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Read our famous WWI quotes and sayings from war veterans, historians, and political leaders of the early 19th century.
World War I was a battle fought due to the international conflict sparked following the assassination of Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand by the pro-Serbian nationalists.
The war was fought between Central Powers and the allied powers between 1914 to 1918.
It resulted in an estimated 37 to 40 million deaths worldwide, including civilian and military personnel.
The great epidemic European plague caused by Influenza trigged 25 million casualties out of the 40 million death.
World War I was the deadliest of war with the usage of high-tech war weapons, including tanks, submarines, long-range artillery, etc.
The effect of 4 long years of war caused widespread civil unrest and revolution and marked the end of monarchist rule in Germany, Turkey, Russia, and Austria-Hungary.
The entry of the U.S into the war in 1917 was a game-changer and put European countries in deep debt. Thereby, the U.S silently became the industrial power.
WWI triggered the destabilization of European powers and the rise of the U.S as a geopolitical powerhead.
Germany suffered the highest loss and defeat post-WWI, which led to Adolf Hitler preparing for WW2.
WWI led to the formation of the league of nations to promote and sustain peace worldwide as war caused unexplainable atrocities, especially the bloodiest attack on the French city of Verdun and the unprecedented killing of Belgium civilians by German troops.
We hope our prevalent causes of WWI quotes give you a taste of how the geopolitical history changed due to WW1 and how war leads to nothing but violence.
Best WWI Quotes and Sayings
Also Read: 30 Best Anti War Quotes Against Violence and Bloodshed
There is nothing that war has ever achieved that we could not better achieve without it.
– Havelock Ellis
Weakness and ambivalence lead to war.
– George H. W. Bush
Force and fraud are in war the two cardinal virtues.
– Thomas Hobbes
History teaches that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.
– Ronald Reagan
Casualties many; Percentage of dead not known; Combat efficiency; we are winning.
– David M. Shoup
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.
– Ernest Hemingway
War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.
– Winston Churchill
War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse.
– John Stuart Mill
War demands sacrifice of the people. It gives only suffering in return.
– Frederic Clemson Howe
Those who ignore history’s lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced to do more than relive them, they may be forced to die by them.
– Dan Simmons
War is an admission of failure.
– K. J. Parker
Inspiring WWI Quotes
Also Read: 20 Powerful Dehumanization Quotes and Sayings on Psychology
This is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours seems to be based on war and games.
– William S. Burroughs
All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.
– Benjamin Franklin
All war is a symptom of man’s failure as a thinking animal.
– John Steinbeck
There has been no war without atrocity. War is atrocity, pure and simple: only greed, nationalism and faith help us pretend otherwise.
– Michael Marshall
Wars do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration does away with the fire hazard.
– Henry Ford
There never was a good war, or a bad peace.
– Benjamin Franklin
The tragedy of war is that it uses man’s best to do man’s worst.
– Harry Emerson Fosdick
The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.
– G. K. Chesterton
The act of war is the last option of a democracy.
– Joseph C. Wilson
War is behavior with roots in the single cell of the primeval seas. Eat whatever you touch or it will eat you.
– Frank Herbert
War is what happens when language fails.
– Margaret Atwood
Great WWI Quotes And Sayings
Also Read: 50 Best War Quotes and Sayings to Live in Harmony
We have war when at least one of the parties to a conflict wants something more than it wants peace.
– Jeane Kirkpatrick
The great rich nation had made triumphant war, suffered enough for poignancy but not enough for bitterness – hence the carnival, the feasting, the triumph.
– F. Scott Fitzgerald
War makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading.
– Thomas Hardy
War being the greatest of evils, all its accessories necessarily partake of the same character.
– Herman Melville
When the rich wage war it is the poor who die.
– Jean-Paul Sartre
To get through a war, a man needs something bigger than himself to fight for.
– Rick Remender
Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. These are the beginnings of sorrows.
– Cynthia Harrod-Eagles
Wars of pen and ink often lead to wars of cannon and bayonets.
– Edward Counsel
The old men were still running the country. The politicians who had caused millions of deaths were now celebrating, as if they had done something wonderful.
– Ken Follett
The belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions.
– Robert Wilson Lynd
War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today.
– John F. Kennedy
War is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the conquered.
– Henri Frederic Amiel
Also Read: 45 Famous Vicious Quotes and Sayings and Its Harmful Effects
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