War Quotes
Two of the best-known lines about war are flagged as misattributed, and both stories are worth knowing.
“In war, truth is the first casualty” is credited to Aeschylus, and sometimes to the US senator Hiram Johnson. It is not in his speeches. The first recorded use Wikiquote found is by Philip Snowden in July 1916, introducing a book by E. D. Morel, and he wrote “it has been said”, so it was probably already going around. Samuel Johnson made the same point in The Idler in 1758, about “the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages”.
“Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing, sooner than of war” is credited to Homer, and it is a misquotation of the Iliad (Book 13). In the original, most men prefer those things to war. It is the Trojans who can never get enough of fighting.
War had a way of making carpe diem seem valid no matter what you wanted to seize...
Building a gazebo in the middle of the civil war, that'd be like doing stand-up comedy now.
Isn't it clear that the war makers are gambling with your lives, while pocketing huge profits?
Life is suffering. Life is war, and sacrifice. Life is victory.
Compulsory military training is conducive to waging wars rather than to the maintenance of peace.
One of the most revealing things about a country is the way it takes the threat of war.
That is precisely what agreements are for: so that hatred won't become war.
As long as there are nation-states, there will be war, tension and national enmity.