David Gemmell Quotes

War,--the trade of barbarians!

The brazen throat of war.

Combat is a piece of war. But war is a totalizing, uncivilized experience.

The first accounts we have of mankind are but so many accounts of their butcheries. All empires have been cemented in blood; and, in those early periods, when the race of mankind began first to form themselves into parties and combinations, the first effect of the combination, and indeed the end for which it seems purposely formed, and best calculated, was their mutual destruction.

Men grow tired of sleep, love, singing and dancing sooner than of war.

War is death's feast.

The lamp of war is kindled here, not to be extinguished but by torrents of blood.

War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it.

War was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner.

War is simple, direct, and ruthless.

War: that mad game the world so loves to play.

If we know anything about man, it's that he's not pacific. The temptation to butcher anyone considered undesirable seems to be a common temptation, not always resisted.

War's dirty little secret is that some men love it.

I know I am among civilized men because they are fighting so savagely.

War is brutal, barbaric and bloody.

...In little more than a single century from 1820 to 19450, no less than fifty-nine million human animals were killed in inter-group clashes of one sort or another.... We describe these killings as men behaving "like animals," but if we could find a wild animal that showed signs of acting this way, it would be more precise to describe it as behaving like men.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atorcity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind.

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.

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

This is what war does. Right here, in my hands. This is war.

War makes early risers of us all.

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?

War is a generality, so are the inevitabilities of war, including death.