George Orwell Quotes

From Vietnam's 'Deer Hunter' to Iraq, films are never about the person who has had his house destroyed.

I came from the South and I know what war is, for I have seen its wreckage and terrible ruin. It is easy for me as President to declare war. I do not have to fight, and neither do the gentlemen on the Hill who now clamour for it. It is some poor farmer's boy, or son of some poor widow away off in some modest community, or perhaps the scion of a great family, who will have to do the fighting.

If war is glorified, it tends to eclipse the policies it is meant to serve.

It doesn't take a military genius to see we'll all be crispy critters after World War III.

War hurts. It hurts no matter which sides the bombs are falling on.

As a nation, we have been responsible for the murder of literally hundreds of thousands of people at home and abroad by fighting a war that should never have been started and can be won, if at all, only by converting the United States into a police state.

It is a damned sight easier to start wars than to end them. This truth has been stated for as long and as often as it has been ignored. High time and thank God, we are at least moving toward de-escalation in Vietnam. The road to extrication will be long, painful, bitter. But it must be trod. We are so bogged down in Vietnam that we cannot respond effectively anywhere else in the world to a military power play except through atomic bombardment.

The Second Amendment reveals a profound principle of American government - the principle of civilian ascendency over the military.

Thus thought I, as by night I read Of the great army of the dead, The trenches cold and damp, The starved and frozen camp,-- The wounded from the battle-plain, In dreary hospitals of pain, The cheerless corridors, The cold and stony floors. Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom And flit from room to room. And slow, as in a dream of bliss, The speechless sufferer turns to kiss Her shadow, as it falls Upon the darkening walls.

Anybody who thinks that 'it doesn't matter who's President' has never been Drafted and sent off to fight and die in a vicious, stupid war on the other side of the world-or been beaten and gassed by Police for trespassing on public property-or been hounded by the IRS for purely political reasons-or locked up in the Cook County Jail with a broken nose and no phone access and twelve perverts wanting to stomp your ass in the shower. That is when it matters who is President or Governor or Police Chief. That is when you will wish you had voted.

Fortunately, America remains a robust democracy, where most individuals are not afraid to speak out. What we have done in Iraq has, however, compromised out standing as an advocate of basic human rights - the prime minister of one country responding to criticism of America for its human rights put it, it was liking having Dracula guard the blood bank. The loss of America's moral standing has been one of the great losses of this war.

There is no good war.

There will be no veterans of World War III.

I have never met a man [in the military], in or out of uniform, who ever said, "Let's use the missiles." They are even more terrified that the Bishops, because a great many of them don't expect to go to Heaven, which at least the Bishops do.

I think one of the great disasters (in military history) is the way that the Second World War has become the defining reference point for every crisis and every conflict.

Actions speak louder than words. The reality is that at least 10 journalists have been killed by the US military, and according to reports I believe to be true journalists have been arrested and tortured by US forces.

There is no more cruel illusion than that war makes a people richer.

War is indefensible on every grounds, military and economic and diplomatic and also on moral.

Through my time in the military and my deployments, I have recognized the importance of having a Commander in Chief who will not only go after those who threaten the safety and security of the American people, but who will also exercise good judgment and foresight in stopping these failed interventionist wars of regime change that have cost our country so much in human lives, untold suffering, and trillions of dollars.

The bloody solution of the crisis, the effort for the destruction of the enemy's forces, is the first-born son of war.

It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom.

It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. They do not know its horrors. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils.

President Vladimir Putin continues to call for new peace plans as his troops roll through the Ukrainian countryside and he absolutely ignores every agreement that his country has signed in the past and he has signed recently, we, the United States, and Europe as a whole, have to stand with Ukraine at this moment. Ukraine needs our financial assistance and support as it pursues reforms and even in the face, in the face of this military onslaught.

America could carry on a two years' war by the confiscation of the property of disaffected persons, and be made happy by their expulsion. Say not that this is revenge, call it rather the soft resentment of a suffering people, who, having no object in view but the good of all, have staked their own all upon a seemingly doubtful event. Yet it is folly to argue against determined hardness; eloquence may strike the ear, and the language of sorrow draw forth the tear of compassion, but nothing can reach the heart that is steeled with prejudice.

Wars make people rich - and they make a lot of people poor, and they take a lot of people's lives away from them.