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.
And for them [Ukrainians] this choice looks so: either a common state with Russia or eternal war.
I want to look into myself, look at myself, delve into the assumptions I had before the war.
If there had been no war, perhaps I would have already discovered a lot by now.
When we are determined upon war, we should carry it on vigorously and without trifling.
In global regime of compassion and tolerance, no war is possible.
It will be a war of infrastructure, and in this sphere, we have many vulnerabilities.