Cesare Pavese Quotes

In times of war, as everyone knows, who has lived through one, or talked to soldiers when they are allowing themselves to remember the truth, and not the sentimentalities with which we all shield ourselves from the horrors of which we are capable ... in times of war we revert, as a species, to the past, and are permitted to be brutal and cruel. It is for this reason, and of course others, that a great many people enjoy war. But this is one of the facts about war that is not often talked about.

War makes monsters out of men.

Most of these who are thrust into combat soon find it impossible to maintain the mythic perception of war.

War. What was it about the prospect of some bloody enterprises that reduced men to the level of animals?

The essence of war is insanity. Destruction, death, women widowed, children orphaned, lands plundered, property destroyed, lives decimated - it's all bad.

War tears, rends. War rips open, eviscerates. War scorches. War dismembers. War ruins.

We were king’s men, knights, and heroes . . . but some knights are dark and full of terror, my lady. War makes monsters of us all.” “Are you saying you are monsters?” “I am saying we are human. You are not the only one with wounds, Lady Brienne

War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill?

This soldiering thing sadly deadens that very good thing, humanity.

War is like a monster," he says, almost to himself. "War is the devil. It starts and it consumes and it grows and grows and grows." He's looking at me now. "And otherwise normal men become monsters, too.

A monster, I think, remembering what Ben told me once. War makes Monsters of Men.

Another of the hard things about being in a war, grandchildren, is that although there are times of quiet when the fighting has stopped, you know you will soon be fighting again. Those quiet times give you the chance to think about what has happened. Some of it you would rather not think about, as you remember the pain and the sorrow. You also have time to worry about what will happen when you go into battle again.

Every war involves a greater or less relapse into barbarism. War, indeed, in its details, is the essence of inhumanity. It dehumanizes. It may save the state, but it destroys the citizen.

My subject is war, and the pity of war.

War is both the product of an earlier corruption, and a producer of new corruptions.

I lived in the first century of world wars. Most mornings I would be more or less insane.

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains, and the women come out to cut up what remains, jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your gawd like a soldier.

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

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

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

War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it.

The idea that somebody who has done something horrible in a war is not willing to talk about it for 32 years is hardly a shocking idea. Quite the contrary.

I have seen enough of one war never to wish to see another.

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

No one hates war like a soldier hates war.