Aleksandr Mikhaylovich Vasilevsky Quotes

You ask me if I will not be glad when the last battle is fought, so far as the country is concerned I, of course, must wish for peace, and will be glad when the war is ended, but if I answer for myself alone, I must say that I shall regret to see the war end.

I hated the draft, but at the same time, it's something that made every American take war seriously.

I'm glad I never went to war.

You know, I'm pro-troops, but I'm not pro-war.

The services in wartime are fit only for desperadoes, but in peace are only fit for fools.

I've grown up, luckily, with only a distant relationship to war and soldiering.

I have no animosity towards those who object to the war. Regardless of which side of the fence you're on, just give a moment of thanks to the hundreds of thousands of our forefathers who gave themselves so we can live in a world where we can do this.

Arms once taken up should never be laid down, but upon one of three conditions—a safe peace, a complete victory, or an honorable death.

I should not care to live half-frozen in a trench, up to my middle in water, for three or four months, because someone in authority said I ought to shoot Germans. But if I were a Frenchman I should do it, because I would have been accustomed to the idea by my compulsory military service.

I tried to read in the faces of the thousands what was in their minds this Easter day. But their faces looked blank. Obviously they do not like the war, but they will do what they’re told. Die, for instance.

The militiaman is best employed at his plough

There is now all this patriotic indignation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese expansionism in Asia. Yet not a word about American and European expansionism in the same area.... We must make a start. We must renounce war as an instrument of policy.... Even as I speak to you I may be guilty of what some men call treason.... You young men should refuse to take up arms. Young women tear down the patriotic posters. And all of you — young and old — put away your flags.

It is a wide road that leads to the war and only a narrow path that leads home again.

I like war.

Churchill knew the importance of peace, and he also knew the price of it. Churchill finally got his voice, of course. He stressed strategy, but it was his voice that armed England at last with the old-fashioned moral concepts of honor and duty, justice and mercy.

We can do without butter, but, despite all our love of peace, not without arms. One cannot shoot with butter, but with guns.

This is the year of Katrina and Iraq. How the war ends is more important than how it began. However you feel about the war, you have to be compassionate and loving towards our troops.

My personal opinion is that if someone writes honestly about war, it will inherently be anti-war.

Should I be the happy mortal destined to turn the scale of war, will you not rejoice, O my father?

No one hates war like a soldier hates war.

From the happy expression on their faces you might have supposed that they welcomed the war. I have met with men who loved stamps, and stones, and snakes, but I could not imagine any man loving war.

It's one thing to say you're for the war; it's another thing to send your kid to war - your daughter or your son.

Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.

I am one of the million or more male residents of the United Kingdom, who a year ago had no special yearning towards military life, but who joined the army after war was declared.

Revenge by young men is considered gain, even at the cost of their own lives, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose, know better.