He who did well in war just earns the right
To begin doing well in peace.
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.
Not with dreams, but with blood and with iron,
Shall a nation be moulded at last.
It would be superfluous in me to point out to your Lordship that this is war.
Though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does.
When the military man approaches, the world locks up its spoons and packs off its womankind.
As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
O, now doth Death line his dead chaps with steel;
The swords of soldiers are his teeth, his fangs.