Mark Twain Quotes on War & Peace (10 Quotes)

Tom's army won a great victory, after a long and hard-fought battle. Then the dead were counted, prisoners exchanged, the terms of the next disagreement agreed upon, and the day for the necessary battle appointed; after which the armies fell into line and marched away, and Tom turned homeward alone.

An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war

Man is the Reasoning Animal. Such is the claim. I think it is open to dispute. Indeed, my experiments have proven to me that he is the Unreasoning Animal... In truth, man is incurably foolish. Simple things which other animals easily learn, he is incapable of learning. Among my experiments was this. In an hour I taught a cat and a dog to be friends. I put them in a cage. In another hour I taught them to be friends with a rabbit. In the course of two days I was able to add a fox, a goose, a squirrel and some doves. Finally a monkey. They lived together in peace even affectionately.

And always we had wars, and more wars, and still other wars all over Europe, all over the world. 'Sometimes in the private interest of royal families,' Satan said, 'sometimes to crush a weak nation but never a war started by the aggressor for any clean purpose there is no such war in the history of the race.

In the South, the war is what A. D. is elsewhere they date from it.

Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man' - with his mouth.

I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with the blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael Angelo was dead.

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.

By the etiquette of war, it is permitted to none below the rank of newspaper correspondent to dictate to the general in the field

Peace by persuasion has a pleasant sound, but I think we should not be able to work it. We should have to tame the human race first, and history seems to show that that cannot be done.