Winning is better than losing, but everybody loses when the war isn’t one worth fighting.

War: first, one hopes to win;
then one expects the enemy to lose; then, one is satisfied that he too is suffering;
in the end, one is surprised that everyone has lost.

I pondered all these things, and how men fight and lose the battle, and the thing that they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes turns out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.

But the Nation had already become restless and discouraged at the prolongation of the war, and many believed that it would never terminate except by compromise.

Victory breeds hatred. The defeated live in pain. Happily the peaceful live,
giving up victory and defeat.

war is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.

Man had gone on, through age after age, avenging wrong with wrong, slaughter with slaughter. Nobody was the better for it, since both sides always suffered, yet everybody was inextricable. The present war might be attributed to Mordred, or to himself. But also it was due to a million Thrashers, to Lancelot, Guenever, Gawaine, everybody. Those who lived by the sword were forced to die by it. It was as if everything would lead to sorrow, so long as man refused to forget the past. The wrongs of Uther and of Cain were wrongs which could have been righted only by the blessing of forgetting them.

War is young men dying and old men talking

My guys were going back to war and I was flying home. That sucked. I felt like I was letting them down, shirking my duty. It was a conflict — family and country, family and brothers in arms — that I never really resolved.

One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.

Where there are repeated wars, the people are weakened; when they score repeated victories, rulers become haughty. Let haughty rulers command weakened people, and rare is the nation that will not perish as a result.

Perhaps wars weren't won anymore. Maybe they went on forever. Maybe it was another Hundred Years' War.

That is what you are. That's what you all are ... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation.

Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.