Lester B. Pearson Quotes

You come back from war, and you have a certain authority to talk about war.

We're living through a time where we are fighting wars fostered by politics, admittedly not on the same scale as the First World War, but with equally tragic realities for our soldiers and their families.

Although a soldier by profession, I have never felt any sort of fondness for war, and I have never advocated it, except as a means of peace.

As a combat veteran, I know the cost of war.

No one hates war like a soldier hates war.

I don't think the war in Afghanistan was ruthlessly enough waged.

I'm glad I never went to war.

I am not sure that you, the younger generations, will like to go to war that we went through. So, we learn as the mistakes are being committed.

War's dirty little secret is that some men love it.

I was drafted when I was 17, and I spent two years, and I lost a friend in war.

Men go to war for fear, honor or interest.

After all, it is not nice going to war with one’s equal or possible superior in strength – so different from those delightful “military operations” which consist in “potting”, savages with an amount of danger just sufficient to give a zest to the sport …But then the special line the skill of our ablest and most valiant generals takes is that of “thrashing a cannibal.” Thrashing a Cossack is a different sort of thing.

Nobody hates a war more than soldiers who have been through it.

We are told that the American soldier does not know what he is fighting for. Now at least he will know what he is fighting against.

No sir, anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar.

All of us who served in one war or another know very well that all wars are the glory and the agony of the young.

Having been in the military myself, there is an awful moment when you're in this moment of conflict.

I like war.

War is hell. You can't photograph a flying bullet, but you can capture genuine fear.

Men o' war were to be a part of the fabric of my life for the next half-century.

Well, you know, I was through the whole of the Second World War and saw all my friends killed.

War as Napoleon knew it just not possible any more. However, we're very unlikely to accept or recognize 'world peace' even when we get it.

We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.

Overseas, America's fighting men and women have been waging war against those who would attack America and plunge the world into a period of darkness, and their success can easily be seen.

The idea that we're going to win this war is an idea that unfortunately is just plain wrong.