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.
Russia’s aim was to wipe Ukraine off the map. Putin’s war of conquest is failing.
The North American air war struck Potter as a duel with machine guns at a pace and a half.
The longer the war drags on, more and more civilians are getting killed.
Ward has no heart, they say, but I deny it:
He has a heart, and gets his speeches by it.
Ori supposed there were as many unspeakable stories as there were men come back from war.