Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.

Hear the paradoxical words of Salvador Dalí, the painter of dreams and distortions, who declared: “Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.” At first hearing, these words sound cruel, almost careless, as though dismissing the suffering of countless millions. Yet in their strangeness lies a deeper truth, wrapped in irony. Dalí, master of the surreal, forced the mind to confront what it wishes to avoid: that in war, the dead bear the final wound, while the living carry on, reshaping their pain into survival. His words, sharp and unsettling, awaken us to the fragility of life and the strange endurance of those who remain.

The origin of this saying flows from Dalí’s peculiar way of seeing the world. He lived through the Spanish Civil War and the devastation of the Second World War, yet he was never a soldier. Instead, he painted the anguish of the age in distorted forms, melting clocks and broken landscapes, visions that captured the madness of human conflict. His words are not the pronouncement of a general, but of an artist confronting the absurdity of war. By saying only the dead are truly hurt, he draws attention to the terrible finality of death, contrasting it with the strange capacity of the living to endure even in the ruins.

Yet history shows that this irony is not without shadow. Consider the villages of Guernica, bombed in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. In a single raid, hundreds were killed, their lives cut short. Pablo Picasso immortalized their suffering in his great painting Guernica, a cry against the brutality of war. But those who survived bore their scars in silence—loss of family, destruction of homes, memories of fire and terror. Were they unharmed, as Dalí’s words suggest? No—but compared to the final silence of the dead, their suffering became a strange form of endurance. In this lies the bitter irony of Dalí’s claim.

The ancients, too, wrestled with this riddle. When Homer sang of the Trojan War, he told of countless heroes cut down, their stories ending in a moment of spear or sword. Yet those who lived—Odysseus, Helen, even the enslaved survivors of Troy—carried on, scarred but alive. For the dead, the suffering was ended. For the living, it stretched on, a different kind of wound, less visible but unending. Thus Dalí’s words remind us of the cruel measure of war: the dead are hurt beyond return, while the living stagger forward, bearing burdens that cannot be seen.

But if we listen more deeply, Dalí’s saying is also a challenge. It forces us to ask: is mere survival enough? If wars kill the body but not the will to live, does that absolve us of their horror? No—because every death is a theft from humanity, each fallen life a story unfinished. The living may endure, but the loss of the dead diminishes all. War wounds not only individuals but the very fabric of humanity, for in every death we lose a brother, a sister, a fragment of the world’s soul.

What lesson, then, must we take? That we must never grow numb to the cost of death in war. Statistics and monuments can make us forget that each life ended is an entire universe extinguished. Let Dalí’s irony awaken us to vigilance: that while the living continue, it is the dead who bear the greatest price, and it is our sacred duty to ensure their sacrifice is neither repeated nor forgotten.

Practical action follows clearly: resist the trivialization of war, whether in politics, art, or speech. Do not let death become an abstraction, but honor each life as precious. Teach the young to question the glamour of battle, to recognize that war is not an adventure but a chasm of endings. Support peace in small and great ways—through dialogue, through compassion, through refusing to see others as enemies. Remember always: survival is not victory if it comes at the cost of countless dead.

So let Dalí’s unsettling words echo: “Wars have never hurt anybody except the people who die.” Hear in them not indifference, but irony sharpened into warning. For though the living may stagger onward, it is the dead who remind us what is truly lost. May we learn from their silence, and may we labor with all our strength to ensure that fewer must join them in the dust of forgotten battlefields.