Julia Ward Howe Quotes

I hated the bangs in the war: I always felt a silent war would be more tolerable.

So war is an extremely sad business, because the majority of people don't want to be in it.

War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.

When men talk about war, the stories and terminology vary - it's this battle, these weapons, this terrain. But no matter where you go in the world, women use the same language to speak of war. They speak of fire, they speak of death, and they speak of starvation.

War dehumanizes everyone.

I woke up and all I could see was Iraqis standing all around me, looking down upon me. I knew at that moment something terrible had happened and I wasn't in the right place.

At 17, the first time I saw a dead body, I froze. By 31 it was a natural occurrence for me, and no group of people should live like that.

To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty.

The war begins to make itself felt very near to us.

World history is tragic.

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

Do not say that someone has won and someone has lost. These are unappropriate, blasphemous words. We have all been scorched by the deadly breath of fratricide.

How [the Pope] he durst [dare] make the token [symbol] of Christ on the cross (which is the token of peace, mercy and charity) a banner to lead us to slay Christian men.

I am ready to fight. My people are killed, my horses stolen; I am satisfied to fight.

There are worse things than war.

War is a tragedy. It's not pretty, and in my opinion, there are no winners. Everybody's a victim, from the one who's suffering pain to the person inflicting it.

I grew up knowing only war, so for me, it was the way things were. It wasn't pleasant by any means.

I saw a huge steam roller, It blotted out the sun. The people all lay down, lay down; They did not try to run. My love and I, we looked amazed Upon the gory mystery. "Lie down, lie down!" the people cried. "The great machine is history!" My love and I, we ran away, The engine did not find us. We ran up to a mountain top, Left history far behind us. Perhaps we should have stayed and died, But somehow we don't think so. We went to see where history'd been, And my, the dead did stink so.

As far as I'm concerned, war always means failure.

There is fascism, leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol, into smartness and yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war. It means change without hope. Our immediate duty - in that tinkering which is the only useful form of action in our leaky old tub - our immediate duty is to stop it.

The Law found more than it lost when Christ said, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven’ (Matthew 5:44-45). This most important commandment summarizes in a word the universal discipline of patience, since it does not allow us to do evil even to people who deserve it.

I am afeard there are few die well that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument?

It was an old lesson learned by governments: that war solves problems of control.

Then down came the lid--the day was lost, for art, at Sarajevo. World-politics stepped in, and a war was started which has not ended yet: a "war to end war." But it merely ended art. It did not end war.