Mark Twain

If man could be crossed with the cat, it would improve man but deteriorate the cat.

When the doctrine of allegiance to party can utterly up-end a man’s moral constitution and make a temporary fool of him besides, what excuse are you going to offer for preaching it, teaching it, extending it, perpetuating it? Shall you say, the best good of the country demands allegiance to party? Shall you also say it demands that a man kick his truth and his conscience into the gutter, and become a mouthing lunatic, besides?

Let us not be too particular; it is better to have old secondhand diamonds than none at all.

The people of those foreign countries are very, very ignorant. They looked curiously at the costumes we had brought from the wilds of America. They observed that we talked loudly at table sometimes. They noticed that we looked out for expenses and got what we conveniently could out of a franc, and wondered where in the mischief we came from. In Paris they just simply opened their eyes and stared when we spoke to them in French! We never did succeed in making those idiots understand their own language.

Necessity is the mother of taking chances.

Let us make a special effort to stop communicating with each other, so we can have some conversation.

The enemy is anybody who’s going to get you killed, no matter which side he’s on.

Give me ten thousand Filipino soldiers and I will conquer the world.

I always wanted to get the Purple Heart. This was much easier.

When I warned them the French that Britain would fight on alone whatever they did, their generals told their Prime Minister and his divided Cabinet, In three weeks England will have her neck wrung like a chicken. Some chicken! Some neck!

The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash.

War is wretched beyond description, and only a fool or a fraud could sentimentalize its cruel reality.

You don’t win wars by dying for your country you win wars by making the other son of a b*tch die for his.

A shadow has fallen upon the scenes so lately lighted by the Allied victory. From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the Continent.

War is not a matter for the professional pacifist or militarist. It is for the unprofessional people. They finance and fight it, they bear its losses. Therefore, they should have the deciding voice concerning it. To do this, they require all the information upon which decisions are made. They should know in a difference, whether it is soluble by rational intelligence, or inevitable by force. Not once in a thousand instances would our people (this may not be true of all peoples, however) approve an offensive war. Never would they be lax in defensive action. For this is their country. However, most of their enemies are within it.

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

Thus, then, on the night of the tenth of May, at the outset of this mighty battle, I acquired the chief power in the State, which henceforth I wielded in ever-growing measure for five years and three months of world war, at the end of which time, all our enemies having surrendered unconditionally or being about to do so, I was immediately dismissed by the British electorate from all further conduct of their affairs.

In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Goodwill.

Nothing is more dangerous in wartime than to live in the temperamental atmosphere of a Gallup Poll, always feeling ones pulse and taking ones temperature. I see that a speaker at the week-end said that this was a time when leaders should keep their ears to the ground. All I can say is that the British nation will find it very hard to look up to leaders who are detected in that somewhat ungainly posture.

[John McCain is]… not a war hero. He’s a war hero – he’s a war hero ’cause he was captured. I Like people that weren’t captured, OK, I hate to tell you.

Mine is the first generation able to contemplate the possibility that we may live our entire lives without going to war or sending our children to war.