Scott Westerfeld Quotes

Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.

War does not determine who is right - only who is left.

I think we were trying to get off Combat from the moment we were on Combat.

The evils of war are great in their endurance, and have a long reckoning for ages to come.

Wars shatter so many lives. I think especially of children robbed of their childhood.

War brings out thieves and peace hangs them.

For although this was a very heroic war, with a parade of every sort of high moral principle, and with the most sonorous language employed upon both sides, it somehow failed to bring about either the reformation or the ruin of humankind: and after the conclusion of the murdering and general breakage, the world went on pretty much as it has done after all other wars, with a vague notion that a deal of time and effort had been unprofitably invested, and a conviction that it would be inglorious to say so.

The war has ruined us for everything.

War is cruel to the people, and terrible to the conquered.

If I'd known how wrong I was - if I'd had any idea of the awful night that lay ahead - I'd have run after him and never returned to that disgusting circus of blood, that revolting circus of death.

Sometimes, in the trenches, you get the sense of something, ancient. One trench we held, it had skulls in the side, embedded, like mushrooms. It was actually easier to believe they were men from Marlborough's army, than to think they'd been alive a year ago. It was as if all the other wars had distilled themselves into this war, and that made it something you almost can't challenge. It's like a very deep voice, saying; 'Run along, little man, be glad you've survived

War spares not the brave, but the cowardly.

War is just like bush-clearing-the moment you stop, the jungle comes back even thicker, but for a little while you can plant and grow a crop in the ground you have won at such a terrible cost.

Our modern wars make many unhappy while they last and none happy when they are over.

This is one of the consequences of the civil war. People stop trusting each other, and every stranger becomes an enemy.

One war, such as that of our Revolution, is enough for one life.

It is war that wastes a nations wealth, chokes its industries, kills its flower, narrows its sympathies, condemns it to be governed by adventurers, and leaves the puny, deformed, and unmanly to breed the next generation.

Most of us do not take these situations as teachings. We automatically hate them. We run like crazy. We use all kinds of ways to escape - all addictions stem from this moment when we meet our edge and we just can't stand it. We feel we have to soften it, pad it with something, and we become addicted to whatever it is that seems to ease the pain.

They won the war but lost the peace.

I really do think that if for one week in the United States we saw the true face of war, we saw people's limbs sheared off, we saw kids blown apart, for one week, war would be eradicated. Instead, what we see in the U.S. media is the video war game.

we made love on the living room floor with the noise in the background of a televised war and in that defeaning pleasure i thought i heard someone say if we walk away they'll walk away

The more I've traveled to war zones, the more I'm convinced that the impact and the effects are way beyond anything we can even begin to imagine.

On the whole, more men had perhaps escaped into the war than from it.

But what a cruel thing is war to separate and destroy families and friends.

It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.