Antoine de Saint-Exupery War Quotations

War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

It is the savor of bread broken with comrades that makes us accept the values of war.

It is as a soldier that you make love and as a lover that you make war.

If it is true that wars are won by believers, it is also true that peace treaties are sometimes signed by businessmen.

There is a cheap literature that speaks to us of the need of escape. It is true that when we travel we are in search of distance. But distance is not to be found. It melts away. And escape has never led anywhere. The moment a man finds that he must play the races, go the Arctic, or make war in order to feel himself alive, that man has begin to spin the strands that bind him to other men and to the world. But what wretched strands! A civilization that is really strong fills man to the brim, though he never stir. What are we worth when motionless, is the question.

Action and personal happiness have no truck with each other; they are eternally at war.

Are wars... anything but the means whereby a nation's problems are set, where creation is stimulated - there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

If France is to be judged, judge her not by the effects of her defeat but by her readiness to sacrifice herself.