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.
Give them great meals of beef and iron and steel, they will eat like wolves and fight like devils.
A feat of chivalry, fiery with consummate courage, and bright with flashing vigor.
In war you learn your lessons, and they stay learned, but the tuition fees are high.
'Tis a principle of war that when you can use the lightning, 'tis better than cannon.
The whole art of war consists in getting at what is on the other side of the hill.
It is not an army that we must train for war; it is a nation.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing.