Famous Quotes & Sayings

Steven Spielberg

In the re-creation of combat situations, and this is coming from a director who's never been in one, being mindful of what these veterans have actually gone through, you find that the biggest concern is that you don't look at war as a geopolitical endeavor.

Steven Spielberg

I interviewed survivors, I went to Poland, saw the cities and spent time with the people and spoke to the Jews who had come back to Poland after the war and talked about why they had come back.

Richard Cobden

From 1836, down to last year, there is no proof of the Government having any confidence in the duration of peace, or possessing increased security against war.

Richard Cobden

Let it never be forgotten that it is not by means of war that states are rendered fit for the enjoyment of constitutional freedom; on the contrary, whilst terror and bloodshed reign in the land, involving men's minds in the extremities of hopes and fears, there can be no process of thought, no education going on, by which alone can a people be prepared for the enjoyment of rational liberty.

Richard Cobden

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.

Raymond Aron

Peace is impossible, war is improbable.

Robert Bourassa

There was no censorship of the press: in general, the War Measures Act could have been made even more radical.

Tom Shadyac

I didn't want to hear the usual answers about what's wrong because I believe these are symptoms: global warming, genocide, hunger, poverty, war, environmental crisis. If we can identify the root cause, we can change our ways.

Tom Hodgkinson

The siesta provides a delightful detour from the working day and it also has a practical value as far as productivity is concerned. Winston Churchill had a good long siesta every day during the Second World War, and he said it was the thing that enabled him to cope with the pressure.

Toni Morrison

I lived in a little working-class town that had no black neighborhoods at all - one high school. We all played together. Everybody was either somebody from the South or an immigrant from East Europe or from Mexico. And there was one church, and there were four elementary schools. And we were all, pretty much until the end of the war, very, very poor.

Toni Morrison

Alice thought, No. It wasn't the War and the disgruntled veterans; it wasn't the droves and droves of colored people flocking to paychecks and streets full of themselves. It was the music. The dirty, get-on-down music the women sang and the men played and both danced to, close and shamelesss or apart and wild...It made you do unwise disorderly things. Just hearing it was like violating the law.

Toni Morrison

Language can never 'pin down' slavery, genocide, war. Nor should it yearn for the arrogance to be able to do so. Its force, its felicity, is in its reach toward the ineffable.

Tommy Franks

There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. As this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.

Tom Stoppard

War is capitalism with the gloves off.

Tom Stoppard

To be an artist at all is like living in Switzerland during a world war. To be an artist in Zurich, in 1917, implies a degree of self-absorption that would have glazed over the eyes of Narcissus.

Tom Stoppard

Wars are fought for oil wells and coaling stations; for control of the Dardanelles or the Suez Canal; for colonial pickings to buy cheap in and conquered markets to sell dear in. War is capitalism with the gloves off.

Thomas Keating

Science and technology have been embarrassed by two world wars, many smaller ones, and the spread of weapons that could destroy humanity. As a result, there is some loss of confidence in the great achievements of technology.

Thomas Chalmers

It is in those times of hopeless chaos when the sovereign hand of God is most likely to be seen.

Vilayanur S. Ramachandran

Remember that politics, colonialism, imperialism and war also originate in the human brain.

Vince Cable

The two policies that Ken Clarke is most famous for are his opposition to the Iraq war and being a very defensible and quite courageous pro-European. These are both policies he shares with us.

Viggo Mortensen

Travel is one of the best anti-war weapons that there are. I've been to Iran, and if you're there you see little kids, cops, old people, cemeteries. Once you see that, you can't say, 'Oh, Iran, let's bomb them.'

Viggo Mortensen

As [John] Tolkien himself said, the story [Lord of the Ring ] is not allegorical. He said so when people tried to make analogies to World War II and the fight against Hitler and his fascist coalition.

Victor Davis Hanson

Nor did Americans believe that Republicans had been waging war on minorities, women, or gays - especially given that Republicans have held the House only since 2011 and have been out of power in the Senate and presidency since 2009.

Victor Davis Hanson

War seems to come out of nowhere, like rust that suddenly pops up on iron after a storm.

Victor Davis Hanson

In Iraq #1 we stayed within U.N. mandates, limited our response, went home after Kuwait was freed - and were censured for allowing Shiites and Kurds to be butchered and not going to Baghdad when the road was open and the dictator tottering. In Iraq #2 we removed the tyrant at less cost than the liberation of Kuwait during the earlier war, stayed on to ensure freedom and fair representation for various groups - and are being castigated for either using too little force to ensure needed order or too much power that stifles indigenous aspirations and turns popular opinion against us.

Victor Hugo

That is the explanation of war, an outrage by humanity upon humanity in despite of humanity.

Victor Hugo

It has become necessary to call the attention of European governments to a fact which is apparently so insignificant that the governments seem not to notice it. The fact is this: an entire people is being annihilated. Where? In Europe. Are there witnesses? One witness, the entire world. Do the governments see it? No.

Victor Hugo

The English took the eagle and Austrians the eaglet. [Fr., L'Angleterre prit l'aigle, et l'Autriche l'aiglon.]

Victor Hugo

You preserve your shame but you kill your glory.

Victor Hugo

Superstition, bigotry and prejudice, ghosts though they are, cling tenaciously to life; they are shades armed with tooth and claw. They must be grappled with unceasingly, for it is a fateful part of human destiny that it is condemned to wage perpetual war against ghosts. A shade is not easily taken by the throat and destroyed.

Victor Hugo

There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.

Victor Hugo

A war between Europeans is a civil war.

Victor Hugo

Superstitions, bigotries, hypocrisies, prejudices, these phantoms, phantoms though they be, cling to life; they have teeth and nails in their shadowy substance, and we must grapple with them individually and make war on them without truce; for it is one of humanity's inevitabilities to be condemned to eternal struggle with phantoms.