William Tecumseh Sherman Quotes

There can be no compromise with war.

For WAR, consisteth not in Battle only, or the act of fighting; but in a tract of time, wherein the Will to content by Battle is sufficiently known.... So the nature of War, consisteth not in actual fighting; but in the known disposition thereto, during all the time there is no assurance to the contrary. All other time is PEACE.

It is always easy to begin a war, but very difficult to stop one.

Wars are, of course, as a rule to be avoided; but they are far better than certain kinds of peace.

We wanted this war and now we've got it, and I'm not sure that we know what to do with it.

If you aren't please tell me how you are going to not have a war.

War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

Everyone is interested in war, in that people don't want it to happen. I'm much more interested in peace than in war but it's important to understand why we fight.

At the beginning of this century, people never questioned the effectiveness of war, never thought there could be real peace. Now, people are tired of war and see it as ineffective in solving anything.

You can’t have peace without a war.

To make peace, it is necessary to know how to make war.

Without armaments peace cannot be kept; wars are waged not only to repel injustice but also to establish a firm peace.

I appeal for cessation of hostilities, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. You will never kill it by its indifferent adoption.

I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners - two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime.

What the country needs is the annihilation of the enemy.

We must conquer war or war will conquer us.

I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price.

Those who make war against the United States have chosen their own destruction.

People who are anxious to bring on war don't know what they are bargaining for; they don't see all the horrors that must accompany such an event.

When [men] go to war, what they want is to impose on their enemies the victor's will and call it peace.

Of course, let us have peace, we cry, "but at the same time let us have normalcy, let us lose nothing, let our lives stand intact, let us know neither prison nor ill repute nor disruption of ties ... " There is no peace because there are no peacemakers. There are no makers of peace because the making of peace is at least as costly as the making of war - at least as exigent, at least as disruptive, at least as liable to bring disgrace and prison, and death in its wake.

War grows out of ordinary human nature.

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars - all over Europe, all over the world. "Sometimes in the private interest of royal families," Satan said, "sometimes to crush a weak nation; but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose - there is no such war in the history of the race."

As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral.

There was only one virtue, pugnacity; only one vice, pacifism. That is an essential condition of war.