H. G. Wells Quotes

Those who prepare for war get it.

Any idea that you can have a league for security is nuts, and all people who favor it are potential murderers… as long as man is man, there will be war and the only way to avoid trouble is to have the best army and navy, which we now have.

War is the science of destruction.

War should be the only study of a prince. He should consider peace only as a breathing-time, which gives him leisure to contrive, and furnishes as ability to execute, military plans.

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

In times of peace, the war party insists on making preparation for war. As soon as prepared for, it insists on making war.

War and preparations for war have acquired a kind of legitimacy.

It is absurd to believe in the possibility of perpetual peace...Fascist education must be education for battle.

The South does not understand anything but the language of the gun.

Anybody who has experienced war will never want to do it again unless they have to. But if we’re going to do it, we have to be damn good at it.

Organized murder is war, and though we demonstrate against a particular war, the nuclear, or any other kind of war, we have never demonstrated against war.

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.

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

War is merely a continuation of politics.

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.

And down the dunes a thousand guns lie crouched,Unseen, beside the flood -Like tigers in some Orient jungle crouchedThat wait and watch for blood.Meanwhile, through streets still echoing with trade,Walk grave and thoughtful men,Whose hands may one day wield the patriot's bladeAs lightly as the pen.

War is the matter which fills all history; and consequently the only, or almost the only, view in which we can see the external of political society is in a hostile shape: and the only actions to which we have always seen, and still see, all of them intent, are such as tend to the destruction of one another.

...the object of waging a war is always to be in a better position in which to wage another war.

But all history has taught us the grim lesson that no nation has ever been successful in avoiding the terrors of war by refusing to defend its rights - by attempting to placate aggression.

Armies are a purely human invention. Most soldiers who go to war nowadays don't even do it because they're inherently aggressive.

War ... a reversal of the rules where a man is permitted to kill all the humans he can.

Against naked force the only possible defense is naked force. The aggressor makes the rules for such a war; the defenders have no alternative but matching destruction with more destruction, slaughter with greater slaughter.

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.

To have good soldiers, a nation must always be at war.