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

• The Republican Party of Richard Nixon was called to power in 1968 to bring an honorable end to the war in Vietnam and restore law and order to campuses and cities convulsed by crime, riots and racial violence. Nixon appeared to have succeeded and was rewarded with a 49-state landslide.

  

  Pat Buchanan
  • Power
  • War
  • Law

• When one nation is at war with another nation, the political machine does everything it can to vilify the people of the other nation, so it makes it easier to kill them. Which is understandable and it's happened this way throughout history.

  

  Alexander Siddig
  • People
  • War
  • History

• Besides, in this random miscellaneous company we may rub against some complete stranger who will, with luck, turn into the best friend we have in the world.

  

  Virginia Woolf
  • World
  • Luck
  • Stranger

• I don't like things like little sandals that look fragile. I like to look strong and commanding.

  

  Zoe Saldana
  • Strong
  • Like
  • Look

• But I do think that when we choose the easy path, where people or society reward us for being what they want us to be, against who we really are, a kind of death occurs. To the soul.

  

  Bill Konigsberg
  • Soul
  • Society
  • Choose

• 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