Leo Tolstoy Quotes

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

Dying in a a war never stopped wars from happening.

We must conquer war or war will conquer us.

For realists, war is like surgery-a painful and dangerous activity that is sometimes necessary ... A pacifist is like a Christian Scientist who is against surgery even when the alternative is the crippling or death of the patient.

Only a fool or a fraud talks tough or romantically about war.

For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.... So the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

Unless a nation's life faces peril, war is murder.

War is the trade of Kings.

Once we have a war there is only one thing to do. It must be won. For defeat brings worse things than any that can ever happen in war.

An unjust peace is better than a just war.

It is very difficult to do one's duty. I was considered a barbarian because at the storming of the Praga, 7,000 people were killed. Europe says that I am a monster. I myself have read this in the papers, but I would have liked to talk to people about this and ask them: is it not better to finish a war with the death of 7,000 people rather than to drag it on and kill 100,000.

At the beginning of this century, people never questioned the effectiveness of war, never thought there could be real peace. Now, people are tired of war and see it as ineffective in solving anything.

Wars happen because the ones who start them think they can win.

What’s so civil about war anyway?

Now that their long war was over, they could get on with the proper concern of all civilised nations, which is to prepare for the next one.

I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners - two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime.

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

War is a grim, cruel business, a business justified only as a means of sustaining the forces of good against those of evil.

When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace.

War is the supreme form of prestige.

Wars are not all evil, they are part of the grand machinery by which this world is governed.

Der Krieg ist nichts als eine Fortsetzung des politischen Verkehrs mit Einmischung anderer Mittel. War is merely the continuation of policy with the admixture of other means.

In war it does not matter who is right, but who is left.

War is not a polite recreation but the vilest thing in life, and we ought to understand that and not play at war.

Guns don't win wars; guns and bombs may kill a man but they cannot make him follow their lead, nor will they ever coerce an unyielding man to yield.