Great War Quotes

“So you, too, like fruitcake? (RW on meeting Lenin in Zurich during World War I.)”
― Robert Walser

“Mute in that golden silence hung with green,
Come down from heaven and bring me in your eyes
Remembrance of all beauty that has been,
And stillness from the pools of Paradise.
”
― Siegfried Sassoon, Counter-Attack and Other Poems

“Though the object of being a Great Power is to be able to fight a Great War, the only way of remaining a Great Power is not to fight one.”
― A.J.P Taylor

“Ironically, the memory of the women heroes of World War I was largely eclipsed by the very women they had inspired. The more blatant evil enacted into law by Nazi Germany during the Second World War ensured that those who fought against it would continue to fascinate long after the first war had become a vague, unpleasant memory—one brought to mind only by fading photographs of serious, helmeted young men standing in sandbagged trenches or smiling young women in ankle-length nursing uniforms, or by the presence of poppies in Remembrance Day ceremonies.”
― Kathryn J. Atwood, Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics

“They used to call it the 'Great War'. But I'll be damned if I could tell you what was so 'great' about it. They also called it 'the war to end all wars'...'cause they figured it was so big and awful that the world'd just have to come to its senses and make damn sure we never fought another one ever again.
That woulda been a helluva nice story.
But the truth's got an ugly way of killin' nice stories.”
― Max Brooks, The Harlem Hellfighters

“...all the men in the photograph wear puttees. All the men in the picture are bound, trying to keep themselves together. That is how considerate they are, for the love of God and country and women and the other men--for the love of all that is good and true--they keep themselves together because they have to. They are afraid but they are not cowards.”
― Elena Mauli Shapiro, 13, rue Thérèse

“During the conflict that was placed before them, they not only gained the gratitude of many in their own generation but they proved, for the first time on a global scale, the enormous value of a woman’s contribution, paving the way for future generations of women to do the same.”
― Kathryn J. Atwood, Women Heroes of World War I: 16 Remarkable Resisters, Soldiers, Spies, and Medics

“Take me! Well, not quite take me, love me now, take me eventually”
― Fay Weldon

“Sie sollten uns Achtzehnjährigen Vermittler und Führer zur Welt des Erwachsenseins werden, zur Welt der Arbeit, der Pflicht, der Kultur und des Fortschritts, zur Zukunft. [...] Mit dem Begriff der Autorität, dessen Träger sie waren, verband sich in unseren Gedanken größere Einsicht und menschlicheres Wissen. Doch der erste Tote, den wir sahen, zertrümmerte diese Überzeugung. Wir mußten erkennen, daß unser Alter ehrlicher war als das ihre; sie hatten vor uns nur die Phrase und die Geschicklichkeit voraus. Das erste Trommelfeuer zeigte uns unseren Irrtum, und unter ihm stürzte die Weltanschauung zusammen, die sie uns gelehrt hatten.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, Im Westen nichts Neues

“We don’t have a great war in our generation, or great depression, but we do, we have a great war of the spirit. We have a great revolution against culture. The great depression is our lives. We have a spiritual depression.”
“We have to show these men and women freedom by enslaving them, and show them courage by frightening them.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Fight Club

“Sometimes time can play tricks. One moment it idles by, an hour can seem a lifetime, such as when sitting by the river at dusk watching the bats snatching insects above the limpid waters; the breaching fish causing ringed ripples and a satisfying plop. Other times, time flashes by in an immodest fashion. So it is with the start of war. First time quivers with the last strum of a wonderful peace, the note holding in the air, mysterious and haunting, filling the listener with awe. Then, with a rising crescendo the terror starts with uncouth haste; with a boom the listener is shaken from their reverie and delivered into the servitude, of an ear-shattering cacophony.”
― M.A. Lossl, Mizpah Cousins: life, love and perilous predicaments during the Great War era.

“The truth is, no study is possible on the battlefield. One does there simply what one can in order to apply what one knows. Therefore, in order to do even a little, one has already to know a great deal, and to know it well.”
― Ferdinand Foch, The Principles of War

“On his worst days, Ellwood hated England...They were a small-minded people, the English, and their greatest art form, writing, was small-minded also, it was provincial; it did not translate like music and painting, it was only for the English-speakers. That [his friends] should all have to die so that England could continue in its smug small-mindedness seemed worse than a tragedy, for it was not beautiful. No, it was only stupid, and Ellwood hated the muddy fields and the dreary sheep and the clumsy, prehistoric rock formations that they had all been asked to die for.”
― Alice Winn, In Memoriam

“… the white stain of chalk mixed with the clay topsoil zigzagging across the freshly-turned earth, the tell-tale marks of the German trenches from which ***** had been enfiladed. Fifty ploughings and fifty harvests had failed to erase those marks, so maybe they were etched into the land for all time, just like the spadework of the ancient peoples which the archaeologists studied with such fervour.”
― Anthony Price, Other Paths to Glory

“Who desired the Great War? No nation benefitted from it. The war brought about the destruction of the Prussian Empire, stripped the British Empire of its ability to hold its colonies, slaughtered the French and starved Germany, inspired a revolution in Russia, and prepared the ground for a more terrible slaughter to come. The great powers didn’t want a war and they certainly didn’t need one. But their people wanted a war. To the surprise of the rulers across the Allies and the Central Powers, the idea of war was seized by the people of every nation.”
― Matthew De Abaitua, If Then

“The sound of the airplanes is in the key of war. The thunder of the truck trains, the sputter of the motorcycles, the music of the bugles, and even the howling of the dogs are parts of the symphony of war.”
― Clair Kenamore

“A halt was called, and the men threw themselves prostrate on the road without loosening their packs. At that moment, the outfit badly needed a 'pick-me-up,' and it came.

'Listen!' said the sergeant.

Through the cloud and the mournful wind we heard the thunder of our guns — the French 75s. They were talking to us.”
― Clair Kenamore

“The soldiers fell into line on the platform and waited while their officers received instructions. It was the early hours of the morning and the air was cold. Michael thought that he could hear the distant rumble of thunder and when he looked in that direction he saw a faint orange glow of light on the horizon that seemed to pulse slowly. He felt sick in his stomach. Months of training had prepared him to be a soldier but until this moment war was just a concept, like a foreign country he had heard about but never visited. It was now a harsh reality, he had arrived on its angry shores. The men around him all face the same way, silently observing the false dawn, they knew that was where they were going.”
― Dennis Cronin, Michael Sweeney

“The Treaty of Versailles and Saint-Germain were seen by liberals, from Keynes's Economic Consequences of the Peace onwards, as the malign progeny of the Great War. The bellicose passions of the war had been translated into the vengeful and unjust strictures of the Peace. A 'guilty conscience' over the treatment of Germany was born. By the end of the twenties most educated Britons had been persuaded of the co-responsibility of all the great Powers in unleashing the catastrophe. Hence, the attribution of sole guilt to Germany was deemed unjust and inexpedient; the treaties' anti-German provisions appeared indefensible and in need of revision. Reparations, territorial penalties, even the discriminatory disarmament — all had to go. From the liberal perspective, the uncompromising, unpragmatic strictures of the Peace seemed to perpetuate the grip of irrationality in world affairs; they promised a new epic of blood-letting. The consensus which arose in Britain in the wake of the Great War opposing the Versailles settlement — and it encompassed Liberals, Socialists and many Conservatives — affords an overwhelming proof of liberalism's sway over British political thinking.”
― Benny Morris, The Roots of Appeasement: The British Weekly Press and Nazi Germany During 1930s

“War is a tissue of uncertainty, its theory often displaying conviction and confidence not reflected in its practice.”
― Richard Holmes