But war, in a good cause, is not the greatest evil which a nation can suffer. War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things: the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks nothing worth a war, is worse. When a people are used as mere human instruments for firing cannon or thrusting bayonets, in the service and for the selfish purposes of a master, such war degrades a people. A war to protect other human beings against tyrannical injustice – a war to give victory to their own ideas of right and good, and which is their own war, carried on for an honest purpose by their free choice – is often the means of their regeneration. A man who has nothing which he is willing to fight for, nothing which he cares more about than he does about his personal safety, is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself. As long as justice and injustice have not terminated their ever-renewing fight for ascendancy in the affairs of mankind, human beings must be willing, when need is, to do battle for the one against the other.
* John Stuart Mill in "The Contest in America" Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Volume 24, Issue 143 (April 1862), page 683-684
==
Igitur qui desiderat pacem, praeparet bellum. (Latin)
* Therefore, whoever wishes for peace, let him prepare for war.
* Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus in De Re Militari
===
Whoever said the pen is mightier than the sword never faced an assault rifle, said by Dwight D. Eisenhower during a speech.
===
When there is mutual fear men think twice before they make aggression upon one another. (Hermocrates of Syracuse)
===
Nobody is driven in to war by ignorance, and no one who thinks he will gain anything from it is deterred by fear. (Hermocrates of Syracuse)
===
A wise man in times of peace prepares for war. (Horace)
===
An army of sheep led by a lion would defeat an army of lions led by a sheep. (Arab proverbs)
[side note: who do the women want? The sheep or the lion?]
===
History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak, or the timid. * Dwight D. Eisenhower
===
I can picture in my mind a world without war, a world without hate. And I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it. * Jack Handey
===
War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies. * Charles Caleb Colton
===
Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that 'violence never settles anything' I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence settled their fates quite nicely. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms. * Mr. Dubois in Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein
===
If we be conquered, let men conquer us, and not these bastard Bretons; whom our fathers have in their own land beaten, bobb'd, and thump'd, and in record, left them the heirs of shame. Shall these enjoy our lands? lie with our wives? Ravish our daughters? * Richard III, act 5 scene 3, by William Shakespeare
[you see - it is all about the women]
===
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/War
====================
"Come on you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?"
Gunnery Sergeant Dan Daly, 4 june 1918 Leading Marines at Belleu Wood.