“We may now picture this great Fleet, with its flotillas and cruisers, steaming slowly out of Portland Harbour, squadron by squadron, scores of gigantic castles of steel wending their way across the misty, shining sea, like giants bowed in anxious thought. We may picture them again as darkness fell, eighteen miles of warships running at high speed and in absolute blackness through the Narrow Straits, bearing with them into the broad waters of the North the safeguard of considerable affairs […] The king’s ships were at sea.”
— Winston Churchill“Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”
— Winston Churchill“There is no merit in putting off a war for a year if, when it comes, it is a far worse war or one much harder to win.”
— Winston Churchill“In those days we did not trust anyone who had not been in the war, but we did not completely trust anyone.”
— Ernest Hemingway“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.”
— Winston Churchill“No catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you always think that it’s not you that dies. But you will die, brother, if you go to it long enough.”
— Ernest Hemingway“Concentration is the secret of strength in politics, in war, in trade, in short, in all management of human affairs.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson“Many things were adopted in the war which we were told were technically impossible, but patience, perseverance, and, above all, the spur of necessity under war conditions, made men’s brains act with greater vigour, and science responded to the demands.”
— Winston Churchill“Our first line of defence is the enemy’s port.”
— Winston Churchill“The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.”
— Ernest Hemingway“Some people did not like this ceremonial style. But after all when you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.”
— Winston Churchill“They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country. But in modern war there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason.”
— Ernest Hemingway“The main military purpose and scheme of the Dictators is to produce quick results, to avoid a prolonged war. A prolonged war never suits dictators.”
— Winston Churchill“For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, most aggressive, most dominating Power on the Continent.”
— Winston Churchill“I am sure it would be sensible to restrict as much as possible the work of these gentlemen [psychologists and psychiatrists], who are capable of doing an immense amount of harm with what may very easily degenerate into charlatanry.”
— Winston Churchill“A war postponed may be a war averted.”
— Winston Churchill“One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once The Unnecessary War.”
— Winston Churchill“You never kill any one that you want to kill in a war.”
— Ernest Hemingway“And we in America should see that no man is ever given, no matter how gradually or how noble and excellent the man, the power to put this country into a war which is now being prepared and brought closer each day with all the premeditation of a long planned murder. For when you give power to an executive you do not know who will be filling that position when the time of crisis comes.”
— Ernest Hemingway“But I must drop one word of caution; for, next to cowardice and treachery, overconfidence, leading to neglect or slothfulness, is the worst of martial crimes.”
— Winston Churchill“Perhaps wars weren’t won any more. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years’ War.”
— Ernest Hemingway“War is no longer made by simply analysed economic forces if it ever was. War is made or planned now by individual men, demagogues and dictators who play on the patriotism of their people to mislead them into a belief in the great fallacy of war when all their vaunted reforms have failed to satisfy the people they misrule.”
— Ernest Hemingway“Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves.”
— Winston Churchill“He killed more people than the cholera”
— Ernest Hemingway“It was a bitter moment. Defeat is one thing; disgrace is another.”
— Winston Churchill“Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It’s been that way all this year. It’s been that way so many times. All of this war is that way.”
— Ernest Hemingway“There was much wine, an ignored tension, and a feeling of things coming that you could not prevent happening.”
— Ernest Hemingway“It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.”
— Winston Churchill“Of course, when you are winning a war almost everything that happens can be claimed to be right and wise.”
— Winston Churchill“In War: Resolution, In Defeat: Defiance, In Victory: Magnanimity, In Peace: Goodwill.”
— Winston Churchill“The belief that security can be obtained by throwing a small State to the wolves is a fatal delusion.”
— Winston Churchill“The first rule of war is to concentrate superior strength for decisive action and to avoid division of force or engaging in detail.”
— Winston Churchill“I have adhered to my rule of never criticizing any measure of war or policy after the event unless I had before expressed publicly or formally my opinion or warning about it.”
— Winston Churchill“War is a lottery in which nations ought to risk nothing but small amounts.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte“There is nothing in war, which I cannot do by my own hands. If there is nobody to make gunpowder, I can manufacture it. The guncarriages I know how to construct. If it is necessary to make cannons at the forge, I can make them. The details of working them in battle, if it is necessary to teach, I shall teach them. In administration, it is I alone who have arranged the finances, as you know.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte“The keys of a fortress are worth the liberty of its garrison when it has resolved not to surrender itself. Thus it is always more advantageous to grant honorable terms of capitulation to a garrison which has shown a vigorous resistance, than to risk the chances of an assault.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte“The secret of great battles consists in knowing how to deploy and concentrate at the right time.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte“Nothing augments a battalion like success.”
— Napoleon Bonaparte“Coolness is the greatest quality in a man destined to command.”
— Napoleon BonapartePatriotism Killing Napoleon Politics Death