- Problems
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- Nov 07, 2020
First World War Quotes
Words shaped by turmoil, loss, and remembrance.
This collection gathers quotes about the First World War, from the disillusioned generation it left behind to the political upheaval it triggered across Europe. Related reading: our First World quotes.
- Last Updated on Aug 01, 2026
- First World
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- Nov 07, 2020
The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.
- First World
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- Nov 07, 2020
Lenin was the first to discover that capitalism 'inevitably' caused war; and he discovered this only when the First World War was already being fought. Of course he was right. Since every great state was capitalist in 1914.
- Fruit
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- Nov 07, 2020
The chief fruit of the First World War was the Russian Revolution and the rise of Communism as a national power.
- First World
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- Nov 07, 2020
The end of the First World War had thrown Germany's youth into great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger ones drew together in larger and smaller groups to blaze new paths or, at least, to discover a new star to steer by.
- Me
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- Nov 07, 2020
Mum told me stories about her time in the Women's Royal Navy, and about her dad, who had died before I was born - he'd been sent to Australia as a child, then joined the Australian Army in the First World War and fought at Gallipoli.
- Learning
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- Nov 07, 2020
I always found the extraordinary loss of life in the First World War very moving. I remember learning about it as a very young child, as an eight- or nine-year-old, asking my teachers what poppies were for. Every year the teachers would suddenly wear these red paper flowers in their lapels, and I would say 'What does that mean?'
- Economics
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- Nov 07, 2020
The adverse economic events following the First World War turned me toward economics.
- First World
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- Nov 07, 2020
No campaign of the First World War better justifies the poets' view of the conflict as futile and pitiless than Gallipoli.
- First World
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- Nov 07, 2020
We are constantly trying to cope with what our fathers or our grandfathers did. I wrote the book 'Great War of Civilization,' and my father was a solider in the First World War which produced the current Middle East - not that he had much to do with that - but he fought in what he believed was the Great War for Civilization.
- First
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- Nov 07, 2020
What distinguished the First World War from all wars before it was the massive power of the antagonists.
- First
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- Nov 07, 2020
The First World War was a war devoid of any virtue. It arose from the quagmire of European tribalism: a complex interplay of nation-state destinies overlaid by notions of cultural superiority peppered with racism.
- End
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- Nov 07, 2020
The First World War not only destroyed European civilisation and the empires at its heart; its aftermath led to a second conflagration, the Second World War, which divided the continent until the end of the century.
- First World
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- Nov 07, 2020
Culturally, the First World War is the war that stands in for other wars.
- First World
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- Nov 07, 2020
The First World War may have been a uniquely horrific war, but it was also plainly a just war.
- First World
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- Nov 07, 2020
Remembering the loss of those Irishmen from all parts of the island who were sent to their deaths in the imperialist slaughter of the First World War is crucial to understanding our history. It is also important to recognise the special significance in which the Battle of the Somme and the First World War is held.
- Person
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- Nov 07, 2020
The period after the First World War was an extremely different time, so that Sherlock Holmes would have been a different person following 1918 than he was during the Victorian era.
- First World
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- Nov 07, 2020