World War 2 Quotes

“He threw his burning cigarette onto our clean living room floor and ground it into the wood with his boot.
We were about to become cigarettes.”
― Ruta Sepetys, Between Shades of Gray

“Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism... neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the worlds greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.”
― Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics and Racism in Germany

“Kropp on the other hand is a thinker. He proposes that a declaration of war should be a kind of popular festival with entrance-tickets and bands, like a bull fight. Then in the arena the ministers and generals of the two countries, dressed in bathing-drawers and armed with clubs, can have it out on themselves. Whoever survives the country wins. That would be much simpler and more than just this arrangement, where the wrong people do the fighting”
― Enrich Maria Remarque, All Quiet on the Western Front

“If the day should ever come when we must go, if some day we are compelled to leave the scene of history, we will slam the door so hard that the universe will shake and mankind will stand back in stupefaction..”
― Joseph Goebbels

“TO ALL THE
ambulance drivers
firewatchers
air-raid wardens
nurses
canteen workers
airplane spotters
rescue workers
mathematicians
vicars
vergers
shopgirls
chorus girls
librarians
debutantes
spinsters
fishermen
retired sailors
servants
evacuees
Shakespearean actors
and mystery novelists
WHO WON THE WAR.”
― Connie Willis, All Clear

“But if she'd come then, she would never have properly appreciated it. She'd have seen the happy crowds and the Union Jacks and the bonfires, but she'd have no idea of what it meant to see the lights on after years of navigating in the dark, what it meant to look up at an approaching plane without fear, to hear church bells after years of air-raid sirens. She'd have had no idea of the years of rationing and shabby clothes and fear which lay behind the smiles and the cheering, no idea of what it had cost to bring this day to pass--the lives of all those soldiers and sailors and airmen and civilians.”
― Connie Willis, All Clear

“When Hitler marched
across the Rhine
To take the land of France,
La dame de fer decided,
‘Let’s make the tyrant dance.’
Let him take the land and city,
The hills and every flower,
One thing he will never have,
The elegant Eiffel Tower.
The French cut the cables,
The elevators stood still,
‘If he wants to reach the top,
Let him walk it, if he will.’
The invaders hung a swastika
The largest ever seen.
But a fresh breeze blew
And away it flew,
Never more to be seen.
They hung up a second mark,
Smaller than the first,
But a patriot climbed
With a thought in mind:
‘Never your duty shirk.’
Up the iron lady
He stealthily made his way,
Hanging the bright tricolour,
He heroically saved the day.
Then, for some strange reason,
A mystery to this day,
Hitler never climbed the tower,
On the ground he had to stay.
At last he ordered she be razed
Down to a twisted pile.
A futile attack, for still she stands
Beaming her metallic smile.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri, Brushstrokes of a Gadfly

“Long ago she'd clamped an iron shell around her heart and nothing and no one could pry it lose, but deep inside the tender flesh still beat.”
― Sarah Sundin, A Memory Between Us

“There are some things you never say good-bye to”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“Just one look and then I knew that all I longed for long ago was you”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“Lovely morning, World War Two.”
― Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

“For all it's problems and difficulties, life is mostly a wonderful experience, and it is up to each person to make the most of each day. I hope you are successful in your life, but look to the heavens and the earth and especially to other people to find your real wealth. Wherever I am, wherever you go, know that my love goes with you.”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“Future generations would be convinced that nothing good could ever have existed in a country that produced such evil. They would think only of these evils. It would be as if these unleashed dark forces had grotesquely marched like devils on dead horses, backward through the gash in the present, and had destroyed the German past too.”
― Eric Metaxas, Bonhoeffer: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy

“Remember me in your dreams, as I will you.”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“Make time for prayer and reflection; try to understand your value as a man on earth but see, too, your proper place in the scheme of things. It may sound funny to say this, but I have come to see that we are all far more important and less important than we think.”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“She put her hand over her heart. Oh boy. It hurts. It's a real pain. Right here.”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“She dreamed of Venice. However, it wasn’t a city alive with stars dripping like liquid gold into canals, or Bougainvillea spilling from flowerpots like overfilled glasses of wine. In this dream, Venice was without color. Where pastel palazzi once lined emerald lagoons, now, gray, shadowy mounds of rubble paralleled murky canals. Lovers could no longer share a kiss under the Bridge of Sighs; it had been the target of an obsessive Allied bomb in search of German troops. The only sign of life was in Piazza San Marco, where the infamous pigeons continued to feed. However, these pigeons fed not on seeds handed out by children, but on corpses rotting under the elongated shadow of the Campanile.”
― Pamela Allegretto, Bridge of Sighs and Dreams

“We're so far away from those stars”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“A family is no place for privacy!”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“There is much to love, and that love is what we are left with. When the bombs stop dropping, and the camps fall back to the earth and decay, and we are done killing each other, that is what we must hold. We can never let the world take our memories of love away, and if there are no memories, we must invent love all over again.”
― Louise Murphy, The True Story of Hansel and Gretel

“I will be so glad for you to hear not the sounds of gunfire but the sounds of church bells, and of people working in peace.”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“Tenemos el prejuicio de que las grandes catástrofes de los pueblos sólo son posibles en medio de un apocalíptico desorden. En nuestro tiempo las cosas suceden de una manera mucho más sencilla, con una simplicidad y una facilidad aterradora.”
― Manuel Chaves Nogales, La agonía de Francia

“What we dedicate today is not a memorial to war, rather it's a tribute to the physical and moral courage that makes heroes out of farm and city boys and that inspires Americans in every generation to lay down their lives for people they will never meet, for ideals that make life itself worth living.”
― Bob Dole, One Soldier's Story

“In the eleven months preceding the outbreak of World War II, 211 treaties of peace were signed. Were these treaties of peace written on paper, or were they written on the hearts of men? And we must ask ourselves as we hear of treaties being written today, whether the treaties of the UN are written with the full cognizance of the fact that those who sign them are responsible before God?”
― Fulton J. Sheen, Life Is Worth Living

“It seemed impossible that men with hearts and brains were capable of it. Such devastation of cities, so many innocent lives lost. It seemed to him that if just a small part of the effort put into war could be put into peace, they'd be so much better off”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“She raised her head and saw a squadron of fighter planes. She stretched her hand high as if she could grab hold and climb away from what she had done, from who she was.”
― Sarah Sundin, A Memory Between Us

“I'm sorry! It's just that it hurts so much and it never stops!”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“Is war a sin?”
― Elizabeth Berg, Dream When You're Feeling Blue

“The vast majority of Jews killed in the Holocaust never saw a concentration camp.”
― Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

“I had a number of German and Austrian refugee friends in London and they kept on telephoning in consternation as the news grew more and more disquieting. To them it was incredible that we had not heeded the growing threat from the country from which they had been forced to flee.”
― Frances Faviell, A Chelsea Concerto