Vera Brittain Quotes

It's very unfortunate that war has always been and probably always will be a part of human beings on this planet. It's a terrible thing.

If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

War is the greatest plague that can afflict mankind... Any scourge is preferable to it.

It is fear which leads us to war, ... It is fear which leads us to believe that we must kill or be killed. Fear which leads us to attack those who have not attacked us. Fear which leads us to ring our nation in the very heavens with weapons of mass destruction.

War is an absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political.

War is always a matter of doing evil in the hope that good may come of it.

You consider war to be inevitable? Very good. Let everyone who advocates war be enrolled in a special regiment of advance-guards, for the front of every storm, of every attack, to lead them all!

Peace need not be impracticable, and war need not be inevitable.

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.

If peace is equated simply with the absence of war, it can become abject pacifism that turns the world over to the most ruthless.

It has been claimed that the aim of the present war is to end war. But war cannot end war, neither can militarism destroy militarism.

War stirs in men's hearts the mud of their worst instincts. It puts a premium on violence, nourishes hatred, and gives free rein to cupidity. It crushes the weak, exalts the unworthy, and bolsters tyranny .. .Time and time again it has destroyed all ordered living, devastated hope, and put the prophets to death.

Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

Listen up—there’s no war that will end all wars,’ Crow tells me. ‘War breeds war. Lapping up the blood shed by violence, feeding on wounded flesh. War is a perfect, self-contained being. You need to know that.

Resort to force in the Great War (I) failed to bring tranquillity. Victory and defeat alike were sterile. That lesson the world should have learned.

There is no telling how many wars it will take to secure freedom in the homeland.

Violence and war lead only to death.

The thing constantly overlooked by those hopefuls who talk about abolishing war is that it is by no means an evidence of decay but rather a proof of health and vigor.

Peace is only better than war when it's not hell too. War being hell makes sense.

Compared to war, all other forms of human endeavor shrink to insignificance. God help me, I do love it so.

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars - all over Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private interest of royal families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose - there is no such war in the history of the race."

War is a specific product of civilization.

After a lifetime of war-watching, I see war as an endemic human disease, and governments are the carriers.

The one thing I don't understand is war.

There is no calamity greater than lightly engaging in war.