One Line War Quotes & Sayings

o In the decision to use the bomb the base line had shifted down during the moral slide from the blockade to the area bombing of Germany and to the fire-bombing of Japan. Predictably one member of Stimson's committee made the point that the 'number of people that would be killed by the bomb would not be greater in general magnitude than the number already killed in fire raids'. — Jonathan Glover

An army must have but one line of operations. This must be maintained with care and abandoned only for major reasons. — Napoleon Bonaparte

Gunner shook his head; he wasn't in the mood. He stared down at his bottle as he spoke. "Yeah, and what if I do go after it and what if I find no one, and I'm alone for the next sixty years? What then? Huh? Friends and family will get married. I'll be stuck buying gifts. Years pass: children, birthday parties. At dinner parties, I'll be odd man out, forcing people to arrange five chairs around a table instead of four or six. Or, okay, let's say maybe twenty years down the line I meet someone nice and I've already given up on ever finding true love. Let's say the girl is a few pounds overweight, has fizzy hair and an annoying laugh, but at this point, I'm also a few pounds overweight and my hair is thinning and my laughter is annoying. Maybe then the two of us get married, and both our groups of friends will say, 'See I told you that you'd find true love. It just took a while.' And we'll smile, but we'll both know it's a lie-- — Michael Anthony

Way back when the Sam Peckinpah film The Wild Bunch premiered, a woman journalist raised her hand at the press conference and asked the following: "Why in the world do you have to show so much blood all over the place?" She was pretty worked up about it. One of the actors, Ernest Borgnine, looked a bit perplexed and fielded the question. "Lady, did you ever see anyone shot by a gun without bleeding?" This film came out at the height of the Vietnam War.
I love that line. That's gotta be one of the principles behind reality. Accepting things that are hard to comprehend, and leaving them that way. And bleeding. Shooting and bleeding. — Haruki Murakami

You can have a pretty good first line but not a strong enough thought to tag along more lines and sometimes in the middle words become bored and make war on one another. Notebooks are full of these fragments, shrapnel of our intention. Life is short on conclusions and that's why it's often a struggle to end a poem. — Jim Harrison

The thing that drew me to Lafayette as a subject - that he was that rare object of agreement in the ironically named United States - kept me coming back to why that made him unique. Namely, that we the people never agreed on much of anything. Other than a bipartisan consensus on barbecue and Meryl Streep, plus that time in 1942 when everyone from Bing Crosby to Oregonian school children heeded FDR's call to scrounge up rubber for the war effort, disunity is the through line in the national plot - not necessarily as a failing, but as a free people's privilege. And thanks to Lafayette and his cohorts in Washington's army, plus the king of France and his navy, not to mention the founding dreamers who clearly did not think through what happens every time one citizen's pursuit of happiness infuriates his neighbor, getting on each other's nerves is our right. — Sarah Vowell

For decades afterwards, I punished myself with images of Sofia standing
naked in the snow, shivering, clutching a chunk of cement that a guard had told her was soap, in the worst winter Poland has ever known. But as I stared at the empty train tracks and thought of the stationmaster making the schoolyard slash across his throat, I had no idea what he was talking about. I could not have conjured up the kind of man who would be willing to design an oven that would be economically fueled by the fat of the men, women and children it was burning. I would not have believed that these same engineers would find other men willing to carry out their monstrous plans. I, too, would have dismissed it as propaganda, that one kind of human being could industriously collect and kill six million of another kind of human being. Somewhere along the line, there would have to be someone who said no.
Forgive me, Sofia. Forgive me, Isaiah. I did not know. — Helen Maryles Shankman

In fact if you look at Reagan's global war on terrorism it very quickly turned into a massive terrorist war: [by us] Central America, South Africa, the Middle East, all U.S.-backed terrorism. That's one of the reasons why it disappeared from history and why the standard line is that Bush 43 declared the war on terror. Actually he just repeated what Reagan had said 20 years earlier. — Noam Chomsky

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Damen found himself alongside Jord. 'If you want to live, ride fast.'

White-faced, Jord took one look at his expression and said, 'He's not coming.'

'We're outnumbered,' said Damen, 'but if you run, you might still make it out.'

'If we're outnumbered, what are you going to do?'

Damen drove his horse onward, ready to take up his own place on the front line.

He said, 'Fight. — C.S. Pacat

From the days of the Founding Fathers, right to this (2008) election, how and where America fights to defend its freedom, has been the ultimate question in its politics. The one that triggers rage and sorrow; the one that asks is the price of blood too dear? Or, if it is to stay true to its convictions, does America have no coice but to put its lives on the line? — Simon Schama

It occurs to me how close happiness and sadness are. So closely knitted together. Such a thin line, a thread-like divide that in the midst of emotions, it trembles, blurring the territory of exact opposites ... how quickly a moment of love was snapped away to a moment of hate ... Of how love and war stand upon the very same foundations. How, in my darkest moments, my most fearful times, when faced, became my bravest. When feeling at your weakest you end up showing more strength, when at your lowest are suddenly lifted above higher than you've ever been. They all border one another, the opposites, and how we can be altered. Despair can be altered by one simple smile offered by a stranger; confidence can become fear by the arrival of one uneasy presence. ... How similar emotions are. — Cecelia Ahern

The implicit optimism of the [field service post card] is worth noting - the way it offers no provision for transmitting news like "I have lost my left leg" or "I have been admitted into hospital wounded and do not expect to recover." Because it provided no way of saying "I am going up the line again," its users had to improvise. Wilfred Owen had an understanding with his mother that when he used a double line to cross out "I am being sent down to the base," he meant he was at the front again. Close to brilliant is the way the post card allows one to admit to no state of health between being "quite" well, on the one hand, and, on the other, being so sick that one is in hospital. — Paul Fussell

The Pacific no longer represents menacing avenues of approach for a prospective invader. It assumes, instead, the friendly aspect of a peaceful lake. Our line of defense is a natural one and can be maintained with a minimum of military effort and expense. — Douglas MacArthur

Signs for the reenactment adorned every corner, each one a line drawing of a Civil War soldier superimposed over the Confederate battle flag. The signs promised THRILLING HISTORY AND HERITAGE, BREATHTAKING SCENERY AND SOUND EFFECTS, and the EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCE OF A LIFETIME all at the Pride Week Patriot Days Festival. — T. Geronimo Johnson

Never let a red line become the cage from which there is no escape. Constricting yourself in statements without any actions coming forth in the future in not engaging in compromise or negotiation will hang you on a tightrope by your own tongue. More talk, less squawk may just be the key to grace in unlocking a sense of mutual respect. Thumping a chest and making a threat from many a mile away from a situation is good for an ability to show off how well one can speak in broad tones. Yet, to sit down across from someone and speak to them as an equal, would go a lot further in balancing the plateau of respect shown. Maybe the red line will fly away and the need to always cling to it shall diminish with ears that truly listen to one another - A.H. Scott 3/3/14 — A.H. Scott

The men who were well enough to stand had moved across the carriage to cheer the Italians as they went past. A crutch waved out of the window; bandaged forearms made the Red Salute. It was like an allegorical picture of war; the trainload of fresh men gliding proudly up the line, the maimed men sliding slowly down, and all the while the guns on the open trucks making one's heart leap as guns always do, and reviving that pernicious feeling, so difficult to get rid of, that war *is* glorious after all. — George Orwell

To rule forever," continues the Chinaman, later, "it is necessary only to create, among the people one would rule, what we call ... Bad History. Nothing will produce Bad History more directly nor brutally, than drawing a Line, in particular a Right Line, the very Shape of Contempt, through the midst of a People,
to create thus a Distinction betwixt 'em,
'tis the first stroke.
All else will follow as if predestin'd, unto War and Devastation. — Thomas Pynchon

As long as we're comparing analogies," Jack added, "how about this one? A person being chased by a bear doesn't have to be able to run faster than the bear. He only has to be faster than his slowest companion. Driver picks. I'm going to catch up with the convoy, find a way to pass several of the cars, and not be last in line. — Donald G. Firesmith

Do you want to know what General Putnam is thinking? It's this. He's thinking that he can't win the war if he doesn't keep the people on his side. He's thinking that he can't keep the people on his side if the troops are running amok among the civilian population - raping the women, stealing cattle, burning houses. He is determined to scare the wits out of the troops to keep them in line. And he's thinking that it doesn't matter very much who he executes to do it. So many men have died, so many mothers have wept, so many brothers and sisters have cried. He is thinking that in the long run if he executes somebody, he'll shorten the war and save more lives. It doesn't matter to him very much who he executes; one man's agony is like another's, one mother's tears are no wetter than anybody else's. And that's why he's going to have Sam shot. — James Lincoln Collier

So the peasants are used as targets in war?" I doubted. "Does the Overhead feel that is necessary to kill off one of their own? Peasants are being placed as diversions on the front line like they mean nothing - "
"Would you rather save the strong, or spare the weak?" Mother questioned me.
"Why can we not do both?" I returned.
"Because Heaven has its reasons, Anastasia," Mother chimed quietly. "It is Heavens way to balance those who are strong and those who are weak. It cannot be changed. — Barbara C. Doyle

Fool!" cried the hunchback. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well known is this: 'Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. — William Goldman

It began with one act of madness, and it ended with another. John Brown heard history's clock strike in the night and tried to hurry dawn along with gunfire; now John Wilkes Booth heard the clock strike, and he tried with gunfire to restore the darkness. Each man stood outside the human community, directed by voices the sane do not hear, and each kept history from going logically ... The line from Harper's Ferry to Ford's Theater is a red thread binding the immense disorder of the Civil War into an irrational sort of coherence. — Bruce Catton

But after World War II, the brothers realized they were running hard just to stay in one place. They weren't building volume even though their parking lot was always full. So they did a courageous thing. They closed that successful restaurant in 1948 and reopened it a short time later with a radically different kind of operation. It was a restaurant stripped down to the minimum in service and menu, the prototype for legions of fast-food units that later would spread across the land. Hamburgers, fries, and beverages were prepared on an assembly line basis, and, to the amazement of everyone, Mac and Dick included, the thing worked! — Ray Kroc

History counts its skeletons in round numbers.
A thousand and one remains a thousand,
as though the one had never existed:
an imaginary embryo, an empty cradle,
...
emptiness running down steps toward the garden,
nobody's place in line. — Wislawa Szymborska

There's always that one thing, right? A particular action that is your own personal line in the sand. The nuclear threat you keep in your back pocket, never even mentioning it because it will escalate any conflict beyond the chance of reconciliation.
And yet, here I was, declaring war, turning that line in the sand into a mere dot in the distance behind me. — Stacey Kade

Today even the dimmest of capitalist can see that the centralized nation-state, so promising an idea a generation ago, has lost all credibility with the population. Anarchism now is the idea that has seized hearts everywhere, some form of it will come to envelop every centrally governed society ... If a nation wants to preserve itself, what other steps can it take, but mobilize and go to war? Central governments were never designed for peace. Their structure is line and staff, the same as an army. The national idea depends on war. A general European war, with ever striking worker a traitor, flags threatened, the sacred soils of homelands defiled, would be just the ticket to wipe Anarchism off the political map. The national idea would be reborn. One trembles at the pestilent forms that would rise up afterward, from the swamp of the ruined Europe. — Thomas Pynchon

One of the ironic things," Kennedy observed to Norman Cousins in the spring of 1963, " ... is that Mr. Khrushchev and I occupy approximately the same political positions inside our governments. He would like to prevent a nuclear war but is under severe pressure from his hard-line crowd, which interprets every move in that direction as appeasement. I've got similar problems ... . The hard-liners in the Soviet Union and the United States feed on one another."8 — Robert F. Kennedy

Exactly. The most convincing argument doesn't come from pithy sayings or aphorisms, but through stories. A clear line of causality, from one event to the next, that seems to be leading to an inevitable conclusion." "We are fighting our guerrilla war battle by battle. — Edward W. Robertson

The Assault Guards had one submachine-gun between ten men and an automatic pistol each; we at the front had approximately one machine-gun between fifty men, and as for pistols and revolvers, you could only procure them illegally. As a matter of fact, though I had not noticed it till now, it was the same everywhere. The Civil Guards and Carabineros, who were not intended for the front at all, were better armed and far better clad than ourselves. I suspect it is the same in all wars-always the same contrast between the sleek police in the rear and the ragged soldiers in the line. — George Orwell

Hamas is regularly described as 'Iranian-backed Hamas, which is dedicated to the destruction of Israel.' One will be hard put to find something like 'democratically elected Hamas, which has long been calling for a two-state settlement in accord with the international consensus' - blocked for over 30 years by the US and Israel. All true, but not a useful contribution to the Party Line, hence dispensable. — Noam Chomsky

I was charging forward too hard, into too many war zones, working too long, drinking too heavily, pushing forward, pushing forward. And who knows, had this not happened, maybe I would have been one of the casualties as a journalist covering the war. Who knows, maybe I would have been captured and tortured somewhere along the line, because I always pushed things to the limit. — Brad Willis

I dispute the right of conservatives to be automatically complacent on these points. My own Marxist group took a consistently anti-Moscow line throughout the 'Cold War,' and was firm in its belief that that Soviet Union and its European empire could not last. Very few people believed that this was the case: The best known anti-Communist to advance the proposition was the great Robert Conquest, but he himself insists that part of the credit for such prescience goes to Orwell. More recently, a very exact prefiguration of the collapse of the USSR was offered by two German Marxists, one of them from the West (Hans Magnus Enzensberger) and one from the East (Rudolf Bahro, the accuracy of whose prediction was almost uncanny). I have never met an American conservative who has even heard of, let alone read, either of these authors. — Christopher Hitchens

Came they, in their droves, one after the other, hundred after hundred, thousand after thousand, engulfing all before them, each line a merciless wave from a boundless sea of bold men. — A.H. Septimius

The sergeants are shunted forward and they blink and stare up at Gonzo as he leans on the edge of his giant mixing bowl. MacArthur never addressed his troops from a mixing bowl
not even one made from a spare geodesic radio emplacement shell
and certainly de Gaulle never did. But Gonzo Lubitsch does, and he does it as if a whole long line of commanders were standing at his shoulder, urging him on.
"Gentlemen," says Gonzo softly, "holidays are over. I need an oven, and I need one in about twenty minutes, or these fine flapjacks will go to waste, and that is not happening."
And something about this statement and the voice in which he says it makes it clear that this is simply true. One way or another, this thing will get done. Under a layer of grime and horror, these two are soldiers, and more, they are productive, can-do sorts of people. Rustily but with a gratitude which is not so far short of worship, they say "Yes, sir" and are about their business. — Nick Harkaway

You are silent now who once stood on battlefields ravaged by destruction unimaginable, holding in those desperate places the line of freedom for others you would never know, and who would never know you. And being one of those you never knew, I would give all I have to clasp your hand one single time, look into eyes that witnessed the bloodied carnage that results when freedom refuses to bow to chains of any kind, and simply say 'thank you. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I can't believe that this world can go on beyond our generation and on down to succeeding generations with this kind of weapon on both sides poised at each other without someday some fool or some maniac or some accident triggering the kind of war that is the end of the line for all of us. And I just think of what a sigh of relief would go up from everyone on this earth if someday-and this is what I have-my hope, way in the back of my head-is that if we start down the road to reduction, maybe one day in doing that, somebody will say, 'Why not all the way? Let's get rid of all these things'. — Ronald Reagan

I hope that when I commence that oath, my tongue may cleave to the roof of my mouth. If I ever sign one line to show allegiance, I hope my arm falls paralyzed to my side ... Get out. I'm so disgusted I can't endure your presence any longer. — Belle Boyd

In the emergency of growing up, we all need heroes. But the father I grew up with was no hero to me, not then. He was too wounded in the head, too endlessly and terribly sad. Too funny, too explosive, too confusing. Heroes are uncomplicated. *This* makes them do *that* ... But the war does not make sense. War senselessly wounds everyone right down the line. A body bag fits more than just its intended corpse. Take the 58,000 American soldiers lost in Vietnam and multiply by four, five, six - and only then does one begin to realize the damage this war has done ... War when necessary, is unspeakable. When unnecessary, it is unforgivable. It is not an occasion for heroism. It is an occasion only for survival and death. To regard war in any other way only guarantees its inevitable reappearance. — Tom Bissell

Truman's farewell address on January 15, 1953, delivered five days before he left the renovated White House, is to this day one of the best speeches of the Cold War, containing insightful analysis and a prediction of how, decades later, it would end. "I suppose that history will remember my term in office as the years when the 'Cold War' began to overshadow our lives," he told the American people, speaking late at night from the Oval Office. Winning the Cold War wouldn't be easy - or fast - but the United States, he firmly believed, would win simply by holding the line. — Garrett M. Graff

I mean, go figure. You prepare your home for an assault and you don't take zombies into consideration. I'd fallen victim to one of the other classic blunders, along with not getting involved in a land war in Asia and never going in against a Sicilian when death was on the line. — Jim Butcher

There is really no crisis except an artificial one ... If the great American people will only keep their temper, on both sides of the line, the trouble will come to an end. — Abraham Lincoln

Has it ever occurred to you- have you never, somewhere along the line, received vibrations to the effect- that this territory was a separate nation? No matter what its political bonds, a nation with its own people, existing within a nation? A society highly paradoxical, with alarming inequities, but with the private honor of thousands of persons winking like lightning bugs through the night? No war was ever fought for so many different reasons meeting in one reason clear as crystal. They fought to preserve their identity. Their political identity, their personal identity. — Harper Lee

Here's what you need to know: some cliches are true, and war is definitely hell. It's being afraid all the time, and when you're not afraid it's because you're pumped full of adrenaline you could literally burst. It's watching people who you love- really profoundly love- get blown to pieces right next to you. It's seeing a leg lying in the ditch and picking it up to put it in a bag because no man- or part of a man, your friend- can be left behind. It's the dark night of the soul. There's no front line over there. The war is all around them, every day, everywhere they go. Some handle it better than others. We don't know why, but we do know this: the human mind can't safely or healthily process that kind of carnage and uncertainty and horror. It just can't. No one comes back from war the same. — Kristin Hannah

It's disingenous for me to say that I wasn't trying to write a moral novel. By its very nature as a novel about the Iraq War, Fobbit steps into the political conversation. There's no way to avoid that. I can appreciate that readers are probably going to line up on one side of the novel or the other. I hope they go to those polar extremes, actually. — Dave Abrams

You ever hear about that experiment an American journalist did in Moscow in the 1970s? He just lined up at some building, nothing special about it, just a random door. Sure enough, someone got in line behind him, then a couple more, and before you knew it, they were backed up around the block. No one asked what the line was for. They just assumed it was worth it. I can't say if that story was true. Maybe it's an urban legend, or a cold war myth. Who knows? — Max Brooks

I am a strong Christian. Not a perfect one - not close. But I strongly believe in God, Jesus, and the Bible. When I die, God is going to hold me accountable for everything I've done on earth. He may hold me back until last and run everybody else through the line, because it will take so long to go over all my sins. "Mr. Kyle, let's go into the backroom. . ." Honestly, I don't know what will really happen on Judgment Day. But what I lean toward is that you know all of your sins, and God knows them all, and shame comes over you at the reality that He knows. I believe the fact that I've accepted Jesus as my savior will be my salvation. But in that backroom or whatever it is when God confronts me with my sins, I do not believe any of the kills I had during the war will be among them. Everyone I shot was evil. I had good cause on every shot. They all deserved to die. — Chris Kyle