Any negotiation has a limit. Otherwise, war is irrelevant.

What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?

Victory may now require a level of force deemed objectionable by civilized peoples, meaning that some, for justifiable reasons, may be reluctant to pursue it. But victory has not become an ossified concept altogether.

Peace is nothing but the confusion between two wars

Those who can win a war well can rarely make a good peace and those who could make a good peace would never have won the war.

Their Silver war is being paid for in Red blood.

Would you believe in a story without the heroes? There are stories without heroes.

Persuading everyone to behave decently to each other because the society is so fragile is a worthy goal, but it may be more straightforward just to make the societies less fragile, which means developing their...

Men have been pacifists for every reason under the sun except to avoid danger and fighting.

The Line welcomed rain and sun. Seeds germinated in mass graves, between skulls and femurs and broken pick handles, tendrils rose up alongside dog spikes and clavicles, thrust around teak sleepers and tibias, scapulas, vertebrae,...

There are roads which must not be followed, armies which must not be attacked, towns which must not be besieged, positions which must not be contested, commands of the sovereign which must not be obeyed.

Unhappy is the fate of one who tries to win his battles and succeed in his attacks without cultivating the spirit of enterprise; for the result is waste of time and general stagnation.

do many calculations lead to victory, and few calculations to defeat

normal,” sane men and women are capable of evil, then the atrocities perpetrated during the Holocaust and other genocides could be repeated today and into the future.Yet, this is exactly the lesson we must learn...

When I write to please everybody, it falls flat. When I write what I know, fearlessly, It won’t please everybody, but it doesn’t fall flat.

War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them...

Millions cheer the warriorspilling blood across the ringwhile the one who stands for peaceis ridiculed and shamed.Must hearts forever sufferfrom ignorance and greed?Can bombs heal our soulsor set our spirits free?

When are you coming home to me?” She said eloquently.

Hmph. Even the animals deserted me.I’d have deserted me, too, a different inner voice inserted dryly. The way Ibanged around in here wanting to kill something—anything—if only it would bring Aislinn back to me. Fionn...

We’re at war.On the verge of an apocalypse filled with monsters and torture in a nightmare world.And I’m standing here, a moonstruck teenager pining for an enemy soldier. What am I, crazy?This time, I’m the...

The day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops.

Food in wartime Britain, she had to admit, was hardly inspiring.

Ciba: “I thought you were supposed to be some big brave war hero. What about that goddamn gold star you polish every night?”Natalya: “You know what this shiny piece of tin is, you fucking space...

Sometimes battles are unavoidable.

Pretend you are a foolish to the tyrant – because if he realizes you are a genius, he might use you to harm others.

Alice knows those stories. The routiers and condottieri of the Free Companies, who fight the wars of whichever prince will pay their fees, and amuse themselves in between times, are said to commit every kind...

Love’ is the only weapon I have, I will defend with love, I will attack with love.

Richard rubbed his temples. He had a headache from lack of sleep. “Don’t you understand? This isn’t about conquering lands and taking things from others; this is about fighting oppression.”The general rested a boot on...

I’ll carry on, carry over, carry forward, Cary Grant, cash and carry, carry me back to Old Virginia, I’ll even ‘hari-kari’ if you show me how, but I will not carry a gun!

And if we burn, you burn with us.

I really do think that if for one week in the United States we saw the true face of war, we saw people’s limbs sheared off, we saw kids blown apart, for one week, war...

Anyway, why would you trust anything written down? She certainly didn’t trust “Mothers of Borogravia!” and that was from the government. And if you couldn’t trust the government, who could you trust?Very nearly everyone, come...

War is not nice.

I WILL FOLLOW ANYONEAND REMIND EVERYONEOF THE SUFFERING…OF THE ENSLAVED…YAZIDI WOMEN

We are punctual, a stressed, marked characteristic. We need order around us, in the house, in the life, although we live by irresistible impulses, as if the order in the closets, in our papers, in...

As long as a population can be induced to believe in a supernatural hereafter, it can be oppressed and controlled. People will put up with all sorts of tyranny, poverty, and painful treatment if they’re...

One of the great Confederate combat leaders, General John B. Gordon, had sat at his horse and spoken farewell to his men. Some he had seen weeping as they folded burnt and shot-pierced battle flags...

War is merely the continuation of politics by other means

her daughter”.

The unchangeable price of everything more precious and valuable is blood.

I cannot forget the figures of Slobodan Milošević, Charles Taylor and Saddam Hussein, who made terrified fiefdoms out of their “own” people and mounds of corpses on the territory of their neighbours. I was glad...

No matter what the reason, the ways I tried to justify the situation, the second-guessing that lingered, nothing could change the fact that people stopped existing because of me.

People who prefer to believe the worst of others will breed war and religious persecutions while the world lasts.

How to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education.If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter,...

As I crawled out of the abyss of combat and over the rail of the Sea Runner, I realized that compassion for the sufferings of others is a burden to those who have it. As...

The history of interactions among disparate peoples is what shaped the modern world through conquest, epidemics and genocide. Those collisions created reverberations that have still not died down after many centuries, and that are actively...

This was when he first suspected that the kindly child-loving God extolled by his headmistress might not exist. As it turned out, most major world events suggested the same. But for Theo’s sincerely godless generation,...

I start thinking about what happened and then I start thinking about why I’m still here. It’s pointless. They say on TV that the soldiers want to be there? I can’t speak for every soldier,...

It seems guerilla warfare has its advantages without regard to time in history. Its simplicity and success.

It seems to me, that you people spend a great deal of time talking about honour, but strip away the high sounding words and you are no different from any other race. Family? Has Priam...