War Quotes
The quotes that launched a thousand Shmoops.
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War Quotes
Bloody wars have been waged over everything from civil rights to a shot pig. Click on any war quote below to see it in context and find out where it falls on Shmoop's pretentious scale. We'll give you details on who said it, when they said it, and in some cases, why on earth they thought it was okay to say it.
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"A lion does not ask permission before he eats a zebra."Source: House of Cards | Speaker: Frank Underwood
"All in the game. All in the game, yo."Source: The Wire | Speaker: Omar Little
"All monsters are human."Source: American Horror Story: Asylum | Speaker: Sister Jude Martin
"All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain."Source: Blade Runner | Speaker: Roy Batty
"And another one gone, another one gone, another one bites the dust."Source: "Another One Bites the Dust" | Speaker: Queen
"and then she would smile, to show me how, and it was the saddest smile I ever saw"Source: A Smile to Remember | Author: Charles Bukowski
"Anything worth dying for...is certainly worth living for."Source: Catch-22 | Author: Joseph Heller
"As God is my witness, I'll never be hungry again."Source: Gone with the Wind | Author: Margaret Mitchell
"Back and to the left."Source: JFK | Speaker: Jim Garrison
"Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun."Source: Digging | Author: Seamus Heaney
"But all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it."Source: Introduction to Poetry | Author: Billy Collins
"Captain, it is I, Ensign Pulver, and I just threw your stinking palm tree overboard. Now, what's all this crud about no movie tonight?"Source: Mister Roberts | Speaker: Frank Pulver
"Come with me if you want to live."Source: The Terminator | Speaker: Kyle Reese
"Don't fire until you see the whites of their eyes!"Source: Battle of Bunker Hill | Speaker: William Prescott
"Earn this. Earn it."Source: Saving Private Ryan | Speaker: Captain James Miller
"Education is the most powerful weapon we can use to change the world."Source: 2003 Speech | Speaker: Nelson Mandela
"Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten."Source: Coraline | Author: Neil Gaiman & G.K. Chesterton
"First rule of Fight Club is... you do not talk about Fight Club."Source: Fight Club | Speaker: Tyler Durden
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here!"Source: Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb | Speaker: President Merkin Muffley
"Good morning, Vietnam!"Source: Good Morning, Vietnam | Speaker: Adrian Cronauer
"He who marches out of step hears another drum."Source: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest | Author: Ken Kesey
"Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned."Source: The Mourning Bride | Author: William Congreve
"Help me, Obi-Wan Kenobi. You're my only hope."Source: Stars Wars Episode IV: A New Hope | Speaker: Princess Leia Organa
"Hi-yo, Silver!"Source: The Lone Ranger | Speaker: The Lone Ranger
"History will be kind to me, for I intend to write it."Source: Misquoted | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"How many ears must one man have before he can hear people cry?"Source: Blowin' in the Wind | Speaker: Bob Dylan
"Human beings can be awful cruel to one another."Source: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn | Author: Mark Twain
"I am definitely a mad man with a box."Source: Doctor Who | Speaker: Eleventh Doctor
"I am Groot."Source: Guardians of the Galaxy | Speaker: Groot
"I am the one who knocks."Source: Breaking Bad | Speaker: Walter White
"I believe it is peace for our time."Source: Speech outside 10 Downing Street | Speaker: Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain
"I came in like a wrecking ball"Source: "Wrecking Ball" | Speaker: Miley Cyrus
"I drink your milkshake."Source: There Will Be Blood | Speaker: Daniel Plainview
"I have not yet begun to fight."Source: Spoken on September 23, 1779 | Speaker: Captain John Paul Jones
"I know nothing!"Source: Hogan's Heroes | Speaker: Sergeant Hans Schultz
"I love it when a plan comes together."Source: The A-Team | Speaker: John "Hannibal" Smith
"I love the smell of napalm in the morning."Source: Apocalypse Now | Speaker: Bill Kilgore
"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy."Source: 1780 Letter | Author: John Adams
"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."Source: Spoken before his death | Speaker: Nathan Hale
"I set fire to the rain."Source: "Set Fire to the Rain" | Speaker: Adele
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good"Source: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban | Author: J.K. Rowling
"I'm Spartacus!"Source: Spartacus | Speaker: Antonius
"I'm the man who's gonna save your lives and all 6 billion people on the planet below. You got a problem with that?"Source: Doctor Who | Speaker: The Tenth Doctor
"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no wars."Source: War and Peace | Author: Leo Tolstoy
"If the apocalypse comes, beep me."Source: Buffy the Vampire Slayer | Speaker: Buffy Summers
"If you'd have been there, if you'd have seen it, I betcha you would have done the same!"Source: "Cell Block Tango" | Speaker: Prison Girls
"Ilsa, I'm no good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world."Source: Casablanca | Speaker: Rick Blaine
"Into the valley of Death / Rode the six hundred"Source: The Charge of the Light Brigade | Author: Alfred Lord Tennyson
"It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."Source: BBC Radio Broadcast | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"Let us learn to show our friendship for a man when he is alive and not after he is dead."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Let's face it: our lives are miserable, laborious, and short."Source: Animal Farm | Author: George Orwell
"Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."Source: The Declaration of Independence | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"Love is a battlefield."Source: "Love is a Battlefield" | Speaker: Pat Benatar
"Madness… madness."Source: The Bridge on the River Kwai | Speaker: Major Clipton
"Man serves the interests of no creature except himself."Source: Animal Farm | Author: George Orwell
"Mankind must put an end to war—or war will put an end to mankind."Source: Address to the UN General Assembly (1961) | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"Music hath charms to soothe the savage beast."Source: The Mourning Bride | Author: William Congreve
"Never forget what you are. The rest of the world will not. Wear it like armor, and it can never be used to hurt you."Source: Game of Thrones | Speaker: Tyrion Lannister
"Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few."Source: Speech to the House of Commons, August 20, 1940 | Speaker: Winston Churchill
"Nip it in the bud!"Source: The Andy Griffith Show | Speaker: Barney Fife
"No prisoners! No prisoners!"Source: Lawrence of Arabia | Speaker: T.E. Lawrence
"No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!"Source: Goldfinger | Speaker: Auric Goldfinger
"Nobody has ever escaped from Stalag 17. Not alive, anyway."Source: Stalag 17 | Speaker: Oberst Von Scherbach
"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."Source: 1965 TV Broadcast | Speaker: J. Robert Oppenheimer
"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die."Source: Speech to the 23rd Republican National Convention (June 1944) | Speaker: Herbert Hoover
"Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun."Source: Problems of War and Strategy | Speaker: Mao Zedong
"Remember, you're fighting for this woman's honor, which is probably more than she ever did."Source: Duck Soup | Speaker: Rufus T. Firefly
"Round up the usual suspects."Source: Casablanca | Speaker: Captain Renault
"See that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet."Source: The Gospel of Matthew | Speaker: Jesus of Nazareth
"Shall we play a game?"Source: WarGames | Speaker: WOPR/Joshua
"She wasn't doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together."Source: "A Girl I Knew" | Author: J.D. Salinger
"Sherif Ali, so long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe…"Source: Lawrence of Arabia | Speaker: T.E. Lawrence
"So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause."Source: Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith | Speaker: Senator Padmé Amidala
"Somebody told me they thought he killed a man once."Source: The Great Gatsby | Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald
"Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!"Source: Planet of the Apes | Speaker: George Taylor
"That's all."Source: The Devil Wears Prada | Speaker: Miranda Priestly
"The best thing about human beings is that they stack so neatly."Source: House of Cards | Speaker: Frank Underwood
"The cold passed reluctantly from the earth, and the retiring fogs revealed an army stretched out on the hills, resting."Source: The Red Badge of Courage | Author: Stephen Crane
"The Fuhrer was a terrific dancer."Source: The Producers | Speaker: Franz Liebkind
"The most radical revolutionary will become a conservative the day after the revolution."Source: The New Yorker | Author: Hannah Arendt
"The most savage controversies are about those matters as to which there is no good evidence either way."Source: An Outline of Intellectual Rubbish | Author: Bertrand Russell
"The only winning move is not to play."Source: WarGames | Speaker: Joshua
"The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe! You have to make it fall."Source: Libération | Speaker: Che Guevara
"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants."Source: Letter to Col. William S. Smith, November 13, 1787 | Author: Thomas Jefferson
"The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places."Source: A Farewell to Arms | Author: Ernest Hemingway
"There can be only one."Source: Highlander | Speaker: The Kurgan
"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold."Source: The Second Coming | Author: William Butler Yeats
"This is the people's war!"Source: Mrs. Miniver | Speaker: The Vicar
"Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety."Source: Pennsylvania Assembly | Author: Benjamin Franklin
"Today, in the world of freedom, the proudest boast is "Ich bin ein Berliner.""Source: Ich bin ein Berliner Speech | Speaker: John F. Kennedy
"Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious."Source: 1984 | Author: George Orwell
"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over."Source: Speech to the Mayor and Councilmen of Atlanta (1864) | Speaker: William Tecumseh Sherman
"War—huh yeah—what is it good for? Absolutely nothing!"Source: War | Speaker: Edwin Starr
"Watch the skies. Everywhere. Keep looking. Keep watching the skies."Source: The Thing from Another World | Speaker: Ned "Scotty" Scott
"We are canceling the apocalypse!"Source: Pacific Rim | Speaker: Stacker Pentecost
"We are the champions, my friends, and we'll keep on fighting 'til the end."Source: We Are the Champions | Speaker: Queen
"We have met the enemy and they are ours."Source: Letter to William Henry Harrison | Author: Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry
"We must guard against […] unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex."Source: Eisenhower's Farewell Address | Speaker: Dwight Eisenhower
"What he did to Shakespeare we are doing now to Poland."Source: To Be or Not to Be | Speaker: Colonel Ehrhardt
"What I do have is a particular set of skills."Source: Taken | Speaker: Bryan Mills
"Wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there."Source: The Grapes of Wrath | Speaker: Tom Joad
"Yo ho! Yo ho! A pirate's life for me! We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot!"Source: Yo Ho (A Pirate's Life for Me) | Speaker: Pirates
"You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war."Source: 1946 Letter | Author: Albert Einstein
"You come at the king, you best not miss."Source: The Wire | Speaker: Omar Little
"You want weapons. We're in a library. Books are the best weapon in the world."Source: Doctor Who | Speaker: Tenth Doctor
"You'll shoot your eye out."Source: A Christmas Story | Speaker: Ralphie's mom