88 Wwii Inspirational Quotes

World War II was a period marked by immense struggle and sacrifice, but it was also a time of unparalleled bravery and unwavering spirit. As we delve into history, we often find ourselves inspired by the words of those who lived through it—leaders, soldiers, and civilians alike. These powerful quotes offer us a glimpse into their resilience, hope, and the indomitable human spirit that carried them through one of the darkest times in history. Join us as we explore a curated collection of the top 88 WWII inspirational quotes, capturing the essence of courage and determination that continues to inspire generations.

1. “Now at this very moment I knew that the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death. So we had won after all! ... How long the war would last or in what fashion it would end no man could tell, nor did I at this moment care ... We should not be wiped out. Our history would not come to an end ... Hitler's fate was sealed. Mussolini's fate was sealed. As for the Japanese, they would be ground to a powder. All the rest was merely the proper application of overwhelming force.” - Winston S. Churchill

2. “Like every other creature on the face of the earth, Godfrey was, by birthright, a stupendous badass, albeit in the somewhat narrow technical sense that he could trace his ancestry back up a long line of slightly less highly evolved stupendous badasses to that first self-replicating gizmo---which, given the number and variety of its descendants, might justifiably be described as the most stupendous badass of all time. Everyone and everything that wasn't a stupendous badass was dead.” - Neal Stephenson

3. “A man must know his destiny… if he does not recognize it, then he is lost. By this I mean, once, twice, or at the very most, three times, fate will reach out and tap a man on the shoulder… if he has the imagination, he will turn around and fate will point out to him what fork in the road he should take, if he has the guts, he will take it.” - George S. Patton Jr.

4. “Morale was deteriorating and it was all Yossarian's fault. The country was in peril; he was jeopardizing his traditional rights of freedom and independence by daring to exercise them.” - Joseph Heller

5. “We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.” - Winston S. Churchill

6. “We shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender.” - Winston S. Churchill

7. “You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we havestriven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you. In company with our brave Allies and brothers-in-arms onother Fronts, you will bring about the destruction of the German warmachine, the elimination of Nazi tyranny over the oppressed peoples ofEurope, and security for ourselves in a free world.Your task will not be an easy one. Your enemy is well trained, wellequipped and battle hardened. He will fight savagely.But this is the year 1944! Much has happened since the Nazi triumphs of1940-41. The United Nations have inflicted upon the Germans great defeats,in open battle, man-to-man. Our air offensive has seriously reduced theirstrength in the air and their capacity to wage war on the ground. Our HomeFronts have given us an overwhelming superiority in weapons and munitionsof war, and placed at our disposal great reserves of trained fighting men.The tide has turned! The free men of the world are marching together toVictory!I have full confidence in your courage and devotion to duty and skill inbattle. We will accept nothing less than full Victory! Good luck! And let us beseech the blessing of Almighty God upon this greatand noble undertaking.” - Dwight D. Eisenhower

8. “...what happened in New York and Washington is the same thing that England and America did to Berlin every day for three years during World War II -- and Germany did the same thing to England.” - Lemmy Kilmister

9. “I..." He struggled to answer. "When everything was quiet, I went up to the corridor and the curtain in the livingroom was open just a crack... I could see outside. I watched, only for a few seconds." He had not seen the outside world for twenty-two months.There was no anger or reproach.It was Papa who spoke.How did it look?"Max lifted his head, with great sorrow and great astonishment. "There were stars," he said. "They burned by eyes.” - Markus Zusak

10. “I have in this War a burning private grudge—which would probably make me a better soldier at 49 than I was at 22: against that ruddy little ignoramus Adolf Hitler (for the odd thing about demonic inspiration and impetus is that it in no way enhances the purely intellectual stature: it chiefly affects the mere will). Ruining, perverting, misapplying, and making for ever accursed, that noble northern spirit, a supreme contribution to Europe, which I have ever loved, and tried to present in its true light.” - J.R.R. Tolkien

11. “The War Department in Washington briefly weighed more ambitious schemes to relieve the Americans on a large scale before it was too late. But by Christmas of 1941, Washington had already come to regard Bataan as a lost cause. President Roosevelt had decided to concentrate American resources primarily in the European theater rather than attempt to fight an all-out war on two distant fronts. At odds with the emerging master strategy for winning the war, the remote outpost of Bataan lay doomed. By late December, President Roosevelt and War Secretary Henry Stimson had confided to Winston Churchill that they had regrettably written off the Philippines. In a particularly chilly phrase that was later to become famous, Stimson had remarked, 'There are times when men have to die.” - Hampton Sides

12. “I was on one of my world 'walkabouts.' It had taken me once more through Hong Kong, to Japan, Australia, and then Papua New Guinea in the South Pacific [one of the places I grew up]. There I found the picture of 'the Father.' It was a real, gigantic Saltwater Crocodile (whose picture is now featured on page 1 of TEETH). From that moment, 'the Father' began to swim through the murky recesses of my mind. Imagine! I thought, men confronting the world’s largest reptile on its own turf! And what if they were stripped of their firearms, so they must face this force of nature with nothing but hand weapons and wits?We know that neither whales nor sharks hunt individual humans for weeks on end. But, Dear Reader, crocodiles do! They are intelligent predators that choose their victims and plot their attacks. So, lost on its river, how would our heroes escape a great hunter of the Father’s magnitude? And what if these modern men must also confront the headhunters and cannibals who truly roam New Guinea? What of tribal wars, the coming of Christianity and materialism (the phenomenon known as the 'Cargo Cult'), and the people’s introduction to 'civilization' in the form of world war? What of first contact between pristine tribal culture and the outside world? What about tribal clashes on a global scale—the hatred and enmity between America and Japan, from Pearl Harbor, to the only use in history of atomic weapons? And if the world could find peace at last, how about Johnny and Katsu?” - Timothy James Dean

13. “She doesn't understand the concept of Roman numerals. She thought we just fought in world war eleven.” - Joan Rivers

14. “In the Second World War he took no public part, having escaped to a neutral country just before its outbreak. In private conversation he was wont to say that homicidal lunatics were well employed in killing each other, but that sensible men would keep out of their way while they were doing it. Fortunately this outlook, which is reminiscent of Bentham, has become rare in this age, which recognizes that heroism has a value independent of its utility. The Last Survivor of a Dead Epoch” - Bertrand Russell

15. “All the nut eaters and food faddists I have ever known, died early after a long period of senile decay - Winston Churchill” - Stuart Finlay

16. “As we drew nearer I saw a cathedral like a crown on the head of a city. In its white walls every window glinted in the sun. Lincoln! Of such places is England made. -"No Moon Tonight” - Don Charlwood

17. “I wonder" he wrote, "if the day will ever come that the loveliest of hymns, Silent Night, will come into the minds of the people throughout the world to express the German heart. I belive it is the expression of the heart of many Germans...[and]of most people throughout the world. That is the appalling tragedy of all that we witness today" Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King in his diary during WWII during German occupation of the Netherlands.” - Mackenzie King

18. “If seeing her an hour before her lastWeak cough into all blackness I could yetBe held by chalk-white walls- The Consumptive. Belsen 1945” - Mervyn Peake

19. “The Japanese fought to win - it was a savage, brutal, inhumane, exhausting and dirty business. Our commanders knew that if we were to win and survive, we must be trained realistically for it whether we liked it or not. In the post-war years, the U.S. Marine Corps came in for a great deal of undeserved criticism in my opinion, from well-meaning persons who did not comprehend the magnitude of stress and horror that combat can be. The technology that developed the rifle barrel, the machine gun and high explosive shells has turned war into prolonged, subhuman slaughter. Men must be trained realistically if they are to survive it without breaking, mentally and physically.” - E.B. Sledge

20. “A generation of the unteachable is hanging upon us like a necklace of corpses.” - George Orwell

21. “Some people like the Jews, and some do not. But no thoughtful man can deny the fact that they are, beyond any question, the most formidable and most remarkable race which has appeared in the world.— Winston S. Churchill” - Ellen Brazer

22. “Si WWII ne peut pas nous prendre, elle~même le diable en personne ne pourra nous joindre! ( IF WWII COULDN'T TAKE US DOWN, NOT EVEN THE DEVIL HERSELF CAN TOUCH US! )” - C. JoyBell C.

23. “When you go homeTell them of us, and sayFor your tomorrow,We gave our today.” - Patrick O'Donnell

24. “The inescapable truth... is that, within a miraculously short period of five years, your Government reduced this country from a position of world supremacy and absolute security to one of mortal peril. It took the Roman Empire a hundred years of the most enjoyable decadence to achieve the same result.” - Robert Boothby

25. “We love WWII because the cause was so obviously just, because you can't be a good person and say you wouldn't fight against an evil like that. It was so black and white on our side, and on our side so few died. (Our side meaning the lantern-jawed John Wayne Greatest Generation constantly canonized soldiers who strode in late to the graveyard that was Europe. Compared to Jewish, Russian, Roma, and other casualties, our losses were minimal.) We felt so strong. In some ways I think we're always trying to recapture that feeling of being a country of superheroes. With every war we invoke that one, we hope it will be that good. -from her blog” - Catherynne M. Valente

26. “Apparently while my squad and I were on our way here, skipping through the French countryside, picking daisies, having picnics, and laying farmer's daughters, the Army must have turned into a democracy.” - Robert Rodat

27. “The point of civilization is to be civilized; the purpose of action is to perpetuate society, for only in society can philosophy truly take place.” - Iain Pears

28. “All that technical expertise isn't worth a damn if you don't get the best out of people, though. . . . These were leaders who saw strength in ordinary people and showed them how to break tyranny.” - Noel Coward

29. “I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a 'gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.' Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.” - Winston S. Churchill

30. “After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States entered into World War II to protect our way of life and to help liberate those who had fallen under the Axis occupation. The country rallied to produce one of the largest war efforts in history. Young men volunteered to join the Armed Forces, while others were drafted. Women went to work in factories and took military jobs. Everyone collected their used cooking grease and metals to be used for munitions. They rationed gas and groceries. Factories now were producing airplanes, weapons, and military vehicles. They all wanted to do their part. And they did, turning America into a war machine. The nation was in full support to help our boys win the war and come home quickly. Grandpa wanted to do his part too.” - Kara Martinelli

31. “His idleness was his refuge, and in this he was like many others in [occupied] France in that period; laziness became political.” - Iain Pears

32. “Odd, don't you think? I have seen war, and invasions and riots. I have heard of massacres and brutalities beyond imagining, and I have kept my faith in the power of civilization to bring men back from the brink. And yet one women writes a letter, and my whole world falls to pieces.You see, she is an ordinary woman. A good one, even. That's the point ... Nothing [a recognizably bad person does] can surprise or shock me, or worry me. But she denounced Julia and sent her to her death because she resented her, and because Julia is a Jew.I thought in this simple contrast between the civilized and the barbaric, but I was wrong. It is the civilized who are the truly barbaric, and the [Nazi] Germans are merely the supreme expression of it.” - Iain Pears

33. “Many Germans nowadays say they were not Nazi, and many were not, but they were nearly ALL Party members. It was safer ... and if you were not, you could end up in a ‘camp’ for retraining ... so they mostly all paid ‘lip service’ to the Nazi Party.” - Alfred Nestor

34. “A very important man used to visit her sometimes, and I met him too. He loved children and used to dandle me on his knee. This was how the title came about for this book, Uncle Hitler, although in the old German tradition, I called him Uncle Adolf, even though I was not related to him. This was a sign of respect to an older person, which is why I called Frau Eva ‘Aunty Eva’.” - Alfred Nestor

35. “O Father, console them and please spare our country from that terrible disaster, not because we are any better but only out of grace. And if it has to be different, then teach me to pray: "Your will be done." O please protect him whom my soul lives! -From the journal of Diet Eman” - Diet Eman

36. “Again, a conversation with the doctor. We always come back to the same point: "The church may not mix in politics." he says. And I tell him that when you are a Christian and profess that God is almighty, there is no single area of life from which you can eliminate God. -From the diary of Diet Eman” - Diet Eman

37. “By the end of the war, I could pick out Jewish people almost as if I had a sixth sense about it, even if they had blue eyes and blond hair. I would have been a very valuable Gestapo person.” - Diet Eman

38. “I felt peace, even though I was still scared to death. I thought that, whatever would happen to me - I could still be killed. I didn't know - and in what I'd already been through, God was in control.” - Diet Eman

39. “To me it was real war and my life was at stake, and I believe that all those clandestine spy games we played as children helped when the Occupation came.” - Diet Eman

40. “But miracles still happen, even if we don't think they do.” - Diet Eman

41. “They thought we were stupid to do it, (hide Jews) of course; in fact, it was beyond their comprehension that we would risk so much for Jews.” - Diet Eman

42. “Surely there is no more wretched sight that the human body unloved and uncared for.” - Corrie Ten Boom

43. “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.” - J. Robert Oppenheimer

44. “(Thinking while being interrogated by the Germans) You big shots think you can decide on my life, but I have news for you: you can't touch a hair on my head without the will of God my Father, because He is on my side.” - Diet Eman

45. “You have amazing gifts. Don't squander them. Don't give them out meaninglessly, don't abuse them, don't take them for granted. You are the weapon you carry with you till the day you die.-Tatiana and Alexander” - Paullina Simons

46. “The only reason for this treatment was that they were Jews.” - Muriel Knox Doherty

47. “The one who forgives never brings up the past to that person's face. When you forgive, it's like it never happened. True forgiveness is complete and total.” - Louis Zamperini

48. “There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.” - John Hersey

49. “It was now December 7, 1941; the date that Franklin D. Roosevelt was destined to declare would live in infamy.” - Randall Wallace

50. “And a ton came down on a coloured road,And a ton came down on a gaol,And a ton came down on a freckled girl,And a ton on the black canal,And a ton came down on a hospital,And a ton on a manuscript,And a ton shot up through the dome of a church,And a ton roared down to the crypt.And a ton danced over the Thames and filledA thousand panes with stars,And the splinters leapt on the Surrey shoreTo the tune of a thousand scars.” - Mervyn Peake

51. “I knew why earlier generations once believed that the sun circled the earth. Because, in our limited imaginations, that is how we lived our lives. -Mrs. Tuesday's Departure” - Suzanne Anderson

52. “One of the most oft-quoted records of the siege, scribbled in pencil over the pages of a pocket address book, is that kept by twelve-year-old Tanya Savicheva: 28 December 1941 at 12.30 a.m. – Zhenya died. 25 January 1942 at 3 p.m. – Granny died. 17 March at 5 a.m. – Lyoka died. 13 April at 2 a.m. – Uncle Vasya died. 10 May at 4 p.m. – Uncle Lyosha died. 13 May at 7.30 a.m. – Mama died. The Savichevs are dead. Everyone is dead. Only Tanya is left.” - Anna Reid

53. “At this period, too, Leningraders resorted to their most desperate food substitutes, scraping dried glue from the underside of wallpaper and boiling up shoes and belts. (Tannery processes had changed, they discovered, since the days of Amundsen and Nansen, and the leather remained tough and inedible.)” - Anna Reid

54. “Finally, I wish to remember the millions of Allied servicemen and prisoners of war who lived the story of the Second World War. Many of these men never came home; many others returned bearing emotional and physical scars that would stay with them for the rest of their lives. I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they scarified, for the good of humanity. It is to them that this book {Unbroken} is dedicated,” - Laura Hillenbrand

55. “Simon shook his head. ‘The Nazis in Germany…the Japanese here in Shanghai…Treating people as less than human because of the shape of their faces or the sound of their names. Sometimes it feels like the whole damn world is unraveling.” - Daniel Kalla

56. “Sturm, Swung, Wucht” - Erwin Rommel

57. “When I went into the Army, I made up my mind that I was putting myself at the Army's disposal. I believe in the war. That doesn't mean I believe in the Army. I don't believe in any army. You don't expect justice out of an army, if you're a sensible, grown-up human being, you only expect victory. And if it comes to that, our Army is probably the most just one that ever existed. . . . I expected the Army to be corrupt, inefficient, cruel, wasteful, and it turned out to be all those things, just like all armies, only much less so than I thought before I got into it. It is much less corrupt, for example, than the German Army. Good for us. The victory we win will not be as good as it might be, if it were a different kind of army, but it will be the best kind of victory we can expect in this day and age, and I'm thankful for it.” - Irwin Shaw

58. “This time it is not a simple, understandable war, within the same culture. This time it is an assault of the animal world upon the house of the human being. I don’t know what you saw in Africa and Italy, but I know what I saw in Russia and Poland. We made a cemetery a thousand miles long and a thousand miles wide. Men, women, children, Poles, Russians, Jews, it made no difference. It could not be compared to any human action. It could be compared to a weasel in a henhouse. It was as though we felt that if we left anything alive in the East, it would one day bear witness against us and condemn us. And, now, we have made the final mistake. We are losing the war” - Irwin Shaw

59. “The street is no longer measured by meters but by corpses ... Stalingrad is no longer a town. By day it is an enormous cloud of burning, blinding smoke; it is a vast furnace lit by the reflection of the flames. And when night arrives, one of those scorching howling bleeding nights, the dogs plunge into the Volga and swim desperately to gain the other bank. The nights of Stalingrad are a terror for them. Animals flee this hell; the hardest stones cannot bear it for long; only men endure.” - Max Hastings

60. “One woman, called Eva, used to visit my mother and sometimes we would call in next door to visit her. Sometimes Frau Eva gave me cakes and fruit drinks. I remember she was very kind. It was not until many years later that I understood just who she was. To me, at the time, she was just a very nice woman who lived next door sometimes, although she did tend to go away, and was often not seen for several months.” - Alfred Nestor

61. “He loved children and used to dandle me on his knee. This was how the title came about for this book, Uncle Hitler, although in the old German tradition, I called him Uncle Adolf, even though I was not related to him. This was a sign of respect to an older person, which is why I called Frau Eva ‘Aunty Eva’.However, little did I know at that time what revulsion the name Adolf Hitler would eventually invoke in the decent conscience of the world.” - Alfred Nestor

62. “One day, I noticed that my father’s uniform had changed from a smart, light green colour with silver edging on the shoulder straps to a black uniform with SS markings and runes on the collar. I asked him why this was, and he told me that he was still a policeman, but now worked for the Schutzpolizei.” - Alfred Nestor

63. “I do recall hearing a conversation in our home in Strausberg, between my mother and my father, where my mother sounded very angry that my cousin had let the Rödels down by having to be dragged out of Oma’s house, crying for his mother and shouting that he did not want to return to the war in Russia.Like a great many other soldiers throughout that period, he died in Russia on 5 May, 1944. He was just twenty years of age, and is buried somewhere in that country.” - Alfred Nestor

64. “After the Christmas and New Year of 1944 my mother and I returned to Strausberg, but the area was full of people evacuated from Berlin due to mass bombings on the capital by the RAF. These had started, in a small way, on 25 August, 1940, and had continued through 1941 and 1942. However, by November, 1943, these air attacks were major, involving mass bomber streams of more than 800 aircraft. I used to stand outside the front of our house and look at the sky, watching the silver bombers turning over Strausberg and heading in the direction of Berlin. Many were shot down, some near us in the fields around Strausberg.” - Alfred Nestor

65. “But the public did not know the truth about what happened to the people in the trucks; they believed the stories from the government, who said that these people, known as Untermensch (non-people or ‘lower people’), were simply moved to open spaces in the east and settled on farms, away from Germany, so as not to ‘contaminate’ the German race. This is an example of people not wishing to know the facts behind the rumours in which were whispered between trusted friends. The general belief was that the rumours were rubbish anyway, for how could a civilized country do such things? Our leaders would never allow anything bad to happen to these people; after all, we were not barbarians! And so nothing was said, or done, and the public developed a collective blindness to the truth.” - Alfred Nestor

66. “I heard people talking about what this Red Army did to any Germans they captured, and this only added to my fears.” - Alfred Nestor

67. “Children accept the conditions they are born into, and, to a degree, I was getting used to the bombings, fires, and death around me. I remember that I thought those things were normal. It is grown-ups who worry about things, and this ... this was total panic! I could taste the fear, and I could see that my mother was frightened, which I had never seen before, and this made me even more frightened.” - Alfred Nestor

68. “The train, I was later told by my mother, only had about ten carriages to it, and there were hundreds of people fighting to get on. I don’t think anybody knew where the train was going, only that it was leaving Strausberg and would take us away from the Russians, who were now arriving on the far end of the platform. Some German SS soldiers and Police were shooting at the Russian troops, and many people – men, women and children – were hit by the flying bullets.” - Alfred Nestor

69. “Inside my carriage there was mass panic and I was in danger of being trampled, but somebody picked me off the floor, and I found myself by the window on the platform side. I was very frightened now, for I thought that I had lost my mother and was all alone, but a few minutes later she arrived at my side. She had some blood on her face, but she told me not to worry, it would all be fine soon.” - Alfred Nestor

70. “I thought of the people on the roof and wondered how they managed to stay up there as there was nothing to hang on to but, thinking back, I think they had either been shot or had fallen off the train many miles back as we left Strausberg.” - Alfred Nestor

71. “At times the engine stopped, and grown-ups and children climbed out of the carriages with tins to collect water from the engine steam pipes. This was the only drinking water that we had access to, and though it was hot and very rusty, it was the best drink I felt I’d ever had.” - Alfred Nestor

72. “We had seen too many horrors already, and we could see and hear more explosions all around us as the war continued, very close to our hiding place; machine gun fire and the sounds of grenades – all very frightening.” - Alfred Nestor

73. “But you never knew where the bombs would fall in the dark, so night bombing was even more frightening than daylight bombing. Let’s just say, it scared the living daylights out of us!” - Alfred Nestor

74. “With our collective shock, what we saw seemed to be frozen into a state of suspended animation. Indelibly etched into our memories in terror, forever! My life was in slow motion, it was as if I was no longer in my body and this was a rather bad dream! It is almost impossible to describe with words what I saw, but I will try. This very experience is the one that has continued to shake me awake during the dense night of my lifetime.” - Alfred Nestor

75. “I felt so much more than horror. I was so afraid, shocked by what I saw. There were hundreds of men, women and children hanging from the trees ... there was blood everywhere! We all saw that every person had been gutted, like a fish. My instinct was to run, but where to ... I was on a train. As I watched those around me on the train, so many others also looked like they had explosions in their eyes and they too wanted to flee.” - Alfred Nestor

76. “As we passed this living cruelty, I shuddered in momentarily isolation and then let out an audible gasp at what I saw. They were hanging from trees! Some shaking violently, with their intestines hanging out of their bodies! Those who were still partly alive were screaming with pain, and wriggling on the branches trying to get off the ropes ... some had fallen off the branches of the trees, they were crawling along the ground, and towards us.” - Alfred Nestor

77. “As he journeyed alone toward the monster that is death, we could do nothing to help him, nor the others still alive; all the words of strength on our lips melted away, our love not great enough to bind them to life, and our hope not enough to will them to live.” - Alfred Nestor

78. “I look at my mother, connected by a breath of glimmering hope, her red and shadowed eyes reveal that some element of our whole being has been lost and, somehow, thrown away. Sob-gasp, sob-gasp, sob-gasp. Slowly, that feeling within me fades. But wisps of it stay with you, locked in the chambers of your mind, always.” - Alfred Nestor

79. “Current interventions in use with children include psycho-pharmacological treatments, play therapy, psychological debriefing and testimony therapy, but this was Nazi Germany in 1945!” - Alfred Nestor

80. “In therapy, to meet the needs of traumatized survivors of war and torture, the patient is requested to repeatedly talk about the worst traumatic event in detail while re-experiencing all emotions associated with the event. Traumatic memory, they say, is cleared by narration of whole life; from early childhood up to the present date ... this book is my therapy. I am awash with living memories.” - Alfred Nestor

81. “Later, I started to understand just why these children ‘hated’ us other children. I understood that they did not, in fact, hate ‘us’, but hated the fact that we were German and spoke in a language that they associated with pain, fear and the loss of their parents, uncles, grandfathers and grandmothers, their whole families, in fact. Once I understood this it affected me in all sorts of subconscious ways, ways that were to blight my life for many years and make me deny my German birth.” - Alfred Nestor

82. “The fact is that many people did not – and still do not – understand that many Germans were held in the concentration camps from 1933 onwards. The camps were not just for Jews or other ‘non-people’, but also for any German who had made some remark about the Nazis, or who would not follow the Nazi rules.” - Alfred Nestor

83. “I let them do some simple arithmetic. In a group of one hundred people, how many assholes are there? How many fathers who humiliate their children? How many morons whose breath stinks like rotten meat but who refuse to do anything about it? How many hopeless cases who go on complaining all their lives about the non-existent injustices they’ve had to suffer? Look around you, I said. How many of your classmates would you be pleased not to see return to their desks tomorrow morning? Think about that one family member of your own family, that irritating uncle with his pointless, horseshit stories at birthday parties, that ugly cousin who mistreats his cat. Think about how relieved you would be - and not only you, but virtually the entire family - if that uncle or cousin would step on a landmine or be hit by a five-hundred-pounder dropped from a high altitude. If that member of the family were to be wiped off the face of the earth. And now think about all those millions of victims of all the wars there have been in the past - I never specifically mentioned the Second World War, I used it as an example because it’s the one that most appeals to their imaginations - and think about the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of victims who we need to have around like we need a hole in the head. Even from a purely statistical standpoint, it’s impossible that all those victims were good people, whatever kind of people that may be. The injustice is found more in the fact that the assholes are also put on the list of innocent victims. That their names are also chiselled into the war memorials.” - Herman Koch

84. “It wasn't my choice to write this story...it was my responsibility.” - Rhonda Fink-Whitman

85. “Wonderful?" wrote J.O. Young in his diary. "To stand cheering, crying, waving your hat and acting like a damn fool in general. No one who has spent all but 16 days of the this war as a Nip prisoner can really know what it means to see 'Old Sammy' buzzing around over camp.” - Laura Hillenbrand

86. “Hitler is the rare individual who really did make history - specifically he made it worse.” - John Green

87. “The veneer of civilization fell away to reveal desperate animals, humanity at their worst.” - Travis Luedke

88. “I am a dash man and not a miler, and it is probable that I will never write a novel. So far the novels of this war have had too much of the strength, maturity and craftsmanship critics are looking for, and too little of the glorious imperfections which teeter and fall off the best minds. The men who have been in this war deserve some sort of trembling melody rendered without embarrassment or regret. I’ll watch for that book.” - J.D. Salinger