Phil Ochs Quotes

And when the war is done and youth stone dead I'd toddle safely home and die—in bed.

The cost of war is constantly spread before me written in many ledgers whose columns are gravestones.

There is no French town in which the wounds inflicted on the battle-field are not bleeding.

Military cemeteries in every corner of the world are silent testimony to the failure of national leaders to sanctify human life.

We have long honored those who gave their lives during the unfortunate reality of war.

On the bastion and entrenchments white flags have been placed, the lowering valley is full of dead bodies, and the beautiful sun descends from the transparent sky to the undulating blue sea, which sparkles under the golden rays of the sun. Thousands of people crowd together, look at, speak to, and smile at each other. And these people, who are Christians, confessing one great law of love and self-sacrifice, looking at what they have done, do not suddenly fall with repentance on their knees before Him who has given them life, who has placed in the soul of each, together with the fear of death, the love of the good and beautiful. They do not embrace like brothers with tears of joy and happiness. No! The white flags are lowered, and again whistle the instruments of death and suffering, again flows innocent blood, and groans and curses are heard

Politicians start wars, but it's young men who wash themselves with blood because of the politicians' shortsightedness.

Young people have come to look upon war as a kind of beneficent deity, which ... develops patriotism and courage. But it is only fair, too, to let them know that the garments of the deity are filthy and that some of her influences debase and befoul.

When the days of rejoicing are over,/ When the flags are stowed safely away,/ They will dream of another wild 'War to End Wars'/ And another wild Armistice day.

A professional soldier understands that war means killing people, war means maiming people, war means families left without fathers and mothers. All you have to do is hold your first dying soldier in your arms, and have that terribly futile feeling that his life is flowing out and you can’t do anything about it. Then you understand the horror of war.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the United States embarked on a new relationship with death, entering into a civil war that proved bloodier than any other conflict in American history, a war that would presage the slaughter of World War I's Western Front and the global carnage of the twentieth century.

It would be better if only the old men fought the wars. Every country is the country of youth. When its youth dies, it dies with them.

Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.

War isn't just about bravery and courage and jingoism and patriotism. It's also fundamentally about grief. And the people that go and do the fighting and the dying are never the people who actually benefit from the fighting and the dying.

Sending our youth to war is wrong.

It's always the generals with the bloodiest records who are the first to shout what a hell it is. And it's always the war widows who lead the Memorial Day parades.

I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.

War is hell. Hollywood fantasizes about it and makes it look good... war sucks.

I hope my own children never have to fight a war.

War taught me that not everything is glamorous.

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

The poets who have written the best poems about war seem to be the poets whose countries have experienced an invasion or vicious dictatorships.

War is never cheap or easy.

All wars are wars among thieves who are too cowardly to fight and who therefore conscript the young manhood of the whole world to do the fighting for them.

The soldier, above all other people, prays for peace, for he must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.