Top 40 Quotes About War (2024 Update)

1. “If wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth.”

— Julian Assange

2. “If we don’t end war, war will end us.”

— H. G. Wells

Also featured in: Peace Quotes

3. “Right is right, even if everyone is against it, and wrong is wrong, even if everyone is for it.”

— William Penn

4. “The cunning of the fox is as murderous as the violence of the wolf.”

— Thomas Paine

5. “If not us, who? And if not now, when?”

— Ronald Reagan

6. “Make time for planning: Wars are won in the general’s tent.”

— Stephen R. Covey

7. “Show me who makes a profit from war, and I’ll show you how to stop the war.”

— Henry Ford

8. “Conflict is inevitable but combat is optional.”

— Max Lucado

Also featured in: Peace Quotes

9. “The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting.”

— Sun Tzu

Also featured in: Fighting Quotes, Art Quotes

10. “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”

— George Orwell

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes, Ignorance Quotes

11. “Generally speaking, the Way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

12. “There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.”

— Howard Zinn

Also featured in: Peace Quotes

13. “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

— Sun Tzu

Also featured in: Peace Quotes

14. “Peace is not absence of conflict, it is the ability to handle conflict by peaceful means.”

— Ronald Reagan

15. “First feelings are always the most natural.”

— Louis XIV

Also featured in: Firsts Quotes, Quotes About Feelings

16. “We shall never surrender.”

— Winston Churchill

17. “War doesn’t determine who’s right, it determines who’s left.”

— Eddie Vedder

18. “It is imperative to master the principles of the art of war and learn to be unmoved in mind even in the heat of the battle.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

19. “Polish your wisdom: learn public justice, distinguish between good and evil, study the ways of different arts one by one.”

— Miyamoto Musashi

Also featured in: Evil Quotes

20. “The best way to keep one's word is not to give it.”

— Napoleon

Also featured in: Communication Quotes, Quotes About Giving

21. “Only the dead have seen the end of war.”

— Plato

22. “A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed. We are one planet.”

— Carl Sagan

23. “I have not yet begun to fight!”

— John Paul Jones

24. “There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

25. “Historically, the most terrible things – war, genocide, and slavery – have resulted not from disobedience, but from obedience.”

— Howard Zinn

26. “Peace is more than just an absence of war. True peace is justice, true peace is freedom, and true peace dictates the recognition of human rights.”

— Ronald Reagan

Also featured in: Freedom Quotes, Rights Quotes

27. “Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed, Everybody knows that the war is over, Everybody knows the good guys lost.”

— Leonard Cohen

28. “The worst evils which mankind has ever had to endure were inflicted by bad governments.”

— Ludwig von Mises

Also featured in: Peace Quotes, Government Quotes

29. “With men, the state of nature is not a state of peace, but war.”

— Immanuel Kant

30. “Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.”

— William Hazlitt

Also featured in: Peace Quotes, Quotes About Humanity

31. “War is what happens when language fails.”

— Margaret Atwood

32. “The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.”

— Thomas Paine

Also featured in: 4th Of July Quotes

33. “To abolish war it is necessary to abolish patriotism, and to abolish patriotism it is necessary first to understand that it is an evil. Tell people that patriotism is bad and most will reply, ‘Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but mine is good patriotism.’”

— Leo Tolstoy

Also featured in: Evil Quotes

34. “In all history there is no war which was not hatched by the governments, the governments alone, independent of the interests of the people, to whom war is always pernicious even when successful.”

— Leo Tolstoy

35. “He who wishes to be a surgeon should go to war.”

— Hippocrates

36. “Character is much easier kept than recovered.”

— Thomas Paine

Also featured in: Integrity Quotes

37. “I hear the birds on the summer breeze, I drive fast I am alone in the night Been trying hard not to get into trouble, but I I’ve got a war in my mind So, I just ride.”

— Lana Del Rey

Also featured in: Quotes About Night, Summer Quotes

38. “No enterprise is more likely to succeed than one concealed from the enemy until it is ripe for execution.”

— Niccolò Machiavelli

Also featured in: Philosophical Quotes

39. “Our Generation has had no Great war, no Great Depression. Our war is spiritual. Our depression is our lives.”

— Chuck Palahniuk

40. “War is the only proper school of the surgeon.”

— Hippocrates

Also featured in: School Quotes

41. “Out of every one hundred men, ten shouldn’t even be there, eighty are just targets, nine are the real fighters, and we are lucky to have them, for they make the battle. Ah, but the one, one is a warrior, and he will bring the others back.”

— Heraclitus

Also featured in: Leadership Quotes, Character Quotes

42. “Miseram pacem vel bello bene mutari. Even war is preferable to a shameful peace.”

— Tacitus