Vol. 06 · Misquoted ·Speech ·315 of 348
"War is hell."
They never said that.
What people say
"War is hell."
What was actually said
"War is at best barbarism ... It is only those who have neither fired a shot ... who cry aloud for blood ... War is hell." William Tecumseh Sherman — Address to Michigan Military Academy, 19 June 1879
Why it stuck
Sherman's full paragraph is a moral lament. The three-word fragment reads as the machismo it was rebuking.
Know another line by heart?
Play the duel and see how many you can spot. Or browse the whole shelf.