Hopeless War/Quotes

Warhammer 40000

"A hundred thousand worlds, ten hundred thousand wars. There is no escape, no respite, no hope for victory. Across the galaxy there is only war."

"There is a tower in the Emperor's palace called the Tower of Heroes, a black tower that rises into the sky like a spike. At the summit of that tower hangs the Bell of Lost Souls. It is an ancient thing, massive as a building and adorned with dark runes, its peal like the scream of an anguished god. It is tolled but once when a great hero of the Imperium dies. Its wailing moan of grief lasts long and reaches the ears of millions, and its tones penetrate the unifying ether of humanity, turning the thoughts of countless billions towards mankind's loss."

"Too much blood has been spilled over the centuries for there to be peace between us. As they mistrust and fear mankind, we revile and hate them. No matter how many we destroy, yet more heretofore unknown aliens appear. As this galaxy wheels toward its final, fateful cataclysm, we are doomed to die - our hands locked around each other's throats and squeezing the life out of each other as the universe dies!"

"From the palaces of Holy Terra, the High Lords of the Imperium watch as their domain crumbles. Armies and fleets fight on with the valor of heroes, calling out for reinforcements that do not exist. In shattered cathedrals on a million worlds, Imperial citizens pray with the desperation of the damned, begging their immortal emperor for a salvation they shall never see. As the lines of battle come ever closer to Terra, the light of the Emperor fades and darkness drowns all."

"Trillions of soldiers march to battle on worlds uncounted. Thousands upon thousands of warships scour the vastness of space in a futile attempt to impose man's will upon the fathomless void. And such it has been for ten thousand years, who can guess what tales of unimaginable valor are there to be told? Of depthless faith, of selfless sacrifice and unshakable duty? Those who have died in the Emperor's service are said to outnumber the stars themselves, the Emperor, it is said, knows the name of every single faithful servant, but who can guess the mind of divinity? And for the living, entire worlds have been made into monuments of remembrance, and yet for every hero commemorated, a million martyrs die unmourned and unremembered."

"Each city ruined, each planet burned brings the Imperium a little closer to dissolution. In a empire of a million worlds, how much can one truly matter? Enough to defend each one against the infernal host, enough to bring down Exterminatus upon those who bend knee and bow before the dark ones. A Black Crusade may come crashing forth from the Eye only once in a thousand years, but the damage it inflicts can never be undone."

"In the grim darkness of the grimdark future, there is only grim darkness, dark grimness, and STALEMATE." —/tg/

Other Fiction

"The humans, I think, knew they were doomed. But where another race would surrender to despair, the humans fought back with even greater strength. They made the Minbari fight for every inch of space. In my life, I have never seen anything like it. They would weep, they would pray, they would say goodbye to their loved ones and then throw themselves without fear or hesitation at the very face of death itself. Never surrendering. No one who saw them fighting against the inevitable could help but be moved to tears by their courage... their stubborn nobility. When they ran out of ships, they used guns. When they ran out of guns, they used knives and sticks and bare hands. They were magnificent. I only hope, that when it is my time, I may die with half as much dignity as I saw in their eyes at the end. They did this for two years. They never ran out of courage. But in the end... they ran out of time." —Londo Mollari, Babylon 5: In the Beginning

"What began as a conflict over the transfer of consciousness from flesh to machine escalated into a war which has decimated a million worlds. The Core and the Arm have all but exhausted the resources of a galaxy in their struggle for domination. Both sides now crippled beyond repair, the remnants of their armies continue to battle on ravaged planets, their hatred fuelled by over four thousand years of total war. This is a fight to the death. For each side, the only acceptable outcome is the complete elimination of the other." —Total Annihilation

"Two hundred million zombies. Who can even visualize that type of number, let alone combat it?... For the first time in history, we faced an enemy that was actively waging total war. They had no limits of endurance. They would never negotiate, never surrender. They would fight until the very end because, unlike us, every single one of them, every second of every day, was devoted to consuming all life on Earth. That's the enemy that waited for us beyond the Rockies. That's the kind of war we had to fight." —General Travis D'Ambrosia, World War Z

"Death came to the planet Ishark in the two hundred and eighth year of the Final War and the one hundred and sixty-seventh year of Operation Ragnarok. It came aboard the surviving ships of the XLIII Corps of the Republic, which had once been the XLIII Corps of the Star Union, and before that the XLIII Corps of the Confederacy, which had once been the Concordiat of Man. But whatever the government's name, the ships were the same, for there was no one left to build new ones. There was no one left to build anything, for the Melconian Empire and its allies and the Concordiat and its allies had murdered one another. [...] There was no tomorrow for either commander, and even if they could have had one, they might have turned their backs upon it. The Human and Melconian races had hurt one another too savagely, the blood hunger possessed them both, and neither side's com officers could raise a single friendly planet. The Humans had nowhere to return to even if they lived; the Melconians were defending their last inhabited world; and even the warships' A Is were caught up in the blood lust. The fleets lunged at one another, neither worried about preserving itself, each seeking only to destroy the other, and both succeeded." —A Time to Kill, Bolo

"Captain's report February 4th, 2531. Five years, five long years. That's how long it took us to get Harvest back...At first it was going well. Then setback after setback...Loss after loss...Made what was going to be a quick and decisive win...Into five years of Hell...Of course that's all Harvest is today...It's hell down there...But it's ours again." —Captain James Cutter, Halo Wars

"'It can't be hopeless.' Two nights ago half a dozen men and I crouched around a campfire, trying to stay warm, and one of them said those words. [...] Tonight I sit by a campfire fifty miles northwest, remembering the way he screamed this morning when four thrall surrounded him, knocked the sword from his good hand, and hacked him to pieces." —Myth

"What are we going to do after we lose this war, sir?" "Prepare for the next one, son." —Cross of Iron

Time Lord: All of [the Visionary's] prophecies say the same. That this is the last day of the Time War. That Gallifrey falls. We die today. The Partisan: Perhaps it's time. This is only the furthest edge of the Time War, but at its heart, millions die every second, lost in bloodlust and insanity, with time itself resurrecting them to find new ways of dying. Over and over again. A travesty of life. Isn't it better to end it at last? President Rassilon: Thank you for your opinion. (disintegrates her) I! WILL NOT! DIE! DO YOU HEAR ME? —Doctor Who, The End of Time

Real Life

"Tonight, back in more familiar surroundings in New York, we'd like to sum up our findings in Vietnam, an analysis that must be speculative, personal, subjective. Who won and who lost in the great Tet offensive against the cities? I'm not sure. The Vietcong did not win by a knockout, but neither did we. The referees of history may make it a draw. Another standoff may be coming in the big battles expected south of the Demilitarized Zone. Khesanh could well fall, with a terrible loss in American lives, prestige and morale, and this is a tragedy of our stubbornness there; but the bastion no longer is a key to the rest of the northern regions, and it is doubtful that the American forces can be defeated across the breadth of the DMZ with any substantial loss of ground. Another standoff. On the political front, past performance gives no confidence that the Vietnamese government can cope with its problems, now compounded by the attack on the cities. It may not fall, it may hold on, but it probably won't show the dynamic qualities demanded of this young nation. Another standoff. We have been too often disappointed by the optimism of the American leaders, both in Vietnam and Washington, to have faith any longer in the silver linings they find in the darkest clouds. They may be right, that Hanoi's winter-spring offensive has been forced by the Communist realization that they could not win the longer war of attrition, and that the Communists hope that any success in the offensive will improve their position for eventual negotiations. It would improve their position, and it would also require our realization, that we should have had all along, that any negotiations must be that — negotiations, not the dictation of peace terms. For it seems now more certain than ever that the bloody experience of Vietnam is to end in a stalemate. This summer's almost certain standoff will either end in real give-and-take negotiations or terrible escalation; and for every means we have to escalate, the enemy can match us, and that applies to invasion of the North, the use of nuclear weapons, or the mere commitment of one hundred, or two hundred, or three hundred thousand more American troops to the battle. And with each escalation, the world comes closer to the brink of cosmic disaster. To say that we are closer to victory today is to believe, in the face of the evidence, the optimists who have been wrong in the past. To suggest we are on the edge of defeat is to yield to unreasonable pessimism. To say that we are mired in stalemate seems the only realistic, yet unsatisfactory, conclusion. On the off chance that military and political analysts are right, in the next few months we must test the enemy's intentions, in case this is indeed his last big gasp before negotiations. But it is increasingly clear to this reporter that the only rational way out then will be to negotiate, not as victors, but as an honorable people who lived up to their pledge to defend democracy, and did the best they could. This is Walter Cronkite. Good night." —Walter Cronkite

"If I've lost Cronkite on Vietnam, I've lost Middle America." —Lyndon Johnson