Herman Wouk Quotes

War is big business. It's a lot of money going to and fro, and unfortunately a lot of angst, and a lot of fear, and a lot of doubt. And eventually a lot of wonderful people, like soldiers, like men and women that are out there trying to do the best they can, they come back being wounded on many levels.

Many powerful people don't want peace, because they live off war.

When you're in the battlefield, survival is all there is. Death is the only great emotion.

For me, at least, Vietnam was partly love. With each step, each light-year of a second, a foot soldier is always almost dead, or so it feels, and in such circumstances, you can't help but love.

I have fought for many years. I have killed many men. I have never seen a foreigner die.

In war, everything changes. You are very selective of what you do because everything you do can be the last thing you do in your life.

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks.

There's been rumors of war and wars that have been The meaning of life has been lost in the wind And some people thinkin' that the end is close by 'Stead of learnin' to live they are learnin' to die

Living in war is a co- existence with death.

War is not about flag-waving and patriotism. War is about killing and death.

War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.

That there are men in all countries who get their living by war, and by keeping up the quarrels of Nations is as shocking as it is true.

War is hell. You can't photograph a flying bullet, but you can capture genuine fear.

It's an odd feeling, knowing someone is trying to kill you. On the front line, you learn quickly that if you're in the path of a bullet, you will get hit.

I had to experience how someone beside me suddenly falls over and is dead and the bullet has hit him squarely. I had to experience that quite directly. I wanted it. I'm therefore not a pacifist at all - or am I?

Yes, war is hell. It is awful. It involves human beings killing other human beings, sometimes innocent civilians. That is why we despise war.

And when Roger talks about the frightened ones running away from the bombs, I immediately thought of my days when I was young and I had to wear these gas masks.

I think the brutality is important to convey as part of the story, to see how brutal it is to have these kids in battle with one another.

The old saying that war is a racket has taken on an even more shameful meaning.

War taught me that not everything is glamorous.

In war, it feels like everything you're doing is more important because you're in the proximity of violence and death, and that proximity changes your relationship to America because it changes the way you see the world.

There is nothing glamorous or romantic about war. It's mostly about random pointless death and misery.

War is death’s holy-day.

Doesn't it strike you as queer that I, who couldn't cut the head off a chicken, and who was sick at the sight of blood, should be cast into the middle of a great war, with blood flowing all about me.

And when the war is done and youth stone dead I'd toddle safely home and die—in bed.