Ishmael Beah Quotes

It took us 50 months in Germany, post World War II to go from the end of the war to a national election.

The concept of military readiness is well understood, but readiness for what happens after the fighting stops is just as important.

Go home all you boys who fought with me and help build up the shattered fortunes of our old state

As early as December 1945, I accompanied my wife and a few relatives in their return from evacuation in the countryside to Cologne, where over the years we settled down in a destroyed house.

After every war someone has to tidy up.

Death created the modern American union, not just by ensuring national survival, but by shaping enduring national structures and commitments. The work of death was Civil War America's most fundamental and most demanding undertaking.

I've been very sensitive for a long time to the repeated pattern, during economic hard times or after a war, of the United States' essentially unilaterally disarming.

Anyway, there were more after the war than before.

It's not just the war itself. It's what you do after the war and what structure you put in place and how you make that structure work.

The Japanese chose the principle of eternal peace as the basis of morality for our rebirth after the War.

In 'Off to War, Voices of Soldier's Children,' kids from Canada and the United States talk about what it is like when their mother or father goes off to war - and comes home again.

Grozny's been largely rebuilt. But at the same time, I think the war is very much being waged inside its survivors.

When the Korean economy was just trying to get back on its feet after the war, having parks was a luxury.

When a nation has just emerged from the throes of a great civil warfare, where section was arrayed against section, class against class, two things are to be done: First, the work of reconstruction is to be effected; Secondly, a willingness for the proper acceptance of the issue's decision is to be created.

After World War II society had to settle back for a moment before it picked up the 20th century.

Americans, we passionately believe, are a humane people. We showed that in restoring wounded economies abroad after World War II, even those of our enemies, Germany and Japan.

The battles after the wars are over can be the toughest; there's no longer the public interest that accompanies, for good and for ill, the start of combat.

The American people want peace. They have long since ceased to talk of a hard or a soft peace for Germany.

We in the West think of peace as society's default position. War is a temporary state of affairs that happens when peace fails. For us, war is something that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. When it is over, win or lose, the warring factions lay down their arms and resume their normal lives.

In 2001-2002, I told the president that the election was supposed to take place when the war was over, at a time when we could return to peaceful life. We agreed upon that. However, I can see now that the election cannot be delayed any longer.

All the aftermath that so frequently follows in the wake of war still confront the nation, and we now, as ever before, must hold fast to the ancient landmarks and see to it that all of these plagues that threaten so mightily shall be rendered harmless.

Even under the best of circumstances, the road back from war is difficult.

Sure we won the war, but the peace we’re losing badly.

We have won the war. Now we have to win the peace, and it may be more difficult.

Older men declare war. But it is youth that must fight and die. And it is youth who must inherit the tribulations, the sorrow, and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war.