opponent against us, and, may I say across the havoc of war, a great general.

But who in war will not have his laugh amid the skulls?

When you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.

Air power may either end war or end civilization.

Before America entered the war [WW2] I knew we could not win it, but after she entered I knew we could not lose

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.

I never slept as soundly as the night following Pearl Harbor. For I knew that The American Race would now be entering the war and it would never be the same.

The pictorial battlefield becomes a sea of mud mercifully veiled by the fog of war.

War, which used to be cruel and magnificent has now become cruel and squalid.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling one's pulse and taking one's temperature.

My hope is that the generous instincts of unity will not depart from us...[so that we] become the prey of the little folk who exist in every country and who frolic alongside the Juggernaut car of war to see what fun or notoriety they can extract from the proceedings.

There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is far worse or much harder to win.

The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.

Put together a seaman, soldier and airman and what do you get? The sum of all fears.

I am not a bit afraid of Siegfried Sassoon. That man can think. I am afraid only of people who cannot think.

For the first time I heard shots fired in anger, heard bullets strike flesh or whistle through the air.

You have to run risks. There are no certainties in war. There is a precipice on either side of you - a precipice of caution and a precipice of over-daring.

Far be it from me to paint a rosy picture of the future. Indeed, I do not think we should be justified in using any but the most sombre tones and colours while our people, our Empire and indeed the whole English-speaking world are passing through a dark and deadly valley. But I should be failing in my duty if, on the other wise, I were not to convey the true impression, that a great nation is getting into its war stride.

On September 28 the fleet hove in sight, and all came safely to anchor in Pevensey Bay. There was no opposition to the landing. The local "fyrd" had been called out this year four times already to watch the coast, and having, in true English style, come to the conclusion that the danger was past because it had not yet arrived had gone back to their homes.

No American will think it wrong of me if I proclaim that to have the United States at our side was to me the greatest joy. I could not foretell the course of events. I do not pretend to have measured accurately the martial might of Japan, but now at this very moment I knew the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to powder.