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.
I feel that if any songs are gonna come out of World War III, we'd better start writing them now.
When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty. books.google
We, the Poles, do not understand war as a symbol but as a real fight.
It was a war that was inevitable because it was a war that everybody wanted.
This may not be a just peace, but it is more just than the continuation of war.
If the general government should persist in the measures now threatened, there must be war.
War means fighting. The business of the soldier is to fight.
The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.
Work is the call. Work at war speed. Good-night—and go to it.
Never again while the risk of war remained must we allow ourselves to neglect our land weapon.