Top 100 Quotes About War (2025 Update)
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51. “Cry havoc and let slip the dogs of war!”

— William Shakespeare

52. “Humble words and increased preparations are signs that the enemy is about to advance. Violent language and driving forward as if to the attack are signs that he will retreat.”

— Sun Tzu

53. “Come back with your shield – or on it.”

— Plutarch

54. “He who fears being conquered is sure of defeat.”

— Napoleon

55. “All wars signify the failure of conflict resolution mechanisms, and they need post-war rebuilding of faith, trust and confidence.”

— Abdul Kalam

56. “One may know how to conquer without being able to do it.”

— Sun Tzu

57. “To Subdue an enemy without fighting is the greatest of skills.”

— Sun Tzu

58. “This is a war to end all wars.”

— Woodrow Wilson

59. “When strong, avoid them. If of high morale, depress them. Seem humble to fill them with conceit. If at ease, exhaust them. If united, separate them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.”

— Sun Tzu

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

— H. G. Wells

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

— William Penn

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

— Thomas Paine

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

— Ronald Reagan

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

— Stephen R. Covey

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

— Henry Ford

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

— George Orwell

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

— Max Lucado

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

— Sun Tzu

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

— Miyamoto Musashi

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

— Sun Tzu

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

— Howard Zinn

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

— Ronald Reagan

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

— Louis XIV

74. “We shall never surrender.”

— Winston Churchill

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

— Eddie Vedder

76. “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

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

— Miyamoto Musashi

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

— Napoleon

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

— Plato

80. “I have not yet begun to fight!”

— John Paul Jones

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

— Howard Zinn

82. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

84. “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

85. “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

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

— Ludwig von Mises

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

— Immanuel Kant

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

— William Hazlitt

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

— Margaret Atwood

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

— Thomas Paine

91. “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

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

— Hippocrates

93. “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

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

— Thomas Paine

95. “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

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

— Niccolò Machiavelli

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

— Chuck Palahniuk

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

— Hippocrates

99. “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

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

— Tacitus