Great Wartime Quotes & Sayings

As in all great cataclysmic events, men are forced to show their true colours. Some will achieve the status of legend for their courage, brilliance and dedication; some will possess all the same qualities unacknowledged; others will be plodders doing their best; and there will be those who will be what they have always been -- sewer rats. — Anne Rouen

Apparently, I have good feet for ballet. — Gillian Jacobs

A monstrous, grisly light poured in on them. - a hideous light - a boiling, pestilential light - a light that would have disfigured hell. The — Douglas Adams

Here, dear reader, you must summon patient compassion. Try to imagine the hardships of a military officer triply burdened by close relationships with political leaders and the national news media, an Ivy League PhD, and wartime triumphs leading an elite airborne division. Our hero somehow survived in spite of it all. He rose against his handicaps, triumphing over the awful mark of Princeton University, that great gathering place for outcasts, rebels, and the socially obscure. He secured higher military rank even though he had been successful in combat. He adroitly worked CBS News, the Washington Post, and the United States Senate, yet still rose to prominence. — Chris Bray

The villains are all parts of me. For years I've been wondering what it would be like if all those negative elements were forced onto the main character's side. I can understand a character with that kind of anger. — Hayao Miyazaki

The modern Middle East was largely created by the British. It was they who carried the Allied war effort in the region during World War I and who, at its close, principally fashioned its peace. It was a peace presaged by the nickname given the region by covetous British leaders in wartime: 'The Great Loot.' — Scott Anderson

We live in forgotten Victorian knife-plunging Manchester, where everything lies wherever it was left over one hundred years ago. The safe streets are dimly lit, the others not lit at all, but both represent a danger that you're asking for should you find yourself out there once curtains have closed for tea. — Morrissey

The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. — O. Henry

Today, people just want to live their lives, they don't need some great Idea. This is entirely new for Russia; it's unprecedented in Russian literature. At heart, we're built for war. We were always either fighting or preparing to fight. We've never known anything else - hence our wartime psychology. Even in civilian life, everything was always militarized. The drums were beating, the banners flying, our hearts leaping out of our chests. People didn't recognize their own slavery - they even liked being slaves. I — Svetlana Alexievich

There was, for many of us, a great escape in reading about the fantastic and supernatural during wartime. Terrors more terrible than those we were living through gave us an outlet for our anxiety. — M.J. Rose

You guys have so much energy. I threw a party in Toronto and there were, like, 4,000 people who couldn't get in. — Jamie Foxx

One thing that does seem to me to be fairly consistent is that presidents who restrict civil liberties, even in wartime, are usually judged harshly for it. So most people agree that one of the worst stains on the reputation of FDR, who is widely considered a great president, is the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Likewise, Lincoln is judged harshly for the suspension of habeas corpus. — David Greenberg

You with your veins full of night - you have no more place among men than an epitaph in the middle of a circus. — Emil M. Cioran

A real woman is someone who knows what she wants. If you want to stay home, that's fine, but you have to be clear-eyed. — Ruth Reichl

There never was night that had no morn. — Dinah

Many historians have noted an interesting phenomenon in American life in the years immediately after a war. In the councils of government fierce partisanship replaces the necessary political coalitions of wartime. IN the great arena of social relations -- business, labour, the community -- violence rises, fear and recrimination dominate public discussion, passion prevails over reason. Many historians have noted this phenomenon. It is attributed to the continuance beyond the end of the war of the war hysteria. Unfortunately, the necessary emotional fever for fighting a war cannot be turned off like a water tap. Enemies must continue to be found. The mind and heart cannot be demobilised as quickly as the platoon. On the contrary, like a fiery furnace at white heat, it takes a considerable time to cool. — E.L. Doctorow

See Cook [op.cit.] for a discussion of Huygens's unusual wartime visit to Cambridge and the Royal Society. His philosophical contretemps with Isaac Newton in 1675 (referenced in Society minutes as "The Great Corpuscular Debate") would mark the last significant intellectual discourse between England and the continent prior to the chaos of the Interregnum and the Annexation . . . Some Newton biographers [Winchester (1867), &c] indicate Huygens may have used his sojourn in Cambridge to access Newton's alchemical journals and that key insights derived thusly may have been instrumental to Huygens's monumental breakthrough. However, cf. Hooft [1909] and references therein for a critique of the forensic alchemy underlying this assertion. From Freeman, Thomas S., A History of the Pre-Annexation England from Hastings to the Glorious Revolution, 3 Vols. New Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1918. — Ian Tregillis

I was not staring at you," he told his plate.
I leaned over. "Did you hear that, Dingane's lunch? He was not staring at you."
He looked up at me crossly. "I was not staring at you."
"I never said you were."
"I was merely explaining that Henry was exaggerating. I did not stare at you."
"Okay," I stated, implying in my tone that he had done just that.
"I didn't. I-I wasn't."
"I believe you," I told him
"I may have looked at you a few times to make sure you were doing your job."
"Oh, I see then."
"But I certainly wasn't staring."
"We've established that you were not staring."
He breathed deeply a few times, his eyes burning into mine. "Good."
He'd definitely been staring. — Fisher Amelie

How we spend our souls matter...We have to desire to become fearless with these moments [of decision]. Fight through the doubt and discouragement and awkwardness of new. (32) — Lysa TerKeurst

You may wish to be loving - you may even try with all your might - but your love will never be pure unless you are free from resentment. When we are free from resentment, loving is effortless. When we have to try hard to love, this is generally a sign that we are repressing our resentments ... — John Gray

To the degree that the British right hand didn't know what the left was doing, it was because a select group of men at the highest reaches of its government went to great lengths to ensure it. To that end, they created a labyrinth of information firewalls - deceptions, in a less charitable assessment - to make sure that crucial knowledge was withheld from Britain's wartime allies and even from many of her own seniormost diplomats and military commanders. — Scott Anderson

First, you believe that there is one intelligent substance, from which all things proceed. Second, you believe that this substance gives you everything you desire. And third, you relate yourself to it by a feeling of deep and profound gratitude. — Wallace D. Wattles