Laurence Housman Quotes

That was luck: I should not then have been a conscientious objector; but I am quite sure that the abominations of war would have made me one, as soon as I got to the front.

Laurence Housman

• War
• Luck

• Previous
• Next

Quotes to Explore

• Growing up, my birthday was always Confederate Memorial Day. It helped to create this profound sense of awareness about the Civil War and the 100 years between the Civil War and the civil rights movement and my parents' then-illegal and interracial marriage.

  

  Natasha Trethewey
  • Up
  • War
  • Parents

• You must not fight too often with one enemy, or you will teach him all your art of war.

  

  Napoleon Bonaparte
  • Art
  • War
  • Enemy

• I knew it was called 'Dunkirk,' Christopher Nolan was directing it, and it was a war film. That was all anyone knew.

  

  Fionn Whitehead
  • War
  • Film
  • Knew

• I acquired a hunger for fairy tales in the dark days of blackout and blitz in the Second World War.

  

  A. S. Byatt
  • World
  • War
  • Dark

• You can go into Mark Twain's material and prove anything you want. He was against war. He was for war. He was against rich people and he was for them. He was a kaleidoscope.

  

  Hal Holbrook
  • People
  • War
  • Rich

• What strategic benefit would accrue from having Montenegro as an ally that would justify the risk of our having to go to war should some neighbor breach Montenegro's borders?

  

  Pat Buchanan
  • War
  • Risk
  • Neighbor

• The true object of war fought for God should always be peace.

  

  Hamza Yusuf
  • God
  • War
  • True

• I was brought up largely by my grandfather because my father only returned from a prisoner-of-war camp in 1947 and worked in the nearest small town, so I hardly ever saw him.

  

  W. G. Sebald
  • Up
  • War
  • Father

• In the '60s we fought for peace, when the Vietnam war was on. We were against the cops and against the politicians, and there was a lot of waving banners and all that. And I think in a way, just as they were enjoying that machoism of war, we were enjoying the machismo of being anti-war, you know?

  

  Yoko Ono
  • War
  • Peace
  • Vietnam War

• Helplessness induces hopelessness, and history attests that loss of hope and not loss of lives is what decides the issue of war.

  

  B. H. Liddell Hart
  • War
  • History
  • Hope

• A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society and a more elevated humanity at which I am aiming - a society without kings, a humanity without barriers.

  

  Victor Hugo
  • War
  • Society
  • Humanity

• Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion,and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such purpose - and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

  

  Abraham Lincoln
  • May
  • War
  • Purpose

• I think what the Nobel committee is doing is going beyond war and looking at what humanity can do to prevent war. Sustainable management of our natural resources will promote peace.

  

  Wangari Maathai
  • War
  • Peace
  • Humanity

• Ralph Miliband was a socialist intellectual of great integrity. He belonged to a generation of socialists formed by the Russian revolution and the Second World War, a generation that dominated left-wing politics for almost a century.

  

  Tariq Ali
  • World
  • Great
  • War

• I covered the Vietnam War. I remember the lies that were told, the lives that were lost - and the shock when, twenty years after the war ended, former Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara admitted he knew it was a mistake all along.

  

  Walter Cronkite
  • Remember
  • War
  • Lost

• Luck affects everything. Let your hook always be cast; in the stream where you least expect it there will be a fish.

  

  Ovid
  • Chance
  • Luck
  • Fish

• The Sino-American competition involves two significant realities that distinguish it from the Cold War: neither party is excessively ideological in its orientation; and both parties recognize that they really need mutual accommodation.

  

  Zbigniew Brzezinski
  • American
  • War
  • Party

• My life has been very lucky, but I made some of that luck.

  

  Dan Jenkins
  • Life
  • My Life
  • Luck

• Whenever you have a possibility of going in two ways, either for peace or for war, for peaceful methods of for military methods, in the present age there is a strong prejudice for the peaceful ones. War seldom ever leads to good results.

  

  George F. Kennan
  • Good
  • War
  • Age

• I was born in Oslo, Norway, but now live in the suburbs of Southwest London, right near the River Thames. It's a lovely part of the world.

  

  Alexander Hanson
  • World
  • Live
  • River

• You know what actors are like; they moisturize every night. They're frozen in time.

  

  Danny Boyle
  • Time
  • Night
  • Frozen

• Joining a radical movement when one is young is very much like falling in love when one is young. The girl may turn out to be rotten, but the the experience of love is so valuable it can never be entirely undone by the ultimate disenchantment.

  

  Irving Kristol
  • May
  • Experience
  • Girl

• What's the difference between bulimics and anorexics?" I ask. "Anorexics are anorexics all the time," she says, "I'm only bulimic when I'm throwing up." Wow. She sounds just like my dad! "I'm only an alcoholic when I get drunk." There are all kinds of addicts, I guess. We all have pain. And we all look for ways to make the pain go away. Penelope gorges on her pain and then throws it up and flushes it away. My dad drinks his pain away.

  

  Sherman Alexie
  • Dad
  • Pain
  • Differences

• That was luck: I should not then have been a conscientious objector; but I am quite sure that the abominations of war would have made me one, as soon as I got to the front.

  

  Laurence Housman
  • War
  • Luck