War and peace - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

They were only planning to send a projectile to the moon, a rather brutal way of opening negotiations, even with a satellite, but one much in favor among civilized nations.

- Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon (1865), translated by Walter James Miller (1978)

They did unto others what they would not have others do unto them, an immoral principle that is the basic premise of the art of war.

- Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon (1865), translated by Walter James Miller (1978)

The third peculiarity of aerial warfare was that it was at once enormously destructive and entirely indecisive.

- H. G.Wells, TheWar in the Air, and Particularly HowMr. Bert Smallways Fared While It Lasted (1908)

Of course a war is entertaining. The immediate fear and suffering of the humans is a legitimate and pleasing refreshment for our myriads of toiling workers.

- C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters (1942)

''Nations which are at peace can live together,'' said Surgeon General Mors earnestly. ''Nations which are at war only die together.''

- Murray Leinster, ''Symbiosis'' (1947)

All wars are founded in economic conflict, or to put it another way, a trial by arms is merely the last battle of an economic war.

- Alfred Bester, ''The Devil's Invention'' (1950)

We thought space was empty and that we were automatically the lords of creation. [. . .] Well, if Man wants to be top dog - or even a respected neighbor - he'll have to fight for it. Beat the plowshares back into swords; the other was a maiden aunt's fancy.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Puppet Masters (1951)

We had our atomic wars - thousands of years ago. After that we fought with bows and arrows. Then, slowly, we learned that fighting is no solution - that aggression leads to chaos.

- Edmund H. North, The Day the Earth Stood Still (film script, 1951)

Men would be just as calm after their cities had been reduced to rubble. The human capacity for calmness was almost unlimited, ex post facto, because the routine of daily living had to go on, despite the big business of governments whose leaders invoked the Deity in the cause of slaughter.

- Walter M. Miller, Jr., ''Way of a Rebel'' (1954)

''Love and war,'' he said, ''are Earth's two staple commodities.We've been turning them both out in bumper crops since the beginning of time.''

- Robert Sheckley, ''Love, Incorporated'' (1956)

Dear Conrad, war is your specialty. Historians love you for it. I love you for it. After all, not only is it fun, it's creative! Your best scientific discoveries are made in wartime: the atom bomb, radar, luncheon meat. And think of all that travel! Getting away from home, making new acquaintances, indulging in amatory dalliance with strangers. So broadening. And then: the delirium of battle, the rush of adrenalin to the head as the trumpets sound attack! Conrad, war is the principal art form of your race.

- Gore Vidal, Visit to a Small Planet, revised (play, 1957)

''Peace'' is a condition in which no civilian pays any attention to military casualties which do not achieve page-one, lead-story prominence - unless that civilian is a close relative of one of the casualties. But, if there ever was a time in history when ''peace'' meant that there was no fighting going on, I have been unable to find out about it.

- Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers (1959)

For centuries we have dreamt of flying; recently we made that come true: we have always hankered for speed; now we have speeds greater than we can stand: we wanted to speak to far parts of the Earth; we can: we wanted to explore the sea bottom; we have: and so on, and so on. And, too, we wanted the power to smash our enemies utterly; we have it. If we had truly wanted peace, we should have had that as well. But true peace has never been one of the genuine dreams - we have got little further than preaching against war in order to appease our consciences.

- JohnWyndham, The Outward Urge (1959)

Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is theWar Room.

- Stanley Kubrick, Terry Southern, and Peter George, Dr. Strangelove, or, How I Learned to StopWorrying and Love the Bomb (film, 1964)

Kirk: There it is.War.We didn't want it. But we've got it. Spock: Curious how often you humans manage to obtain that which you do not want.

- Gene L. Coon, ''Errand of Mercy,'' episode of Star Trek (1967)

You seem to be claiming that war could be cured, like a disease, with a dose of the proper medicine.

- John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968)

Primitiveness and civilization are degrees of the same thing. If civilization has an opposite, it is war.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969)

''Translator, explain this word 'peace.' '' Translator: ''This is incredible, but the closest approximation we can get from our instruments is that the members of this species were so accustomed to slaughtering each other that they had to employ a special word to designate the intervals when the slaughter had ceased.''

- Bob Shaw, ''That Moon Plaque: Comments by Science FictionWriters'' (1969)

When a country's economy was in rotten shape, the easiest dodge was to start a war as a pretext for gagging everyone immediately.

- Arkady Strugatsky and Boris Strugatsky, Prisoners of Power (1969), translated by Helen Saltz Jacobson (1977)

These great planet-wide and interplanet-wide wars break out, and everyone is supposed to be thinking of the ideologies involved . . . whereas in actuality most people simply want a good, safe night's sleep.

- Philip K. Dick, Our Friends from Frolix 8 (1970)

War brutalizes everyone involved until there is no more innocence on either side.

- Harry Harrison, ''American Dead'' (1971)

He had grown up in a country run by politicians who sent the pilots to man the bombers to kill the babies to make the world safe for children to grow up in.

- Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven (1971)

Some fight war while the rest fight wars.We can use that division of labor.

- Bernard Wolfe, ''Biscuit Position'' (1972)

(He wants to bring us some kind of peace.What peace, Martin?) The peace of being, of unthinking. The peace that comes from a universe ordered in a manner that men could never order it.

- Thomas N. Scortia, ''The Armageddon Tapes - Tape 1'' (1974)

War had become the American way of life.

- Sydney J. Van Scyoc, ''Nightfire'' (1978)

Peace is often only war without fighting.

- Barry B. Longyear, ''Enemy Mine'' (1979)

They sang a number of tuneful and reflective songs on the subjects of peace, justice, morality, culture, sport, family life and the obliteration of all other life forms.

- Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982)

In all wars, the first stage was to dehumanize the enemy, reduce the enemy to a lower level so that he might be killed without compunction.When the enemy was not human to begin with, the task was easier. As wars progressed, this tactic frequently led to an underestimation of the enemy, with disastrous consequences.

- Greg Bear, ''Hardfought'' (1983)

As long as they did not use nuclear weapons, it appeared, nobody was going to give the right name to all the killing that had been going on since the end of the Second World War, which was surely ''World War Three.''

- Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., Galapagos (1985)

''Women shouldn't be in combat,'' said Vorkosigan, grimly glum. ''Neither should men, in my opinion.''

- Lois McMaster Bujold, Shards of Honor (1986)

War makes it very difficult to think straight.

- Terry Pratchett, Pyramids (1989)

War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It's peace that's wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with.

- Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game (1990)

''The key to strategy, little Vor,'' she explained kindly, ''is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.''

- Lois McMaster Bujold, The Vor Game (1990)

The consensus seemed to be that if really large numbers of men were sent to storm the mountain, then enough might survive the rocks to take the citadel. This is essentially the basis of all military thinking.

- Terry Pratchett, Eric (1990)

The place where a war starts is long before the first missile, or the first bullet, or the first spear.

- Nancy Kress, ''And Wild for to Hold'' (1991)

That was war; killing people by every means possible.

- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars (1992)

The galaxy was littered with ancient worlds torn apart by warfare.

- Robert Reed, ''Sister Alice'' (1993)

War is not a game but the most repugnant atrocity committed by sapient beings, and when indulged in it must be ended in the shortest conceivable span of time.

- Gay Marshall, ''The Heart of the Hydra'' (1995)

Why does any advanced civilization seek to destroy less advanced ones? Because the land is strategically valuable, because there are resources that can be cultivated and exploited, but most of all, simply because they can.

- J. Michael Straczynski, ''And Now for aWord,'' episode of Babylon 5 (1995)

Somewhere east of here, there had been rocket attacks and rumors of chemical agents, the latest act in one of those obscure and ongoing struggles that made up the background of his world.

- William Gibson, Idoru (1996)

Murder's the taking of one man's life by another - war's the other way around.

- Steve Aylett, Slaughtermatic (1998)

He was trying to find some help in the ancient military journals of General Tacticus, whose intelligent campaigning had been so successful that he'd lent his very name to the detailed prosecution of martial endeavour, and had actually found a section headed What to Do If One Army Occupies aWellfortified and Superior Ground and the Other Does Not, but since the first sentence read ''Endeavour to be the one inside'' he'd rather lost heart.

- Terry Pratchett, Carpe Jugulum (1998)