Take the diplomacy out of war and the thing would fall flat in a week.
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.
War prosperity is like the prosperity that an earthquake or a plague brings.
No terms except an unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted.
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.
Once blood is shed in a national quarrel reason and right are swept aside by the rage of angry men.
War itself is never glorious, and we must never trumpet it as such.
He didn’t doubt there would be a next war; there would always be a next war.
Nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war.
Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder.