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.
Angels never attack, as infernal spirits do. Angels only ward off and defend.
The war against terrorism will not be finished as long as he [Saddam Hussein] is in power.
If we have a thousand bamboo spears, there's nothing to worry about a war with the Soviet Union.
Without the military help of the black freedman, the war against the South could not have been won.
To carry on war, three things are necessary: money, money, and yet more money.
The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.
The only way there could be war is if they start it; we're not going to start a war.
In the fall the war was always there but we did not go to it any more.
Speeches made to the people are essential to the arousing of enthusiasm for a war.
Everything in war is linked together, is mutually interdependent, mutually interpenetrating.
The war we have to wage today has only one goal, and that is to make the world safe for diversity.