Anime and Manga
"My friends, it has often been said that I like war. Friends, I like war. No friends, I LOVE war.
I love holocausts. I love blitzkriegs. I love defensive lines. I love sieges, charges, I love mop-up operations, and retreats.
Wars across prairies, in streets, in trenches, in grasslands, in frozen tundras, through deserts, on the sea, in the air, I love every act of war that can occur upon this earth."
I love holocausts. I love blitzkriegs. I love defensive lines. I love sieges, charges, I love mop-up operations, and retreats.
Wars across prairies, in streets, in trenches, in grasslands, in frozen tundras, through deserts, on the sea, in the air, I love every act of war that can occur upon this earth."
— The Major, Hellsing
Where's your fear now?
Look at all the blood and flesh: It's like fireworks!
It splatters and splatters!
I haven't forgotten my thousands of scars.
The flame's heat... spilling organs...
Final cries... clouded eyes...
Ahh, those are the things I truly seek!
Peace and tranquility, let alone reconciliation,
Are the acts of domestic dogs who've forsaken their fangs!
Sheer madness, brought on by despair and disturbance,
Sounds more like Paradise than it does Hell!
Look at all the blood and flesh: It's like fireworks!
It splatters and splatters!
I haven't forgotten my thousands of scars.
The flame's heat... spilling organs...
Final cries... clouded eyes...
Ahh, those are the things I truly seek!
Peace and tranquility, let alone reconciliation,
Are the acts of domestic dogs who've forsaken their fangs!
Sheer madness, brought on by despair and disturbance,
Sounds more like Paradise than it does Hell!
— Los! Los! Los!, The Saga of Tanya the Evil ending theme
Comic Books
But I must say, Lykomedes, you exaggerate your age. You're younger than Nestor of Pylos. Many still remember your triumph in battle with the Dolopes. You can't have forgotten it yourself, the living rush of battle, the pride in valor, the glory. Our effort is greater than any the world has known before... The man whose spearthrust is sure, the man whose sword is strong, whose bowshot is unerring, who longs- more than for life- to stand in the rank of those heroes whose names will be sung for generations, that is the man the Acheans must have at their forefront. Honor awaits that man at Troy, honor and glory everlasting!
— Odysseus to Lykomedes (and the Disguised in Drag Achilles), Age of Bronze
Film — Live-Action
"War: it's FAN-tastic!"
— Arvid Harbinger, Hot Shots! Part Deux
"Detente with communists? Detente! Sounds like a couple of fags dancing."
—Nixon (1995)
"I love it. God help me, I do love it so. I love it more than my life."
— Patton (1970)
"We must publish the army newspaper again and tell magnificent stories - stories that exalt sacrifice, bravery. We must make them believe in a victory. We must give them hope, pride, a desire to fight. Yes, we need to make examples, but examples to follow. What we need are heroes."
— Danilov, Enemy at the Gates
"These are great days we're living, bros. We are jolly green giants, walking the Earth with guns. These people we wasted here today are the finest human beings we will ever know. After we rotate back to the world, we're gonna miss not having anyone around that's worth shooting."
—Crazy Earl, Full Metal Jacket
Literature
"Suppose two men at cards with nothing to wager save their lives. Who has not heard such a tale? A turn of the card. The whole universe for such a player has labored clanking to this moment which will tell if he is to die at that man's hand or that man at his. What more certain validation of a man's worth could there be? This enhancement of the game to its ultimate state admits no argument concerning the notion of fate. The selection of one man over another is a preference absolute and irrevocable and it is a dull man indeed who could reckon so profound a decision without agency or significance either one. In such games as have for their stake the annihilation of the defeated the decisions are quite clear. This man holding this particular arrangement of cards in his hand is thereby removed from existence. This is the nature of war, whose stake is at once the game and the authority and the justification. Seen so, war is the truest form of divination. It is the testing of one's will and the will of another within that larger will which because it binds them is therefore forced to select. War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."
—Judge Holden, Blood Meridian
"The warlike days are over. Blood is too precious a thing in these days of dishonourable peace, and the glories of the great races are as a tale that is told."
"Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man; with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his real First Fuck."
—Anthony Swofford, Jarhead
"It can be argued, for instance, that war is grotesque. But in truth war is also beauty. For all its horror, you can't help but gape at the awful majesty of combat. You stare out at tracer rounds unwinding through the dark like brilliant red ribbons. You crouch in ambush as a cool, impassive moon rises over the nighttime paddies. You admire the fluid symmetries of troops on the move, the harmonies of sound and shape and proportion, the great sheets of metal-fire streaming down from a gunship, the illumination rounds, the white phosphorus, the purply orange glow of napalm, the rocket's red glare. It's not pretty, exactly. It's astonishing. It fills the eye. It commands you. You hate it, yes, but your eyes do not. Like a killer forest fire, like cancer under a microscope, any battle or bombing raid or artillery barrage has the aesthetic purity of absolute moral indifference — a powerful, implacable beauty — and a true war story will tell you the truth about this, though the truth is ugly."
— Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried
Live-Action TV
"Just because I can give multiple orgasms to the furniture just by sitting on it, doesn't mean I'm not sick of this damn war. The blood. The noise. The endless poetry!"
— Flashheart, Blackadder Goes Forth
Jaime: First battle? How was it?
Dickon: It was glorious!
Jaime: Your father's not here.
Dickon: I didn't think it would smell so bad.
Mark Antony: Breath deep boy! It's the smell of victory!
Octavian: Smoke, shit, and rotting flesh.
Music
I learned that war is not so bad
I learned of the great ones we have had
We fought in Germany and in France
And some day I might get my chance
I learned of the great ones we have had
We fought in Germany and in France
And some day I might get my chance
—Tom Paxton, "What Did You Learn in School Today?"
Ninety-nine knights of the air
Riding super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a super hero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
Riding super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone's a super hero
Everyone's a Captain Kirk
—Nena, "99 Red Balloons"
"Now I am a general
And I am giving out the orders
I almost have an orgasm when the tanks are rolling
Crashing through the borders
It's good to be a general
Just tell these idiots what to do...hehe
Anyone in my position would love it, too"
And I am giving out the orders
I almost have an orgasm when the tanks are rolling
Crashing through the borders
It's good to be a general
Just tell these idiots what to do...hehe
Anyone in my position would love it, too"
—Brazilian Girls, "Never Met a German"
Sport the war, war support
The sport is war, total war
When this end is a slaughter
The final swing is not a drill
It's how many people I can kill!
The sport is war, total war
When this end is a slaughter
The final swing is not a drill
It's how many people I can kill!
— Slayer, "War Ensemble"
And here he is, to all his tearful oh and ah
Hearing a quiet “fuck you” answer,
he weaves away with shame like a yellow mimosa
And the warrior goes towards him on crutches:
Wounded, disfigured, fate to shreds
But this is the tragedy of a tiger, not a coyote!
An enviable destiny! And in vain the notorious "someone"
Angrily stares his pupils at me
Hearing a quiet “fuck you” answer,
he weaves away with shame like a yellow mimosa
And the warrior goes towards him on crutches:
Wounded, disfigured, fate to shreds
But this is the tragedy of a tiger, not a coyote!
An enviable destiny! And in vain the notorious "someone"
Angrily stares his pupils at me
— Mikhail Shcherbakov, "1995"
Stand-Up Comedy
"People say to me, 'Hey, Bill, the war made us feel better about ourselves.' Really? What kind of people are these with such low self-esteem that they need a war to feel better about themselves? May I suggest, instead of a war to feel better about yourself, perhaps … sit-ups? Maybe a fruit cup? Eight glasses of water a day?"
—Bill Hicks on the Gulf War
Tabletop Games
"We don't fight fer food, or fer teef, or guns, or cos we's told to fight. We fight cos we woz born to fight. And win."
—Ork Boy Grukk, Warhammer 40,000
"I have seen war in all its forms. I have seen feral world savages braining each other with stones, and I have monitored the death of a whole planet at the hands of a virus bomb. I have seen Space Marines drop to certain death, and win. I have seen Titans crush whole platoons underfoot. But there is no more stirring sight in war than the charge of massed cavalry."
—Dravin Gratz, 14th Tharinga Regiment, Warhammer 40,000
Theatre
Glory and love to the men of old,
Their sons may copy their virtues bold;
Courage in heart and a sword in hand,
Both ready to fight and ready to die for Fatherland!
Who needs bidding to dare by a trumpet blown?
Who lacks pity to spare when the field is won?
Who would fly from a foe if alone or lost?
And boast he was true, as coward might do when peril is past?
Glory and love to the men of old!
Their sons may copy their virtues bold,
Courage in heart and a sword in hand,
All ready to fight for Fatherland.
Their sons may copy their virtues bold;
Courage in heart and a sword in hand,
Both ready to fight and ready to die for Fatherland!
Who needs bidding to dare by a trumpet blown?
Who lacks pity to spare when the field is won?
Who would fly from a foe if alone or lost?
And boast he was true, as coward might do when peril is past?
Glory and love to the men of old!
Their sons may copy their virtues bold,
Courage in heart and a sword in hand,
All ready to fight for Fatherland.
—"Soldiers' Chorus" from Gounod's opera Faust
Video Games
(War!) Never been so much fun!
(War!) Never been so much fuuuun!
(War!) Never been so much fun!
(War!) Never been so much fuuuun!
Go up to your brother
Kill him with your gun
Leave him lyin' in his uniform
Dyin' in the sun
(War!) BANG!
(War!) Never been so much fuuuun!
(War!) Never been so much fun!
(War!) Never been so much fuuuun!
Go up to your brother
Kill him with your gun
Leave him lyin' in his uniform
Dyin' in the sun
(War!) BANG!
—Cannon Fodder theme
Father Armand was silent for a long time. He glanced over at the skull on a stake. "A Hunnic trophy," he said. "I think the man was a Visigoth. He died at the battle of the Catalaunian Fields. I keep it here so that I may see it every day and remember."
"Remember what, father?" I asked him.
"The scent of a burning village. The sound of butchery. The way peasants would flee before the Hun riders. The way we would ride them down. The way it felt to conquer alongside Attila and the Huns."
He leaned so close I could feel his breath. "Sometimes...
I miss it."
Glory for the first man to die, charge!
—Dawn of War: Winter Assault
"The nightmares? They never go away, Snake. Once you have been on the battlefield, tasted the thrills, the exhilaration, the tension... It all becomes part of you. Once you've awakened the warrior within, it never sleeps again."
— Big Boss, Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake
Make no mistake. War is coming. With all its glory. And with all its horror.
Noble Nords remember these words of
the hoar father: To kill in
glorious war is to honor oneself, to die
in glorious war is to honor all of Skyrim.
— Wall engraving found in Skyrim
What do we fight for? Peace? Peace... is a false hope. It is a lie told by leaders who have lost the will to fight. A time of reckoning has come. We will cleanse Heathmoor of the liars and the wicked. We will start an era with the truest heroes of this world. Peace... is poison. We... are... war.
—Astrea, For Honor
My coming would have saved you, set your people free in ways they cannot see. War would have tested them. Broken the weak with its violence, yet allowing the strong to arise. Violence gave you that strength, awakened you - I can see it upon your face, where two bullets left their mark.
Webcomics—Legate Lanius, Fallout: New Vegas
"'Bloodless victory'? Where's the fun in that?!"
— Fructose Riboflavin, The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!
Web Original
"Now’s as good a time as any to discuss the fate of Chris Kyle. Certainly, the film itself finds very little time to do so. His eventual death at the hands of a fellow veteran on a gun range should shadow every frame of American Sniper. For whatever reason, it’s the buried lede here; for all the horrors it reveals on the battlefield, the film is reluctant to truly acknowledge that the war never truly ends for many veterans. Kyle is apparently miraculously healed of his PTSD, and his death is consigned to a closing text—Chris Kyle somehow becoming an afterthought in his own story is the real horror of American Sniper. Eastwood seems less interested in the man and more enthralled by the legend—he’s into mythmaking, not psychoanalysis."
"Now comes Bernard-Henri Lévy, who, when asked by Jon Lee Anderson why he supported the intervention in Libya, says, “Why? I don’t know! Of course, it was human rights, for a massacre to be prevented, and Blah, Blah, Blah….” Never underestimate the murder and mayhem men will make, just to escape their boredom."
"I remember vividly and guiltily how, in the lead up to the Gulf War, I longed for war. It was natural. A view of history that treated war as the interesting bits, reinforced by a view of mass media that taught me that wars were where fun things like cartoons and video games happened meant that by 1990, at the age of 8, I was positively bitter that my life had dragged on without a proper war to keep things interesting.
The viewpoint is, like so much of being eight, barbaric in hindsight. It is not quite bloodlust, but rather a sort of blood blindness — the complete failure to recognize war as something other than the skeleton upon which a textbook is draped."
The viewpoint is, like so much of being eight, barbaric in hindsight. It is not quite bloodlust, but rather a sort of blood blindness — the complete failure to recognize war as something other than the skeleton upon which a textbook is draped."
—El Sandifer
on G.I. Joe
on G.I. Joe"I tell you that neither eating, drinking, nor sleep has as much savor for me as to hear the cry 'Forwards!' from both sides, and horses without riders shying and whinnying, and the cry 'Help! Help!', and to see the small and great fall to the grass at the ditches and the dead pierced by the wood of the lances decked with banners."
— Bertran de Born
"The pleasant season is drawing nigh when our ships shall land, when King Richard shall come, merry and proud as he never was before. Now we shall see gold and silver spent; the newly built stonework will crack to the heart's desire, walls crumble, towers topple and collapse, our enemies taste prison and chains. I love the melee of blue and vermilion shields, the many-colored ensigns and the banners, the tents and rich pavilions spread out on the plain, the breaking lances, the pierced shields, the gleaming helmets that are split, the blows given and received."
— Bertran de Born
"Now, God be thanked Who has matched us with His hour,
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping.
And caught our youth, and wakened us from sleeping,
With hand made sure, clear eye, and sharpened power,
To turn, as swimmers into cleanness leaping.
— Rupert Brooke, 1914
"Three cheers for the war. Three cheers for Italy's war and three cheers for war in general. Peace is hence absurd or rather a pause in war."
—Benito Mussolini, 1921
"I think a curse should rest on me — because I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment — and yet — I can't help it — I enjoy every second of it."
— Winston Churchill, A letter to a friend (1916)
"I would like at this time to touch upon the greatest spiritual event which has taken place since the fourth kingdom of nature, the human kingdom, appeared. I refer to the release of atomic energy, as related in the newspapers this week, August 6, 1945, in connection with the bombing of Japan."
—Alice Bailey, "The Release of Atomic Energy"
"Certainly the war is hurting the economy, and the people don’t like that. But at a deeper level, I think our people revel in war and blood, particularly if the victims belong to 'inferior' races."
—Gore Vidal on The Vietnam War, 1969
"We are also the victims of an unfortunate caricature of our profession. That is, a lot of people think we are pinstriped cookie pushers. I know that because I am a regular guest, for better or worse, on the Ollie North Show. His listeners often tell me that I'm a pinstriped cookie pusher."
—Former U.S. Ambassador R. Nicholas Burns
"This blanket amnesia is often part of the aftermath of war. The puncturing of the nationalist myth, an event that saw the Serbs turn their back on Milošević once Kosovo was lost, does not mean, however, that the nationalist virus has been conquered. While the excesses carried out in the name of the nationalist cause are forgotten or ignored, the myth of the nation has a disturbing longevity. It lies dormant, festering in the society, nurtured by boys' adventure stories of heroism in service to the nation, the monuments we erect to the fallen, and carefully scripted remembrances until it slowly slouches back into respectability."
— Chris Hedges, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning
"If the war is lost, then it is of no concern to me. If people perish in it, I still would not shed a single tear for them, because they do not deserve better.
Life does not forgive weakness.
I want war. To me all means will be right. My motto is not 'Don't, whatever you do, annoy the enemy.' My motto is 'Destroy him by all and any means.' I am the one who will wage the war! I have not come into this world to make men better, but to make use of their weaknesses."
Life does not forgive weakness.
I want war. To me all means will be right. My motto is not 'Don't, whatever you do, annoy the enemy.' My motto is 'Destroy him by all and any means.' I am the one who will wage the war! I have not come into this world to make men better, but to make use of their weaknesses."
"Our strength consists in our speed and in our brutality. Genghis Khan led millions of women and children to slaughter, with premeditation and a happy heart. History sees in him solely the founder of a state. It's a matter of indifference to me what a weak western European civilization will say about me. I have issued the command, and I'll have anybody who utters but one word of criticism executed by a firing squad, that our war aim does not consist in reaching certain lines, but in the physical destruction of the enemy. Accordingly, I have placed my death's-head formation in readiness, for the present only in the East, with orders to them to send to death mercilessly and without compassion, men, women, and children of Polish derivation and language. Only thus shall we gain the living space which we need. Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
— Adolf Hitler
