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.
Harold Waring, like many other Englishmen, was a bad linguist.
In the year of Christ 1183, the House of Plantagenet was at war against itself.
[I take] full military responsibility for the actions of the army in the war against terrorism.
War is a convenient fix for government problems if it happens somewhere else. To other people.
Even if my country remains at war with yours . . . remember ... I am not your enemy.