I was always embarrassed by the words sacred, glorious, and sacrifice, and the expression in vain. We had heard them, sometimes standing in the rain almost out of earshot, so that only the shouted words came through, and had read them, on proclamations that were slapped up by billposters over other proclamations, now for a long time, and I had seen nothing sacred, and the sacrifices were like the stockyards in Chicago if nothing was done with the meat except to bury it.
Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American writer
A Farewell to Arms, ch. 27 (1929)
(Source)
The book is set in the Italian campaigns of World War I.
Quotations about:
war is hell
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
War is a billionaire’s extortion racket, baptized in the blood of impoverished teenagers.
Smedley Butler (1881–1940) American Marine Corps officer, war hero, anti-war activist
(Spurious)
Widely circulated in social media, this is less of a quote than a paraphrase of various anti-war statements Butler made, including in his book War Is a Racket (1935), itself an expansion of a lecture series by Butler in the early 1930s.
Much has been said in this country about not wanting to participate in foreign wars and people who have said it, must now face the fact that foreign wars come very close to our own shores. We will always have not only the religious groups, but many groups who feel that war is wrong. I cannot imagine how anyone could feel otherwise with the picture before them today. But when force not only rules in certain countries, but is as menacing to all the world, as it is today, one cannot live in a Utopia which prays for different conditions and ignores those which exist.
Eleanor Roosevelt (1884–1962) American politician, diplomat, activist; First Lady of the US (1933–45)
Column (1940-05-17), “My Day”
(Source)
HAWKEYE: War isn’t Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse.
FR. MULCAHEY: How do you figure, Hawkeye?
HAWKEYE: Easy, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?
FR. MULCAHEY: Sinners, I believe.
HAWKEYE: Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is chock full of them — little kids, cripples, old ladies. In fact, except for some of the brass, almost everybody involved is an innocent bystander.
Burt Prelutsky (b. 1940) American TV screenwriter, author, columnist, critic
M*A*S*H, 05×20 “The General’s Practitioner” (1977-02-15)
War may not be Hell itself but it definitely does weaken the barriers between us and the dark regions.
