World War I, WWI Quotes

This is not a peace. It is an armistice for 20 years.

Germany was beaten after World War I, but it didn't take long for it to rise again as a much more malignant threat. The end of World War II was not to be a compromise; it was to come about from the total annihilation of the enemies' ability and will to make war.

The abolition of the Ottoman Caliphate by Kamal Ataturk after World War I was an affront to God’s rule.

If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don't know, and can't know. The correspondents don't write and the censorship wouldn't pass the truth. What they do send is not the war, but just a pretty picture of the war with everybody doing gallant deeds. The thing is horrible and beyond human nature to bear and I feel I can't go on with this bloody business.

Resistance to conscription [in WWI] was quite strong. By the end of the war, the ranks of noncooperators were stunningly large. Roughly 3 million eligible men never registered, in violation of the law — compared with the 24 million who did. And some 338,000 who did register either failed to obey an induction notice or deserted after they joined the ranks .... Altogether, a higher percentage of American men successfully resisted conscription during World War I than during the Vietnam War half a century later.

Americans know that war must be paid for and it is they who must pay for it.

Serbia must now be dealt with.

I should like to express the appreciation of countless Germans, who regard me as their spokesman, for the wise and beneficial public support which you have given to a policy that we all hope will contribute to the enduring pacification of Europe. Just as we are fanatically determined to defend ourselves against attack, so do we reject the idea of taking the initiative in bringing about a war. I am convinced that no one who fought in the front trenches during the world war, no matter in what European country, desires another conflict.

We should have known better after the first war.

While young men stand ready to pay with their lives for the honor and interest of the American people, the son of wealthy Mr. [Henry] Ford sits at home in ignoble safety.

A scientist belongs to the world in times of peace but to his country in times of war.

Lust of power; the subjugation of inoffensive and law-abiding neighbors; autocratic aggrandizement, is the cause of this war. In its cause the allies have been guiltless.

The conduct of Germany is almost unexampled in human history. The terrible responsibility which lies at her doors can be seen in the fact that not less than seven million dead lie buried in Europe, while more than twenty million others carry upon them the evidence of wounds and sufferings, because Germany saw fit to gratify her lust for tyranny by resort to war.

I was born in 1923 into a middle class Jewish family in Vienna, a few years after the end of World War I, which was disastrous from the Austrian point of view.

I love my country but I cannot vote for war.

It is a fearful thing to lead this great peaceful people into war, into the most terrible and disastrous of all wars, civilization itself seeming to hang in the balance. But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest to our hearts – for democracy.

I got active in this business of politics and self-government in 1958 when my father, who was serving in the U.S. Army, took us to the battlefield of Verdun.

… the war which began on August 1st, 1914, was the greatest crime against humanity and the freedom of peoples that any nation, calling itself civilized, has ever consciously committed. For many years the rulers of Germany, true to the Prussian tradition, strove for a position of dominance in Europe. They were not satisfied with that growing prosperity and influence to which Germany was entitled, and which all other nations were willing to accord her, in the society of free and equal peoples. They required that they should be able to dictate and tyrannize to a subservient Europe, as they dictated and tyrannised over a subservient Germany. Germany's responsibility, however, is not confined to having planned and started the war. She is no less responsible for the savage and inhuman manner in which it was conducted. The Germans they deliberately carried out a series of promiscuous shootings and burnings with the sole object of terrifying the inhabitants into submission by the very frightfulness of their action. They were the first to use poisonous gas, notwithstanding the appalling suffering it entailed. They began the bombing and long distance shelling of towns for no military object, but solely for the purpose of reducing the morale of their opponents by striking at their women and children. They commenced the submarine campaign with its piratical challenge to international law, and its destruction of great numbers of innocent passengers and sailors, in mid ocean, far from succour, at the mercy of the winds and the waves, and the yet more ruthless submarine crews. They drove thousands of men and women and children with brutal savagery into slavery in foreign lands. They allowed barbarities to be practiced against their prisoners of war from which the most uncivilized people would have recoiled.

There can be no friends more benevolent than the British.

I obtained the occupation of the Rhineland for fifteen years, with partial evacuation after five years. If Germany does not fulfill the treaty, there will be no evacuation either partial or definitive. At last I am no longer anxious. I have obtained almost everything I wanted.

Personally, I would have dealt with the Soviets as the de facto Government of Russia. So would President Wilson. But we both agreed that we could not carry to that extent our colleagues at the Congress [Versailles], nor the public opinion of our countries which was frightened by Bolshevik violence and feared its spread.

A nation which defends itself demands the respect of all. Such a nation cannot perish.

Remember that everybody signed up as fast as they could in World War I because they thought the war would be over by Christmas.

The strength of a nation should be expended to defend its own existence. It is totally wrong to forget that and to use one’s forces for the purposes of foreigners. Those who led the war, forgot our own existence and became prisoners of the Germans…

I can imagine no greater disservice to the country than to establish a system of censorship that would deny to the people of a free republic like our own their indisputable right to criticize their own public officials. While exercising the great powers of the office I hold, I would regret in a crisis like the one through which we are now passing to lose the benefit of patriotic and intelligent criticism.