Kurt Vonnegut Quotes

The experience of being in the Army changed my whole life; I never believed that an organization such as ours could ever go to war, leave alone win it. It was, as Yeats remarked of the Easter Rising, 'A terrible beauty.'

The worst days of my life were in Iraq, and the best days were there, too. My fondest memories of the Iraq War are of the people - both Americans and Iraqis - and the opportunity we saw in one another, for our countries, and for which we fought.

I hate to say it, but I had a great time in World War II.

What you experience in the army, aged 18 to 21, is what you take through all your life. You cross invisible lines: you shoot someone, get shot, break into people's houses. It's naive to think you won't carry anything into your life.

I learned about life before I went into the theater, which is why I've been so happy. I was a soldier.

My experience on 'Jarhead' was life changing.

My father was an air officer in the Second World War. My brother was a marine in Vietnam. When I was given this opportunity, I leapt at the chance because I thought it would be a hell of a lot more interesting than what my friends were doing.

I would like to have had that experience of combat. I would have liked to.

I've been in many wars already.

I'm a Veteran. I was in the Navy, in the submarine corps. I come from a military family. Both of my grandparents were in World War II and retired as officers. One fought in the Pacific and one fought in Europe. The whole family was in the war. I grew up exposed to it and hearing the stories, but the stories I heard weren't kind of the whole "Rah, rah, rah! We saved the world!" They were about the personal price and the emotional price.

Most of my friends' fathers had been in the war - either as soldiers or in some other capacity in the military. Whereas my father had not fought. He was older and he was in a business that was considered essential to the wartime effort - the wire business - and, of course, I was so young I didn't understand any of this.

I would have fought in WW2, so I wasn't a pacifist in the broader sense. I prefer to be a pacifist, but I think there are exceptions and times to defend yourself or your country, but that war wasn't one of them.

I came from the South and I know what war is, for I have seen its wreckage and terrible ruin. It is easy for me as President to declare war. I do not have to fight, and neither do the gentlemen on the Hill who now clamour for it. It is some poor farmer's boy, or son of some poor widow away off in some modest community, or perhaps the scion of a great family, who will have to do the fighting.

I enlisted when I was a boy. The Navy looked after me like my mother. It fed me, took care of me and gave me wonderful opportunities.

It is not patriotic to commit young Americans to war unless our national security clearly requires it.

I grew up with the Gene Kelly look at war. The cheerful kind of stories you tell about a horrendous war.

I'm very proud of 'Platoon,' but at the end of it I was done. I was done.

Unless war is made something real for the Englishman in his own country, this robber and murderer will not recognize what it means for other people. Since the forces of [Dutch 17th century Admiral] de Ruyter, nobody has exploded a single bomb on England’s doorstep.

The war was an escape to reality... The only thing that mattered were human relationships; not money, not position, not even family... Only relationships with people who might be dead tomorrow were important. It is a sort of wonderful state of mind. It's too bad it takes a war to create such a condition among men.

My father fought in World War II at the Battle of the Bulge.

'The Wall' doesn't recount a specific soldier's experience in Iraq, but it captures the spirit of many experiences that were shared with me and with Aaron Taylor-Johnson and with John Cena.

If war teaches you anything, it is an appreciation of being alive.

I was on the front lines in the Cold War, and I was on the front lines in the fight against Al Qaeda.

One ... aspect of the case for World War II is that while it was still a shooting affair it taught us survivors a great deal about daily living which is valuable to us now that it is, ethically at least, a question of cold weapons and hot words.

Lift up yourselves, men, take yourselves out of the mire and hitch your hopes to the very stars themselves. Let no man pull you down, let no man destroy your ambition, because man is but your companion, your equal; man is your brother; he is not your Lord, he is not your sovereign master.