Catherine the Great

All this is only for the mice and myself to admire!

I shall be an autocrat: that’s my trade. And the good Lord will forgive me: that’s his.

If Russians knew how to read they would write me off.

Don’t worry about things you cannot alter.

Madame, you must be gay; only thus can life be endured. I speak from experience for I have had to endure much, and have only been able to endure it because I have always laughed whenever I had the chance.

You were in a mood to quarrel. Please inform me once the inclination passes.

On the fields of friendly strife are sown the seeds that on other days, on other fields will bear the fruits of victory.

Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.

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

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

War talk by men who have been in a war is always interesting; whereas moon talk by a poet who has not been in the moon is likely to be dull.

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

If everyone fought for their own convictions there would be no war.

War is a game that is played with a smile. If you can’t smile, grin. If you can’t grin, keep out of the way till you can.

That’s what an army is – a mob; they don’t fight with courage that’s born in them, but with courage that’s borrowed from their mass, and from their officers.

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.

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

Among the calamities of war, may be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates, and credulity encourages.

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!

World War II was fought for the abolition of racial exclusiveness, equality of nations and the integrity of their territories, liberation of enslaved nations and restoration of their sovereign rights, the right of every nation to arrange its affairs as it wishes, economic aid to nations that have suffered and assistance to them in attaining their material welfare, restoration of democratic liberties, and destruction of the Hitlerite regime.

What is human warfare but just this; an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party.