Men are at war with each other because each man is at war with himself.
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.
Europe needs an army to fight the resource wars of the twenty-first century.
You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.
The real war is within us. History is a symptom of our disease.
It is the same in love as in war; a fortress that parleys is half taken.
What if they gave a war and no one came? Then the war will come to you.
You were given the choice between war and dishonour. You chose dishonour and you will have war.