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21b0c1f Sometimes heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination, the sort of unshowy soldiering that didn't win medals but wars. war Iain M. Banks
5d820a8 The trenches', wrote Robert Kee fifty years later, 'were the concentration camps of the First World War'; and though the analogy is what an academic reviewer would call unhistorical, there is something Treblinka-like about almost all accounts of July 1st, about those long docile lines of young men, shoddily uniformed, heavily burdened, numbered about their necks, plodding forward across a featureless landscape to their own extermination inside the barbed wire. Accounts of the Somme produce in readers and audiences much the same emotions as do descriptions of the running of Auschwitz - guilty fascination, incredulity, horror, disgust, pity and anger - and not only from the pacific and tender-hearted; not only from the military historian, on whom, as he recounts the extinction of this brave effort or that, falls an awful lethargy, his typewriter keys tapping leadenly on the paper to drive the lines of print, like the waves of a Kitchener battalioon failing to take its objective, more and more slowly towards the foot of the page; but also from professional soldiers [...] Why did the commanders not do something about it? Why did they let the attack go on? why did they not stop one battalion following in the wake of another to join it in death? war wwi John Keegan
7bcb2e9 Richard Nixon had made a fatal error in ignoring the politico-meteorological dimension when he announced the expansion of the Vietnam War into Cambodia on April 30, 1970. The invasion of Laos, on the other hand, happened in February 1971, and the campuses were quiet. Who wants to stage a walkout in February? protest war weather Rebecca Goldstein
bffb11f Before man's bravery I bow my head: More so when valour is unnatural And fear, a bat between the shoulder-blades Flaps its cold webs - but I am ill at ease With propaganda glory, and the lies Of statesmen and the lords of slippery trades. - May 1941. propaganda war Mervyn Peake
3357093 Hungry men are not known for their patience or their kindness. patience-kindness pestilence war Karen Essex
dd1505c "I remember my father telling me about England's redrawing of India's boundaries when it became independent. They wanted to separate the Hindu from the Muslim, but they used outdated maps. Twelve million people had to relocate because the Brits screwed it up so badly. And a half million people died during the resulting chaos. And before that, Iraq was unilaterally cobbled together, causing many of the conflicts we see today. There are dozens of such examples. The strong countries smashing the weaker ones and then avoiding responsibility later for the very problems they caused." "You keep proving my point, Tom, that we're rotten to the core." "My point is we never learn!" religion war David Baldacci
55485d8 "-"I remember my father telling me about England's redrawing of India's boundaries when it became independent. They wanted to separate the Hindu from the Muslim, but they used outdated maps. Twelve million people had to relocate because the Brits screwed it up so badly. And a half million people died during the resulting chaos. And before that, Iraq was unilaterally cobbled together, causing many of the conflicts we see today. There are dozens of such examples. The strong countries smashing the weaker ones and then avoiding responsibility later for the very problems they caused." -"You keep proving my point, Tom, that we're rotten to the core." -"My point is we never learn!" war David Baldacci
b18647d For DeHaven it was well worth the extra money to a federal budget that had always allocated more to war than it ever did to peaceful purposes. For a fraction of the cost of one missile he could purchase on the open market every work the library needed to round out its rare books collection. Yet politicians believed that missiles kept you safe, whereas actually books did, and for a simple reason. Ignorance caused wars, and people who read widely were seldom ignorant. ignorance library war David Baldacci
d873e98 Don't worry about me, no matter what happens. We're nervous here, but not afraid. We have all looked into our souls, one way or another, and are content to die if need be. The only thing left to say is that I love you. war Mark Helprin
8a6a617 Civilians seldom understand that soldiers, once impressed into war, will forever take it for the ordinary state of the world, with all else illusion. The former soldier assumes that when time weakens the dream of civilian life and its supports pull away, he will revert to the one state that will always hold his heart. He dreams of war and remembers it in quiet times when he might otherwise devote himself to different things, and he is ruined for the peace. What he has seen is as powerful and mysterious as death itself, and yet he has not died, and he wonders why. war Mark Helprin
9981143 ...these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets. war Azar Nafisi
728171f It was the fact that I didn't want to kill anyone. I wasn't put on this earth to murder my fellow man. I'd grown up with violence - can't you see that? I can't bear it. war John Boyne
e2130e2 the greatest trick of kings is to fool the poor into thinking we have common cause with the rich simply because we live on the same bog. Then the poor get their heads split open in the battles they fight so the rich can keep their wine cellars well stocked. politics poor rich war Kate Horsley
92431b7 "Decades would pass. A few short sections would be formed in time into strangely resurrected, trunkless legs-tourist sites, sacred sites, national sites. past war Richard Flanagan
9e12bbe War is now a form of TV entertainment war Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
a241587 As for national greatness: It is probably true that all nations are great and even holy at the time of death. The Biafrans had never fought before. They fought well this time. They will never fight again. They will never play Finlandia on an ancient marimba again. Peace. patriotism war Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
9f9076c What was a prisoner of war anyway? Less than a man, just material to be used to make the railway, like the teak sleepers and steel rails and dog spikes. war Richard Flanagan
561fa40 The Line welcomed rain and sun. Seeds germinated in mass graves, between skulls and femurs and broken pick handles, tendrils rose up alongside dog spikes and clavicles, thrust around teak sleepers and tibias, scapulas, vertebrae, fibulas and femurs. dying life war Richard Flanagan
173cb0f The result of these shared experiences was a closeness unknown to all outsiders. Comrades are closer than friends, closer than brothers. Their relationship is different from that of lovers. Their trust in, and knowledge of, each other is total. They got to know each other's life stories, what they did before they came into the Army, where and why they volunteered, what they liked to eat and drink, what their capabilities were. On a night march they would hear a cough and know who it was; on a night maneuver they would see someone sneaking through the woods and know who it was from his silhouette. comrades soldiers stephen-e-ambrose war Stephen E. Ambrose
ee160d2 "We could unleash all this technology at once. You can imagine what would happen then. But that's not the interesting thing." "What is the interesting thing?" "The interesting thing is that we have a moral sense. It is on punched cards, perhaps the most advanced and sensitive moral sense the world has ever known." "Because it is on punched cards?" "It considers all considerations in endless and subtle detail," he said. "It even quibbles. With this great new moral tool, how can we go wrong? I confidently predict that, although we could employ all this splendid new weaponry I've been telling you about, we're not going to do it." war Donald Barthelme
859c4b7 Tenemos putrefactores, plagas y oxidos capaces de atacar su alfabeto. Estos son la leche. Tenemos un producto quimico para encoger sus cabanas que penetra las fibras del bambu provocando que las chozas asfixien a sus ocupantes. Esto funciona solo despues de las diez de la noche, cuando la gente duerme. Sus matematicas estan a merced de un supurante numero sordo que hemos inventado. Tenemos una familia de peces entrenados para atacar a sus peces.Tenemos el mortal telegrama destructor de testiculos. Las companias de telecomunicaciones estan colaborando con el proyecto. Tenemos una sustancia verde que, bueno, mejor no hablo de esto. humor war Donald Barthelme
22149b0 Minie balls and repeating rifles. That was why the body count was so high. We had trench warfare in America way before WW1. p128 war Donna Tartt
1e49912 "Perche finche la guerra e altrove, non riesci a prenderla sul serio. Come ha detto Martha Gellhorn "La guerra e un fatto personale". E proprio cosi: finche non capita a te, non riesci a capirla, tanto meno a immaginarla. Finche non entra nella tua vita e irreale" reality war Lucy Foley
cebf249 The recruits of 1914 have the look of ghosts. They are queuing up to be slaughtered: they are already dead. ghosts soldiers somme war Geoff Dyer
5fae640 Perhaps war was due to fear: to fear of reliability. Unless there was truth, and unless people told the truth, there was always danger in everything outside the individual. You told the truth to yourself, but you had no surety for your neighbour. This uncertainty must end by making the neighbour a menace. politics war T. H. White
0d24b51 "We are all ghosts," Morris Klapper said at last. "We are conceived in a moment of death and born out of ghost wombs, and we play in the streets with other little ghosts, chanting ghost-rhymes and scratching to become real. We are told that life is full of goals and that, although it is sadly necessary to fight, you can at least choose your war. But we learn that for ghosts there can only be one battle: to become real. A few of us make it, thus encouraging other ghosts to believe it can be done." ghosts goals morris-klapper necessary-to-fight real to-become-real war Peter S. Beagle
e4c8a63 If I die anytime soon, you make sure they bury me right. history war Markus Zusak
8f10c00 The first stone, thrown by Hellgiver, crashed through the roof of a dyer's house close to St Brieuc's church and took off the heads of an English man-at-arms and the dyer's wife. A joke went through the garrison that the two bodies were so crushed together by the boulder that they would go on coupling throughout eternity. war Bernard Cornwell
39c2e49 1. The desperate Jews - their spirits in my lap as we sat on the roof, next to the steaming chimneys. 2. The Russian soldiers - taking only small amounts of ammunition, relying on the fallen for the rest of it. 3. The soaked bodies of a French coast - beached on the shingle and sand. souls war Markus Zusak
d5b786c Those who suffer terrible wars have a finer sense of when they begin and when they end. korea korean-war military-history war war-history Bruce Cumings
2cda6ff It was this war and not World War II which established a far-flung American base structure abroad and a national security state at home, as defence spending nearly quadrupled in the last six months of 1950, and turned the United States into the policeman of the world. korea military-history the-korean-war war war-history Bruce Cumings
189c935 The implications of the true story are existential and corrosive to our larger national myth. To understand that the most costly war in this country's history was launched in direct opposition to everything the country claims to be, to understand that this war was the product of centuries of enslavement, which is to see an even longer, more total war, is to alter the accepted conception of America as a beacon of freedom. How does one face this truth or forge a national identity out of it? freedom mythology race race-relations racism slavery war Ta-Nehisi Coates
5b629a3 "There will never again be men like them," said Carreen softly. "No one can take their places." loss men war Margaret Mitchell
ae682ac "Absage Lieber von einem Faschisten erschlagen werden Als selber Faschist sein! Lieber von einem Kommunisten erschlagen werden Als selber Kommunist sein! Wir haben den Krieg nicht vergessen. Wir wissen, Wie das berauscht, wenn man Trommel und Pauke ruhrt. Wir sind taub, wir werden nicht mitgerissen, Wenn ihr das Volk mit dem alten Rauschgift verfuhrt. Wir sind weder Soldaten noch Weltverbesserer mehr, Wir glauben nicht, dass "an unserem Wesen Die Welt musse genesen". Wir sind arm, wir haben Schiffbruch gelitten, Wir glauben alle an die hubschen Phrasen nicht mehr, Mit denen man uns in den Krieg gepeitscht und geritten - Auch die Euren, rote Bruder, sind Zauber und fuhren zu Krieg und Gas! Auch Eure Fuhrer sind Generale, Kommandieren, schreien und organisieren, Wir aber, wir hassen das, Wir trinken den Fusel nicht mehr, Wir wollen Herz und Vernunft nicht verlieren, Nicht unter roten noch weissen Fahnen marschieren. Lieber wollen wir einsam als "Traumer" verderben Oder unter Euren blutigen Bruderhanden sterben, Als irgend ein Partei- und Machtgluck geniessen war Hermann Hesse
6442b45 - Then tell me of your long journey home, Ada said. Inman thought about it, but then he let himself imagine he had at last come out on the far side of trouble and had no wish to revisit it, so he told only how along the way he watched the nights of the moon and counted them out to twenty-eight and then started over, how he watched Orion climb higher up the slope of sky night by night, and how he had tried to walk with no hope and no fear but had failed miserably, for he had done both. But how on the best days of walking he achieved some success in matching his thoughts to the weather, dark or bright, so as to attune with what freak of God's mind sent cloud or shine. Then he added, I met a number of folks on the way. There was a goatwoman that fed me, and she claimed it's a sign of God's mercy that He won't let us remember the reddest details of pain. He knows the parts we can't bear and won't let our minds render them again. In time, from disuse, they pale away. At least such was her thinking. God lays the unbearable on you and then takes some back. trauma war Charles Frazier
f7ab16f My mother told stories - of their life in the war and how she'd played the accordion in the air-raid shelter and it had got rid of the rats. Apparently rats like violins and pianos but they can't stand the accordion . . . air-raid rats war Jeanette Winterson
215a42a If you have been embroiled in a war in which you confidently expected to die, what were you supposed to do with so much life unexpectedly left over? There were so many ways of passing the peace, and you would never know what they would have been like, those roads not taken. path-not-taken road-not-taken war Louis de Bernières
a36e231 "In January 1943, there appeared in a Negro newspaper this "Draftee's Prayer": Dear Lord, today I go to war: To fight, to die, Tell me what for? Dear Lord, I'll fight, I do not fear, Germans or Japs; My fears are here. America!" fear war Howard Zinn
191bec9 The Mexicans had fired the first shot. But they had done what the American government wanted, according to Colonel Hitchcock, who wrote in his diary, even before those first incidents: I have said from the first that the United States are the aggressors. . . We have not one particle of right to be here. . . It looks as if the government sent a small force on purpose to bring on war, so as to have a pretext for taking California and as much of this country as it chooses, for, whatever becomes of this army, there is no doubt of war between the United States and Mexico. . . My heart is not in this business. . . but, as a military man, I am bound to execute orders. military war Howard Zinn
6d0d702 Psychology is a soft weapon but you can take out more enemy battalions with leaflets and radio broadcasts than with high explosives. war Nelson DeMille
4c886c1 We soldiers knew next to nothing about what was going on in the centres of power. We received so many orders and counter-orders that there were times when we did not obey any of them at all, knowing that they were likely to be countermanded almost immediately. soldiers war ww2 ww2-books Louis de Bernières
f34d058 Yes, they'd lost. But it was just a battle, not the war. star-wars war Timothy Zahn
b8c52f3 He could help put a man on the Moon, but he couldn't count the body bags. Send a satellite spinning, but he couldn't figure out how many crosses to go into the ground. space vietnam-war war Colum McCann
3de4ee4 "...Father dislikes weaponry of any sort. " "Yes, he's even suspicious of Mother's knitting scissors," Barnaby B pointed out. "He feels all warfare should be conducted with taunts and gibes and vicious rumors." rumors taunts war warfare weapons Lois Lowry
2c1723a She doesn't realize yet though men go to war it is the women who suffer--perhaps more than anyone. war women Philippa Gregory
1ced81f Be one of many. Be sure that they never have reason to remember your face. war Lois Lowry
71a907a After all, you can't really blame the Waffen S.S. for doing what comes naturally. But a funny thing happened on the way to the moral high ground. nazis ss waffen-ss war Garth Ennis
aea5ab4 Well, I once recall an old master sergeant once telling me that NCOs look after the men so that officers can figure out how to get them killed. That's the difference between maintenance and command. killed maintenance military ncos officers war Garth Ennis
01cd5f8 It's the time to run away an' hide under the bed, an' hope the world's still in one piece when you come out again. hide war world Garth Ennis
3796708 My stol'ko voevali, i vse radi togo, chtoby nam ne perekrasili doma v goluboi tsvet (<>, G.G. Markes) war война свобода-выбора Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
789ea23 I refused to teach Sunday school. When Archdeacon Henry Phillips, my last rector, died, I flatly refused again to join any church or sign any church creed. From my 30th year on I have increasingly regarded the church as an institution which defended such evils as slavery, color caste, exploitation of labor and war. evil slavery superstition war W.E.B. Du Bois
98e0ef9 It was this war and not World War II which established a far-flung American base structure abroad and a national security state at home, as defence spending nearly quadrupled in the last six months of 1950, and turned the United States in the policeman of the world. military-history the-korean-war war war-history Bruce Cumings
4f4de13 Eventually the Korean War will be understood as one of the most destructive and one of the most important wars of the twentieth century. korea korean-war military-history war Bruce Cumings
a8e3440 Carleton took issue with Steck's advocacy on behalf of Natives and embarked on a campaign with military leaders on Capitol Hill that eventually forced Steck out of his job. carleton history military native-american steck war Noel Marie Fletcher
f74874d Buddhism spreads by people converting out of their own wish for peace and right action. But power condenses around those willing to use force. peace power religion war Kim Stanley Robinson
5d2fdf3 A common thread that weaves the stories of all the captives together is race--one racial group attacking another. Many innocent people were simply trying to live their ordinary lives when another group decided it was justifiable to use violence to rob, beat, murder, kidnap, sometimes mutilate, and enslave others and their loved ones. history innocents race racism southwest war Noel Marie Fletcher
1f50e68 I am going to be Queen of England,' I protest. 'You make it sound like a battle to the death.' 'It is a battle to the death,' she says simply. 'That is what it means to be Queen of England. You are not Melusina, rising from a fountain to easy happiness. You will not be a beautiful woman at court with nothing to do but make magic. The road you have chosen will mean that you have to spend your life scheming and fighting. Our task, as your family, is to make sure you win. historical romance war Philippa Gregory
ec14880 During the war, I promised the dead I would never forget them. I stared at them, barely able to move myself. Pretended I was one of them. To this day I can recall the light in the ruins. ruins war Chris Bohjalian
c180e64 In fact the United States has had no exit strategy since 1945, expect in places where we were kicked out (Vietnam) or asked to leave (the Philippines): American troops still occupy Japan, Korea, and Germany, in the seventh decade after the end of World War II. Policymakers - almost always civilians with little or no military experience (Acheson is the archetype) - get Americans into wars but cannot get them out, and soon the Pentagon takes over, establishes bases, and the entire enterprise becomes a perpetual-motion machine fuelled by a defence budget that dwarfs all others in the world. korean-war military military-history war Bruce Cumings
bd09341 You make peace with one sister only to declare war on the other. It's always like that with peace, isn't it? Always to someone's detriment, already sowing the seed for the next war. fairy-tales fantasy peace portal-fantasy war war-and-peace young-adult young-adult-fantasy Cornelia Funke
6980a80 War was so simple, wasn't it? Much simpler than justice. war Kate Elliott
06d37ca There is no one who loves peace more than a soldier soldier war Philippa Gregory
e78409b In quei giorni i funerali erano piu semplici e sbrigativi, a causa dei combattimenti. Alcune famiglie non avevano altra scelta che seppellire i propri morti in un cortile o in un punto riparato lungo una strada, essendo impossibile raggiungere un vero cimitero, e di conseguenza sorsero luoghi di sepoltura improvvisati, dove un cadavere ne attirava subito altri, un po' come l'arrivo di un occupante abusivo in un terreno pubblico inutilizzato puo dare origine a un'intera baraccopoli. occupazione-luoghi-pubblici war Mohsin Hamid
8ba30b9 I ain't gonna kill; it's against my will. . . . killing war Howard Zinn
809b886 I am not speaking strictly of slavery here, but of that process that dislodges people from the webs of mutual commitment, shared history, and collective responsibility that make them what they are, so as to make them exchangeable--that is, to make it possible to make them subject to the logic of debt. Slavery is just the logical end-point, the most extreme from of such disentanglement. But for that reason it provides us with a window on the process as a whole. What's more, owing to its historical role, slavery has shaped our basic assumptions and institutions in ways that we are no longer aware of and whose influence we would probably never wish to acknowledge if we were. If we have become a debt society, it is because the legacy of war, conquest, and slavery has never completely gone away. It's still there, lodged in our most intimate conceptions of honor, property, even freedom. It's just that we can no longer see that it's there. capitalism commercial-markets conquest debt property slavery social-imagination war David Graeber
92eb28d - A! Te wojne bedzie warto zobaczyc... Zadnego pijanego rzucania sie do gardel bandytow-imbecyli... - Moja matka by zwariowala! - powiedziala Sylwia. - Bynajmniej - odparl. - To ja podnieci, o ile dozyje. excite parade-s-end some-do-not sylvia-tietjens war Ford Madox Ford
69b756a The prospect of a war has seized his brain. It engages some old, ongoing terror in him. As a former soldier, he still believes in armies. But he believes in armies at rest, armies relaxing, armies shopping at the PX, armies eating supper in the mess hall. war Lorrie Moore
790b6d8 "Jack Reed, whom The New York Times had labeled "the Bolshevik agitator," hesitated and then equivocated on the stand. But by then the defense of The Masses was plain: criticism of the government didn't amount to a desire to overthrow it. If all hostile opinion were suppressed, how could Americans believe they lived in a free country? Dissent was a safeguard to freedom, not an impediment." -- independence liberty philosophy politics war Nancy Milford
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