Bernard Cornwell Quotes

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, was their mutual destruction.

Now, a river of blood will divide France from its enemies.

War proves nothing. To kill a man does not prove that he was in the wrong. Bloodletting cannot change men's spirits, neither can the evil of men's thoughts be driven out by blows. If I go to my neighbor's house, and break her furniture, and smash her pictures, and bind her children captive, it does not prove that I am fitter to live than she - yet according to ethics of nations it does. I have conquered her and she must pay me for my trouble; and her house and all that is left in it belongs to my heirs and successors, forever. That is war!

War is about remaking the world to suit the whims of some powerful group over the whims of some other powerful group. The dead are just the sparks that fly from the metal as they grind it down.

It is cruelty in war that buyeth conquest.

The root of the evil is not the construction of new, more dreadful weapons. It is the spirit of conquest.

War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man.

Serious sport is war minus the shooting.

War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.

What a cruel thing war is... to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors.

I do not wish a foreign army to spill the blood of my people.

War is a series of catastrophes that results in a victory.

I couldn't stand the idea of bloodshed, casualties.

Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting.

War means fighting, and fighting means killing.

Politics is war without bloodshed while war is politics with bloodshed.

War: a massacre of people who don't know each other for the profit of people who know each other but don't massacre each other.

War is cruelty, and none can make it gentle.

The great questions of the day will not be settled by means of speeches and majority decisions but by iron and blood.

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.

No one need think that the world can be ruled without blood. The civil sword shall and must be red and bloody.

Sports is like a war without the killing.

It's a major part of world history that men are trying to kill each other. It's just one slaughter after the other. We talk about it, but no one's really listening.

An empire founded by war has to maintain itself by war.

Nations have the tendency to be born in blood.