Nostradamus Quotes

In old days nations could collect only portions of their men and resources at a time and dribble them out by degrees. Under modern conditions whole nations could be mobilized at once and their whole life-blood and resources poured out in a torrent. Instead of a few hundreds of thousands of men meeting each other in war, millions would now meet, and modern weapons would multiply manifold the power of destruction. The financial strain and the expenditure of wealth would be incredible. I thought this must be obvious to everyone else, as it seemed obvious to me ; and that, if once it became apparent that we were on the edge, all the Great Powers would call a halt and recoil from the abyss.

[Describing World War I:] A short cleansing thunderstorm.

In the account book of the Great War the page recording the Russian losses has been ripped out. The figures are unknown. Five millions, or eight? We ourselves know not.

Germany has reduced savagery to a science, and this great war for the victorious peace of justice must go on until the German cancer is cut clean out of the world body.

Great is the guilt of an unnecessary war.

It is idle to say that nations can struggle to outdo each other in building armaments and never use them. History demonstrates the contrary, and we have but to go back to the last war to see the appalling effect of nations competing in great armaments.

In the beginning of the Great War, the emotions of Europe ran riot in a most horrible manner, first among the so-called 'living,' and then among the killed when they awoke.

We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war.

Alfred Nobel's discoveries are characteristic; powerful explosives can help men perform admirable tasks. They are also a means to terrible destruction in the hands of the great criminals who lead peoples to war.

The U.S. dropped more high explosives on Vietnam than the Allies used on Germany and Japan together in the Second World War.

If we just let our vision of the world go forth, and we embrace it entirely, and we don't try to piece together clever diplomacy but just wage a total war, our children will sing great songs about us years from now.

I do not know how the Third World War will be fought, but I can tell you what they will use in the Fourth—rocks!

If the blood of France and of Germany flows again, as it did twenty-five years ago, in a longer and even more murderous war, each of the two peoples will fight with confidence in its own victory, but the most certain victors will be the forces of destruction and barbarism.

Daily Herald this morning described burning Berlin on Saturday night as having looked “like an oven”. I wonder who really gets the satisfaction out of this terrible deterioration in human values.

In Hitler’s frantic mental haze Already Hull and Cardiff blaze And Paul’s grey dome rocks to the blast Of air torpedoes screaming past

Then comes the catastrophe. Then the great mobilization will take place in Europe; 16-18 million men, the flower of the various nations, armed with the best tools of death, will enter the field as enemies. But, I am convinced, that behind the great mobilization there stands the great havoc. It will not come through our party, but rather yours. You are driving things to the limit. You are leading us to catastrophe. You will reap what you have sown

Guerrilla parties are making dreadful slaughter upon the Union men in Missouri and stealing and destroying their property... The entire route across the State... bears the marks of the ravages of war... Anarchy reigns in Missouri.

In war, science has proven itself an evil genius; it has made war more terrible than it ever was before. Man used to be content to slaughter his fellow men on a single plane---the earth's surface. Science has taught him to go down into the water and shoot up from below and to go up into the clouds and shoot down from above, thus making the battlefield three times a bloody as it was before

There are worse things than war.

Our enemies should take note. Arial attacks, stupendous in their mass effect, surprise, terror, sabotage, assassination from within, the murder of leading men, overwhelming attacks on all weak points in the enemies defense, sudden attacks, all in the same second without regard for reserves or losses.

Clanless, lawless, homeless is he who is in love with civil war, that brutal ferocious thing.

The Great War differed from all ancient wars in the immense power of the combatants and their fearful agencies of destruction, and from all modern wars in the utter ruthlessness with which it was fought.

The industrial way of life leads to the industrial way of death. From Shiloh to Dachau, from Antietam to Stalingrad, from Hiroshima to Vietnam and Afghanistan, the great specialty of industry and technology has been the mass production of human corpses.

No compromise is possible and the victory of the democracies can only be complete with the utter defeat of the war machines of Germany and Japan.

War has become an affair of machines...and soldiers are little more than clever mechanics.