Helmut Schmidt Quotes

Oh, go in anywhere Colonel, go in anywhere. You'll find lovely fighting all along the line.

I like war.

Politics are very much like war. We may even have to use poison gas at times.

There are scenes here and effects here that would make George S. Patton wince.

You should be prepared to be bombed back to the stone age.

Wars ruin armies.

Big armies have always brought, not peace, but war which has ended in a hate that in due course brings another war.

We are conditioned to regard warfare as something exciting and even glamorous.

From the earliest dawnings of policy to this day, the invention of men has been sharpening and improving the mystery of murder, from the first rude essays of clubs and stones, to the present perfection of gunnery, cannoneering, bombarding, mining, and all those species of artificial, learned, and refined cruelty, in which we are now so expert, and which make a principal part of what politicians have taught us to believe is our principal glory.

I know of nothing more exciting than war.

War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times.

The sponsors of war closely resemble the weapons they create. And smart bombs, depleted uranium, land mines, rockets and tanks, rather than protect 'widows and orphans and strangers at the gate', are designed precisely to create 'widows and orphans', to transform strangers into enemies and enemies into corpses.

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.

Who's they?" He wanted to know. "Who, specifically, do you think is trying to murder you?" "Every one of them," Yossarian told him. "Every one of whom?" "Every one of whom do you think?" "I haven't any idea." "Then how do you know they aren't?" "Because..." Clevinger sputtered, and turned speechless with frustration. Clevinger really thought he was right, but Yossarian had proof, because strangers he didn't know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn't funny at all.

This is a war universe. War all the time. There may be other universes, but ours seems to be based on war and games.

What the country needs is the annihilation of the enemy.

They will try to enter Baghdad, and I think this is where their graveyard will be.

so few people realize that preparedness never leads to peace, but that it is indeed the road to universal slaughter.

It is raining bombs on the house of the Lord. I go in fear and trembling lest one of these terrible bombers gets into difficulties.

I never hugged him, I bombed him.

If you talk to these young men and women who are fighting, they'll tell you that they think it's a worthwhile cause, and they're fighting for freedom, and they-well, they-all I'm saying-the overwhelming majority of them do.

War may be an auction for countries. For soldiers it's a lottery.

He who loves the bristle of bayonets only sees in the glitter what beforehand he feels in his heart. It is avarice and hatred; it is that quivering lip, that cold, hating eye, which built magazines and powder-houses.

We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day... Do not count days; do not count miles. Count only the number of Germans you have killed.

Those who make war against the United States have chosen their own destruction.