Norman Davies Quotes

Wars have no memory, and nobody has the courage to understand them until there are no voices left to tell what happened.

War will of itself discover and lay open the hidden and rankling wounds of the victorious party.

I remember saying that wars must not be glorified, but wars must be remembered.

War is an instrument entirely inefficient toward redressing wrong; and multiplies, instead of indemnifying losses.

Only the dead have seen the end of the war.

News reports don't look at the land that existed before a war and the land that exists after a war. Reporting on war is a snapshot in time.

It is the youth who must inherit the tribulation, the sorrow... that are the aftermath of war.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

Wars teach us not to love our enemies, but to hate our allies.

There are too many war museums.

When the war of the giants is over the wars of the pygmies will begin.

Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.

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

Yesterday, we clinched victory in the Pacific, but we sowed the whirlwind.

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.

Wars begin when you will, but they do not end when you please.

The lessons of history are taught by the victors.

Wars: You know how you start, but you never know how you end.

If you really want to see the face of war, see the faces of survivors.

The social and political climate came from discussions about how we could find conflict in the wake of a 100-year-long war ending. But as we know in the real world, just because a war ends it doesn't mean that everything turns happy and peaceful. That provided us with some new kinds of conflict for us to explore in 'Korra.'

Wars almost never end the way starters had in mind.

This is one of the consequences of the civil war. People stop trusting each other, and every stranger becomes an enemy.

I write in the novel's afterword that our recent wars "finish not with victory or defeat but with a calendar draw-down date and a presumption that we shall never be reconciled with the enemy".

...as soon as the war was over, they had to justify what was done.

Soldiers' graves are the greatest preachers of peace.