Epic War Quotes & Sayings

On with you, horse-taming Trojans! Never give Greeks best in your will to fight! They are not made of stone or iron. Their flesh can't keep out penetrating spears when they are hit. — Homer

My own memories of the vimanas during my lifetime as Yudhisthira are that they were basically leftovers from a golden age several thousand years before when India was a colony of Atlantis. The epic Ramayana dates from this earlier time frame and chronicles a war with the Atlaneans when India rebelled against their oppressive rule. Toward the later days of Atlantis's history, it had been bent on tyrannical world domination by force. In that distant time, more than twelve thousand years ago, the vimanas were far larger and more numerous than they were during my lifetime as Yudhisthira. — Michael K Jaco

Surely, by all convention, the Iliad will end here, with the triumphant return of its vindicated hero. But the Iliad is not a conventional epic, and at the very moment of its hero's greatest military triumph, Homer diverts his focus from Achilles to the epic's two most important casualties, Patroklos and Hektor: it is to the consequences of their deaths, especially to the victor, that all action of the Iliad has been inexorably leading. — Caroline Alexander

I Would Go To War With Dhoni By My Side. — Gary Kirsten

What I wish is that people would look beyond the tribbles and see I've written some other books that I really would like people to notice. There's 'The Man Who Folded Himself,' there's 'The Martian Child,' which is about my son and the adoption. There's 'The War Against The Chtorr,' which is my magnum opus, my great epic story. — David Gerrold

For Achilles, the death of Patroclus pushed him into a fury, but it was not only grief that drove him. It was also a sense of shame and guilt because he had not been there to protect his friend. Sometimes men in combat feel this sort of survivor's guilt even though, realistically, they could have done nothing to prevent their comrade's death. — Nel Noddings

Widespread criticisms of jihad in Islam and the so-called sword verses in the Quran have unearthed for fair-minded Christians difficult questions about Christianity's own traditions of holy war and 'texts of terror.' Like Hinduism's Mahabharata epic, the Bible devotes entire books to war and rumors thereof. Unlike the Quran, however, it contains hardly any rules for how to conduct a just war. — Stephen R. Prothero

I seem to remember only centuries of heroic war, in which you were always heroes
epic on epic, Iliad on Iliad, and you always brothers in arms. Whether it was but recently (for time is nothing), or at the beginning of the world, I sent you out to war. I sat in the darkness, where there is not any created thing, and to you I was only a voice commanding valour and an unnatural virtue. You heard the voice in the dark, and you never heard it again. The sun in heaven denied it, the earth and sky denied it, all human wisdom denied it. And when I met you in the daylight I denied it myself ... But you were men. You did not forget your secret honour, though the whole cosmos turned an engine of torture to tear it out of you. — G.K. Chesterton

While war for love is inspiring in legends and epic poems, we must be governed by cynical pragmatism. — James L. Cambias

In keeping with the American effort to reconcile with Japan, all of them, including those serving life sentences, would soon be paroled. It appears that even Sueharu Kitamura, "the Quack," was set free, in spite of his death sentence. By 1958, every war criminal who had not been executed would be free, and on December 30 of that year, all would be granted amnesty. Sugamo would be torn down, and the epic ordeals of POWs in Japan would fade from the world's memory. — Laura Hillenbrand

President Ronald Reagan, who spent World War II in Hollywood, vividly described his own role in liberating Nazi concentration camp victims. Living in the film world, he apparently confused a movie he had seen with a reality he had not. On many occasions in his Presidential campaigns, Mr. Reagan told an epic story of World War II courage and sacrifice, an inspiration for all of us. Only it never happened; it was the plot of the movie A Wing and a Prayer - that made quite an impression on me, too, when I saw it at age 9. Many other instances of this sort can be found in Reagan's public statements. It is not hard to imagine serious public dangers emerging out of instances in which political, military, scientific or religious leaders are unable to distinguish fact from vivid fiction. — Carl Sagan

You must think I'm a total idiot."
"Nah. I am starting to wonder if you're trying to beat Keefe's record for biggest interspeciesial episode- and if you are, I'm pretty sure you've won. The Great Gulon Incident was epic, but it didn't almost start a war. — Shannon Messenger

On THE DECSIVE DUEL: SPITFIRE VS 109
The epic struggle between the Spitfire and the Messerschmitt 109 upon which so much of western civilization depended in the summer of 1940 has found the ideal biographer in David Isby. I write "biographer" because, like the men who flew these remarkable fighter planes, Isby sees them in almost human terms, transcending the mere mechanical. (Andrew Roberts, Author Of The Storm Of War ) — Andrew Roberts

Zac dangled his legs off the edge of the building, hanging onto every word I said as though I were some old time bard telling an epic war tale. I tried to be as detailed as possible, and I knew that I was doing a good job when he'd lean back and shut his eyes. He'd breathe slowly and watch the pictures that I painted for him with my words. He'd smile, not a cunning toothy one, but a sincere smile that comes only from being truly happy. I'd sit across from him and just watch his reactions. We could be up there for hours. I would see the sunset across his face and be as captivated with his skin's changing colours as he was with my everyday stories. That's when I learned to dislike winters. — Ashley Newell

If I thought there was any hope of turning 'World War Z' into a movie, I wouldn't have written it as a giant, epic, global story, because that requires a giant, epic, global budget. — Max Brooks

I'm fascinated by the period that goes from the Industrial Revolution to right after World War II. There's something about that period that's epic and tragic. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Most people think of cinematographers as choosing subjects of an epic nature to show off what they do - big, sweeping images of war or pageantry. — Caleb Deschanel

Because this story struck me as extraordinary, and it still does. Once upon a time there was a man in a spacesuit in a secret reconnaissance plane reading The Once and Future King, that great historical epic, that comic, tragic, romantic retelling of the Arthurian legend that tussles with questions of war and aggression, and might, and right, and the matter of what a nation is or might be. — Helen Macdonald

Homer's epic does not tell of such seemingly essential events as the abduction of Helen, for example, nor of the mustering and sailing of the Greek fleet, the first hostilities of the war, the Trojan Horse, and the sacking and burning of Troy.
Instead, the 15,693 lines of Homer's Iliad describe the occurrences of a roughly two-week period in the tenth and final year of what had become a stalemated siege of Troy. — Caroline Alexander

...seeing everything, yet a part of nothing. — George R R Martin

Th' unconquerable will,/ And study of revenge, immortal hate,/ And courage never to submit or yield/ And what is else not to be overcome? — John Milton

That image of a chessboard - an epic contest between two giant players, carefully nudging their pieces around the globe as part of a grand strategy - has indeed become a familiar metaphor for the Cold War. But it is misleading. Many decisions remembered today for their farsighted, tactical brilliance were denounced in their day as weak-willed. And big, public gestures often made less difference than the small, hidden ones. — Sam Tanenhaus

Not everyone who spoke to you friendly was really your friend. — George R R Martin

Yea, and if some god shall wreck me in the wine-dark deep,
even so I will endure ...
For already have I suffered full much,
and much have I toiled in perils of waves and war.
Let this be added to the tale of those. — Homer

A lot has changed, and now we're going off to fight a war neither of us wanted. So I'm asking you now, again, if you will bind yourself to me as my wife, now and forever.

Carison to Raven — Ruth Ford Elward

A great many of the epic fantasies, from The Lord of the Rings onward, are about war, but to my mind, a lot of it doesn't really deal honestly with the consequences of war, what war does to us, as a society, what war does to us, as individuals, and the struggle for power, in the same way, and what we're fighting for. — George R R Martin

In war, people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and in those circumstances, they act in extraordinary ways. In war, you see people at their very best and their very worst, acting in ways you could never imagine. War is human drama at its most epic and most intense. — Dexter Filkins

How infuriating it is to be continually born to war that continues one's whole lifetime, even as one protests it - what futility. It is perhaps a more public epic in this regard, and carries a ritual vocalization. — Anne Waldman

My life wasn't just about one city, or one Epic, anymore. It was about a war. It was about finding a way to stop the Epics.
Permanently. — Brandon Sanderson

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others - even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. — N.K. Jemisin

We are supposed to believe [capitalist ideology] was the champion of freedom and prosperity in the epic struggle called the Cold War. If there was such a champion, might it not have been freedom itself, as realized in the institutional forms of democracy? This is not how the story has been told. We are t believe it was an economic system, capitalism, that arrayed its forces against its opposite, communism, and rescued all we hold dear. Yet in the new era ... [capitalism] has shown itself very ready to devour what we hold dear, if the list can be taken to include culture, education, the environment, and the sciences, as well as the peace and well-being of our fellow citizens. — Marilynne Robinson

The International Committee to support People's War in India salutes all the initiatives held in different countries of the world for the International Days of action on 29-30-31 January 2015. We are carefully collecting all these small and wide actions. They are a sign of solidarity of proletarians and peoples with the fighting masses in India, marching to the liberation from imperialism, feudalism and comprador bourgeoisie, along the epic rebellion began in Naxalbari on 1967, which impetuously comes up to the present day. — Anonymous

The goddess smiled. "You are a good hero, Percy Jackson. Not too proud. I like that. But you have much to learn. When Dionysus was made a god, I gave up my throne for him. It was the only way to avoid a civil war among the gods."
"It unbalanced the Council," I remembered. "Suddenly there were seven guys and five girls."
Hestia shrugged. "It was the best solution, not a perfect one. Now I tend the fire. I fade slowly into the background. No one will ever write epic poems about the deeds of Hestia. Most demigods don't even stop to talk to me. But that is no matter. I keep the peace. I yield when necessary. Can you do this? — Rick Riordan

Maybe in this Star Wars world maybe subconsciously I was preparing myself. But I've just found all of my ideas I've been coming up with are big sci-fi things, and I wanted to do a big epic, a big space opera, and this is it. This is mine. — Mark Millar

The hard truths are the ones to hold tight. - Old Bear — George R R Martin

Life is the result of war, and society is the instrument of war... To refuse war means to refuse an epic life — James Palmer

No one embodied the spirit of the frontier more than Daniel Boone, who faced and defeated countless natural and man-made dangers to literally hand cut the trail west through the wilderness. He marched with then colonel George Washington in the French and Indian War, established one of the most important trading posts in the West, served three terms in the Virginia Assembly, and fought in the Revolution. His exploits made him world famous; he served as the model for James Fenimore Cooper's Leatherstocking Tales and numerous other pioneer stories. He was so well known and respected that even Lord Byron, in his epic poem Don Juan, wrote, "Of the great names which in our faces stare, The General Boon, back-woodsman of Kentucky, Was happiest amongst mortals anywhere ... " And yet he was accused of treason - betraying his country - the most foul of all crimes at the time. What really happened to bring him to that courtroom? And was the verdict reached there correct? — Bill O'Reilly

The greatest war story ever told commemorates a war that established no boundaries, won no territory, and furthered no cause. — Caroline Alexander

The War went on far too long ... It was too vast for its meaning, like a giant with the brain of a midge. Its epic proportions were grotesquely out of scale, seeing what it was fought to settle. It was far too indecisive. It settled nothing, as it meant nothing. Indeed, it was impossible to escape the feeling that it was not meant to settle anything - that could have any meaning, or be of any advantage, to the general run of men. — Wyndham Lewis

It was one thing to go into battle with friends, and another to perish alone and despised. — George R R Martin

Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If seems so it is because when you look backward things that happened years apart are telescoped together, and because very few of your memories come to you genuinely virgin. It is largely because of the books, films and reminiscences that have come between that the war of 1914-18 is now supposed to have had some tremendous, epic quality that the present one lacks. — George Orwell

This, it occurred to me, this was the undisciplined human community that, fired by its dull collective wit, now drove the armed nation towards it knew-not-what sort of epic martial cataclysm: a massive flailing organism with all the rectitude and foresight of an untrained puppy.

--In the private letters of Albert Sloane, by permission of the Sloane family. — George Saunders

This, the only occasion in the Iliad when furious Achilles smiles serves as a bittersweet reminder of the difference real leadership could have made to the events of the Iliad. Agamemnon's panicked prize-grabbing in Book One and even Nestor's rambling "authority" pale beside Achilles' instinctive and absolute command of himself and the dangers of this occasion. — Caroline Alexander

There was a bidding war between Epic Records and Jive - now RCA - which was bittersweet. Just having labels bid over me was really cool, but I ended up going with Jive because it felt better over there, and they have my favorite artists like Usher, Chris Brown, and Justin Timberlake. — Jacob Latimore

His military triumphs had been neither frequent nor epic in scale. He had lost more battles than he had won, had botched several through strategic blunders, and had won at Yorktown only with the indispensable aid of the French Army and fleet. But he was a different kind of general fighting a different kind of war, and his military prowess cannot be judged by the usual scorecard of battles won and lost. His fortitude in keeping the impoverished Continental Army intact was a major historic accomplishment. It always stood on the brink of dissolution, and Washington was the one figure who kept it together, the spiritual and managerial genius of the whole enterprise: he had been resilient in the face of every setback, courageous in the face of every danger. He was that rare general who was great between battles and not just during them. — Ron Chernow

I don't think the latest Star Wars pictures have any artistic intentions, but the original picture opened up epic science fiction. — William Monahan

History conditioned you for epic-scale calamity. Once, when she was studying the death tolls of battles in World War I, she'd caught herself thinking, Only eight thousand men died here. Well, that's not many. Because next to, say, the million who died at the Somme, it wasn't. The stupendous numbers deadened you to the merely tragic, and history didn't average in the tame days for balance. On this day, no one in the world was murdered. A lion gave birth. Ladybugs launched on aphids. A girl in love daydreamed all morning, neglecting her chores, and wasn't even scolded. — Laini Taylor

It was Vyasa's genius to take the whole great Mahabharata epic and see it as metaphor for the perennial war between the forces of light and the forces of darkness in every human heart. — Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

We don't tend to write about disease in fiction - not just teen novels but all American novels - because it doesn't fit in with our idea of the heroic romantic epic. There is room only for sacrifice, heroism, war, politics and family struggle. — John Green