Peacetime Quotes & Sayings

Americans have the mistaken viewpoint that Lady Liberty is only a peacetime luxury who is ill-equipped to fight the nasties. Therefore, they reason, we need an equally nasty Big Brother. Americans have forgotten that Lady Liberty is one ferocious mother when protecting her children. — Mary Ruwart

God knows the war sucks, but he sees no great appeal in these tepid peacetime lives. — Ben Fountain

Before I entered the service, all I did was take orders. Next thing I knew, I was giving them.
Peacetime was one thing. Got a lot of wise guy recruits. But then the war started and the new men flooded in- young men, like you- and they were all saluting me, wanting me to tell them what to do. I could see the fear in their eyes. They acted as if I knew something about war that was classified. They thought I could keep them alive. You did too, didn't you?'
Eddie had to admit he did.
The Captain reached back and rubbed his neck. 'I couldn't, of course. I took my orders, too. But if I couldn't keep you alive, I thought I could at least keep you together. In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to believe in. When you find one, you hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole.
For me, that little idea was what I told you guys every day. No one gets left behind. — Mitch Albom

Warriors are never appreciated in peacetime except by those they saved during the war. — Evan Currie

Indiscriminate attacks on civilians ought, under all circumstances, to be illegal in war as in peacetime. — Gijs De Vries

A poor man in this world can be done to death in two main ways, by the absolute indifference of his fellows in peacetime or by their homicidal mania when there's a war. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

There's peacetime and there's wartime, and you don't need polarization on wartime issues. You need polarization on all other issues. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want, which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear, which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor -- anywhere in the world. — Patrick Henry

The little red eyes glared at Prew challenging, almost hoping for some disagreement that would force Old Ike to prove his loyalty to Holmes, Wilson, the Company, and the cause, which might be Better Soldiering; Peacetime Preparedness; or the Perpetuation of An Aristocracy. Nobody could have named the Cause, but then its name was unimportant, as long as the Cause itself remained to levy loyalty. — James Jones

But there are many men-and women-who do things in a time of war that they wouldn't dream of doing in peacetime, and all for the common good. — Jacqueline Winspear

Communistic evolution, according to the Senate committee that examined it, is responsible for 135 million deaths in peacetime. There's no religion that has a tiny fraction of that many deaths on its conscience. There are scientists who will admit that there's not one iota of scientific evidence to support it. — D. James Kennedy

The bomb was 'born secret,' as Daniel Patrick Moynihan said. The atomic bomb marked a powerful turning point in America's stewardship of national security affairs. After its arrival, Garry Willis argues, 'the power of secrecy that enveloped the Bomb became a model for the planning or execution of Anything Important, as guarded by Important People.' But the first stop was a radical restructuring of the government itself, to account for the development and expansion of a nuclear arsenal requiring special means, staffs, oversight, and a stringent and novel regime of peacetime secrecy. The national security state was born. — Scott Horton

As we will see in the following pages, peacetime is not always kind to generals and they do not necessarily do well outside their task of generaling. Perhaps that is because during war they become as close to gods on earth as we are ever likely to see. Patton — Winston Groom

The unbearable silliness of English newspapers from about 1900 onward has had two main causes. One is that nearly the whole of the Press is in the hands of a few very big capitalists who are interested in the continuance of capitalism and therefore in preventing the public from learning to think; the other is that peacetime newspapers live off advertisements for consumption goods, building societies, cosmetics and the like, and are therfore interested in maintaining a "sunshine mentality" which will induce people to spend money. Optimism is good for trade, and more trade means more advertisements. Therefore, don't let people know the facts about the political and economic situation; divert their attention to giant pandas, channel swimmers, royal weddings and other soothing topics. — George Orwell

It is time to acknowledge the extraordinary sacrifice of all of our veterans. While many Massachusetts soldiers served our nation in a period technically dubbed 'peacetime,' they restored American pride in the wake of Vietnam and helped bring a successful end to the Cold War. The service of these men and women was not without cost. There are countless stories of soldiers who served with great distinction only to be denied veteran status after returning home. Every man and woman who volunteered to serve this country should be treated with the same degree of respect, gratitude and dignity. — Mitt Romney

Pardon if all the cleanness and the beauty
Brave rhythym and the immemorial sea
Ensare us sometimes with their siren song,
Forgetful of our murderous intentions.
Through our uneasy peacetime carnival
Cold sweat of death holds us like a dew;
Even this grey machinery of murder
Holds beauty and the promise of a future. — Norman Hampson

I feel that the constitution is workable, it is flexible and it is strong enough to hold the country together both in peacetime and in wartime. Indeed, if I may say so, if things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile. — B.R. Ambedkar

Spies could be invaluable in peacetime, once the fighting actually started, their value dropped steeply. When the swords were out, it was the information your own scouts provided that mattered, not reports from unknown people whose veracity you couldn't prove. — David Weber

It is time for blacks to begin the shift from a wartime to a peacetime identity, from fighting for opportunity to the seizing of it. — Shelby Steele

The man who gets drunk in peacetime is a coward. The man who gets drunk in wartime goes on being a coward. — Jose Bergamin

For the lessons one fails to learn during peacetime, one pays a high price in war. — Karl Donitz

A lawsuit is to ordinary life what war is to peacetime. In a lawsuit, everybody on the other side is bad. A trial transcript is a discourse in malevolence. — Janet Malcolm

Wartime CEO is too busy fighting the enemy to read management books written by consultants who have never managed a fruit stand. Peacetime — Ben Horowitz

I really think that if I had met Picasso during peacetime, nothing would have happened. — Francoise Gilot

I had prepared myself for prison and torture as a soldier in peacetime prepares for the hardships of war. I had studied the lives of Christians who had faced similar pains and temptations to surrender and thought how I might adapt their experiences. Many who had not so prepared themselves were crushed by suffering, or deluded into saying what they should not. — Richard Wurmbrand

If there were any justice," said Shale, "one ought to be allowed to use ardent militarists for experiments in peacetime, if one uses pacifists in war. But I suppose they wouldn't volunteer. — Nigel Balchin

Officers conditioned to conformity in peacetime cannot be expected to behave boldly and flexibly in combat. — Paul Yingling

We're all going to go crazy, living this epidemic [AIDS] every minute, while the rest of the world goes on out there, all around us, as if nothing is happening, going on with their own lives and not knowing what it's like, what we're going through. We're living through war, but where they're living it's peacetime, and we're all in the same country. — Larry Kramer

Since cowardice must occur at a time and place where an enemy either has already appeared or may yet turn up, servicemen in peacetime - and ordinary civilians - can breathe a sigh of relief. If you are yellow-bellied back home, you're not technically a coward. — Charles Duhigg

Thousands of people are being buried and no one attends the funerals,' said one of the soldiers. 'In peacetime it's the other way round: one coffin and a hundred people carrying flowers. — Vasily Grossman

It seemed trivial. After the battlefield it was going to be difficult to take seriously some of the stuff people worried about in peacetime. — Ken Follett

Burning churches associate with war. But here there are churches burning in peacetime. Can a country be engaged in an invisible war against an unseen enemy? — Henning Mankell

Men destroy each other during war, themselves during peacetime. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

I've always had a lot of time for servicemen. Yet there's been this bad relationship between civilians and the armed services. We say to soldiers, 'We want you when we want you, but stay away in peacetime. We're proud of you, but keep away from my daughter and don't come drinking in my pub.' — Ross Kemp

Everywhere in Homer's saga of the rage of Achilles and the battles before Troy we are made conscious at one and the same time of war's ugly brutality and what Yeats called its "terrible beauty." The Iliad accepts violence as a permanent factor in human life and accepts it without sentimentality, for it is just as sentimental to pretend that war does not have its monstrous ugliness as it is to deny that it has its own strange and fatal beauty, a power, which can call out in men resources of endurance, courage and self-sacrifice that peacetime, to our sorrow and loss, can rarely command. — Bernard Knox

The last officer named was Nathanael Greene of Rhode Island; a man of limited education and military experience limited to two years of peacetime militia duty, he nevertheless was destined to be the best of the lot.27 — John Ferling

Barack Obama is facing a financial emergency on a grander scale. Yet his approach has been to engage in one of the biggest peacetime spending binges in American history. — Mitt Romney

During the twentieth century, communist governments killed some 100 million of their own people in peacetime, either by repression or by famine. — Charles Wheelan

Prayer in a combat zone serves exactly the same purpose as it does in peacetime. In war, the stakes are life and death, true; but if you believe in God and in the notion of a human soul, then we are always making decisions of tremendous significance. — Phil Klay

General Atomics, the progenitor of General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, started life in 1955 when a major military contractor, General Dynamics, feared that the military hardware market might dry up. It began exploring peacetime uses of atomic energy, but abandoned the effort when cold-war military spending took off. — Charles Duhigg

PEACETIME BY LUKE MOGELSON I was living in the armory on Lexington Avenue. First Sergeant Diaz had given me the keys. — Anonymous

This reinforced Rivers's view that it was prolonged strain, immobility and helplessness that did the damage, and not the sudden shocks or bizarre horrors that the patients themselves were inclined to point to as the explanation for their condition. That would help to account for the greater prevalence of anxiety neuroses and hysterical disorders in women in peacetime, since their relatively more confined lives gave them fewer opportunities of reacting to stress in active and constructive ways. Any explanation of war neurosis must account for the fact that this apparently intensely masculine life of war and danger and hardship produced in men the same disorders that women suffered from in peace. — Pat Barker

Under the new government of the Constitution, beginning in 1789, all of the peacetime measures were repeated: chaplains, prayers, memorials of Thanksgiving, the Northwest Ordinance, funding for the Christian education of Indians. — M. Stanton Evans

I don't think I would have written a combat novel if I had just had peacetime military training. I think, in fact, I probably would have remained a poet and just written a short story every now and then. — Joe Haldeman

Back in the old Corp, we weren't training those privates to infiltrate into the peacetime Marine Corp. We were training those privates to go to Vietnam. — R. Lee Ermey

The events in Prague, together with the Berlin blockade, convinced the European recipients of American economic assistance that they needed military protection as well: that led them to request the creation of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which committed the United States for the first time ever to the peacetime defense of Western Europe. — John Lewis

No one would believe me but at times I would choose wartime in Saigon over peacetime in Alabama.-Inside Out and Back Again — Thanhha Lai

In recent years, academics, policy-makers, and experts have raised the question of the applicability of peacetime environmental law in times of armed conflict. — Widad Akreyi

War is just a violent way of doing what half the people do calmly in peacetime: using the other half for food, heat, machinery and sexual pleasure. Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself, and the recipe is separation. — Alasdair Gray

Human beings are better equipped to cope with disaster and hardship than they are with unvarying security, but as long as security is the highest value in a community they can have little opportunity to decide this for themselves. It is agreed that Englishmen coped magnificently with a war, and were more cheerful, enterprising and friendly under the daily threat of bombardment than they are now under benevolent peacetime, when we are so far from worrying about how many people starve in Africa that we can tolerate British policy in Nigeria. — Germaine Greer

The injustice is that women continue to be the main target of violence both during wartime and peacetime and yet there is still a lack of a public outrage. — Zainab Salbi

Sergeant Axel Dane ordinarily opened the San Jose recruiting office at eight o'clock, but if he was a little late Corporal Kemp opened it, and Kemp was not likely to complain. Axel was not an unusual case. A hitch in the U.S. Army in the time of peace between the Spanish war and the German war had unfitted him for the cold, unordered life of a civilian. One month between hitches convinced him of that. Two hitches in the peacetime army completely unfitted him for war, and he had learned enough method to get out of it. The San Jose recruiting station proved he knew his way about. He was dallying with the youngest Ricci girl and she lived in San Jose. Kemp hadn't the time in, but he was learning the basic rule. Get along with the topkick and avoid all officers when possible. — John Steinbeck

The Army's new pitch was simple. Good pay, good benefits, a manageable amount of adventure ... but don't worry, we're not looking to pick fights these days. For a country that had paid so dear a price for its recent military buccaneering, the message was comforting. We still had the largest and most technologically advanced standing army in the world, the most nuclear weapons, the best and most powerful conventional weapons systems, the biggest navy. At the same time, to the average recruit the promise wasn't some imminent and dangerous combat deployment; it was 288 bucks a month (every month), training, travel, and experience. Selling the post-Vietnam military as a career choice meant selling the idea of peacetime service. It meant selling the idea of peacetime. Barf. — Rachel Maddow

When you look at a company that's already succeeded or is at the very top of its game, it isn't necessarily when it's executing well. It tends to be peacetime - you've defeated the competition, you have the highest margins, the highest multiple. — Ben Horowitz

I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners - two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime. — P. J. O'Rourke

It may be useful to remember that a peacetime political machine is built essentially on patronage. — David Galula

Too many?pass judgement on wartime decisions in the luxury of a peacetime environment. — Harry S. Truman

In peacetime some sort of introduction is generally required to make a person's acquaintance; in war a small eatable will perform the same office. — Susanna Clarke

War makes extremely heavy demands on the soldier's strength and nerves. For this reason, make heavy demands on your men in peacetime exercises. — Erwin Rommel

By depriving Rejewski of the keys, Langer believed he was preparing him for the inevitable time when the keys would no longer be available. He knew that if war broke out it would be impossible for Schmidt to continue to attend covert meetings, and Rejewski would then be forced to be self-sufficient. Langer thought that Rejewski should practice self-sufficiency in peacetime, as preparation for what lay ahead. — Simon Singh

People are fond of using military terms to describe what they do. We call it bombing when we go out painting, when of course it's more like entertaining the troops in a neutral zone, during peacetime in a country without an army. — Banksy

The American Civil War lays out the stark contrast: the greatest generals in war are often abundant failures during peacetime, and vice versa. McClellan and Sherman are the sharpest contrasts; but there is also Grant the peacetime drunkard, and Stonewall Jackson the barely tolerable military professor. Only Lee stands out as effective in both peace and war (and even he had a mentally unstable father, and himself may have been dysthymic in his general personality). This conflict reflects, I think, the different psychological qualities of leadership needed in different phases of human activity, peace and war being the two extremes. — S. Nassir Ghaemi

The characteristic feature of militarism is not the fact that a nation has a powerful army or navy. It is the paramount role assigned to the army within the political structure. Even in peacetime the army is supreme; it is the predominant factor in political life. The subjects must obey the government as soldiers must obey their superiors. Within a militarist community there is no freedom; there are only obedience and discipline. — Ludwig Von Mises

He'd imagined peacetime would bring him a sense of belonging. During the war it kept him going, that thought of peace. He'd believed in it like a season he knew it would arrive one day — Amanda Hodgkinson

The conditions which now exist in Germany make it impossible for industrial production to reach the levels which the occupying powers agreed were essential for a minimum German peacetime economy. — James F. Byrnes

By 2001, even the peacetime US military budget was well over half the size of all other military budgets in the world combined. — Rachel Maddow

A peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know. — George Wald

What a shame for a man like him to be born during peacetime. If he'd been born only a few decades earlier, he'd have worn the mantle of hero, — Mo Yan

I was in a peacetime army. It was like something out of a Le Carre novel: studying the habits of your enemy. It was very exciting. It's interesting living life as a civilian, then on Friday night you're parachuting into a foreign country. — Steve Truglia

Who did the council fight?"
"It split in two and fought itself."
"That's suicide!"
"No, ordinary behaviour. The efficient half eats the less efficient half and grows stronger. War is just a violent way of doing what half the people do calmly in peacetime: using the other half for food, heat, machinery and sexual pleasure. Man is the pie that bakes and eats himself, and the recipe is separation."
"I refuse to believe men kill each other just to make their enemies rich."
"How can men recognize their real enemies when their family, schools and work teach them to struggle with each other and to believe law and decency come from the teachers?"
"My son won't be taught that," said Lanark firmly.
"You have a son?"
"Not yet. — Alasdair Gray

I will lament your departure. I will hide my shame for having erred on some obscure point, for thinking that the justice of war is the same of peacetime. — Paulo Coelho

Nearly all soldiers, and this applies even to professional soldiers in peacetime, have a sane attitude towards war. They realise that it is disgusting, and that it may often be necessary — George Orwell

Getting emotional about things is a peacetime luxury. In wartime, it's much too painful. — Edmund H. North

several studies have since shown that basic military training during peacetime can precipitate schizophrenia in men with a hitherto unsuspected vulnerability to the illness.15 — Sylvia Nasar

In the space of a single year, a crumbling rural village had sprouted an army town, like a great parasitical growth. The former peacetime aspect of the place was barely discernible. The village pond was where the dragoons watered their horses, infantry exercised in the orchards, soldiers lay in the meadows sunning themselves. All the peacetime institutions collapsed, only what was needed for war remained. Hedges and fences were broken or simply torn down for easier access, and everywhere there were large signs giving directions to military traffic. While roofs caved in, and furniture was gradually used up as firewood, telephone lines and electricity cables were installed. Cellars were extended outwards and downwards to make bomb shelters for the residents; the removed earth was dumped in the gardens. The village no longer knew any demarcations or distinctions between thine and mine.
pp. 36-37 — Ernst Junger

Liberals correctly perceive the Reagan record as their most dangerous enemy. Why? Because what happened during the 1980s - prosperity at home the longest period of peacetime growth in this nation's history, strength abroad - directly contradicts every liberal belief. Bill Clinton has confused many about the 1980s and the Reagan legacy. His patently false mantra states, "The rich got richer, the poor got poorer. The rich didn't pay their fair share, etc." — Rush Limbaugh

We build character in order for us to withstand the rigors of combat and resist the temptations to compromise our principles in peacetime. We must build character in peacetime because there is no time in war. Character is the most important quality you can find in any person, but especially in a soldier. It is the foundation that will get anybody through anything he may encounter. Reputation is what people think you are; character is what you are- that is the staying power. — Glen E. Morrell

Now obviously, in peacetime a one-legged catcher, like a one-armed outfielder (such as the Mundys had roaming right), would have been at the most a curiosity somewhere down in the dingiest town in the minors - precisely where Hot had played during the many years that the nations of the world lived in harmony. But it is one of life's grisly ironies that what is catastrophe for most of mankind, invariably works to the advantage of a few who live on the fringes of the human community. On the other hand, it is a grisly irony to live on the fringes of the human community. — Philip Roth

There are always those who wish to sanitize war by portraying its grand and noble deeds-which sometimes occur-while drawing a veil over its shameless side. By its nature, war is harsh, brutal, and pitiless, and while it can call out the best in humankind, it can also awaken the darkest side of human nature, arousing in many participants a coldhearted callousness. For most, danger begets fear. For some, fear sires ferocity, and ferocity spawns a ruthlessness that subsumes compassion. For still other men, more than is gratifying to acknowledge, soldiering is a license to unleash iniquitous qualities that they struggled to suppress in peacetime. — John Ferling

In wartime people took action because of what they believed in. In peacetime people were driven by their private concerns. — Sara Sheridan

The Cold War provided justification for a larger peacetime military, since we were never really at peace, or so the argument went. — Phil Klay

In the first week of holidays we might acknowledge that term would come again - as a young man, in peacetime, in full health, acknowledges that he will one day die. — C.S. Lewis

The average clan - and there were more than fifty of them in 1745 - was no more a family than is a Mafia "family." The only important blood ties were those between the chieftain and his various caporegimes, the so-called tacksmen who collected his rents and bore the same name. Below them were a large, nondescript, and constantly changing population of tenants and peasants, who worked the land and owed the chieftain service in war and peacetime. Whether they considered themselves Campbells or MacPhersons or Mackinnons was a matter of indifference, and no clan genealogist or bard, the seanachaidh, ever wasted breath keeping track of them. What mattered was that they were on clan land, and called it home. — Arthur Herman

You study the Path of Peace. I practice the Art of War. There are some congruities between these different approaches but there are many more differences, and they are significant. The Art of War is carried out on the battlefield with deadly weaponry and sometimes, more importantly, in other places and in other ways that you would find distasteful. If I speak little about my plans it's because the Art of War teaches that it is the business of a general to ensure secrecy. You might want to mollify or change my tactics or strategies to fit the morals of your peacetime world and I'd be shackled and hampered in seeing the victory won as it should be, as quickly as possible, with as little fighting as possible, and at the lowest cost possible. You cannot bear the consequences of battle and you don't know the resources required. I do. — Aleksandra Layland