Inspirational Quotations edit
Below, is a large collection of quotations that reflect my beliefs and feelings on a lot of things. They have been spoken by some truly great men and some not so great....I hope they can inspire people as well and make them think....
"Naturally the common people don't want war: Neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." - Hermann Goering
To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. -- Theodore Roosevelt
"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." — Native American Proverb
"To engage in war is always to pick a wild card. And war must always be the last resort, not a first choice. I truly must question the judgment of any president who can say that a massive, unprovoked military attack on a nation which is over fifty percent children is 'in the highest moral traditions of our country.'" — U.S. Senator Robert F. Byrd
"War would end if the dead could return." — Stanley Baldwin"
"Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime." — Ernest Hemingway
"You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way." — Will Rogers
"Everything, everything in war is barbaric.... But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being." — Ellen Key
"War is the science of destruction." — John S. C. Abbott
"I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down, men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive goodwill will proclaim the rule of the land." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction.... The chain reaction of evil—hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars—must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." — Martin Luther King Jr.
"The past is prophetic in that it asserts loudly that wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows." — Martin Luther King, Jr.
"The arms race can kill, though the weapons themselves may never be used.... [B]y their cost alone, armaments kill the poor by causing them to starve." — Vatican statement to the U.N., 1976
"If you wish to be brothers, let the arms fall from your hands. One cannot love while holding offensive arms." — Pope Pius VI
"It isn't enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn't enough to believe in it. One must work at it." — Eleanor Roosevelt
"A strange game. The only winning move is not to play." — A computer named WOPR in the film WarGames
"We're not made by God to mass kill one another ... and that's backed up by the Gospel. Lying and war are always associated. Listen closely when you hear a war-maker try to defend his current war: If he moves his lips he's lying." — Father Philip Berrigan
"Either war is obsolete or men are." — R. Buckminster Fuller
"Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides and hurricanes he will encounter. The statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events." — Winston Churchill
"A riot is a spontaneous outburst. A war is subject to advance planning." — Richard M. Nixon
"War is a profession by which a man cannot live honorably; an employment by which the soldier, if he would reap any profit, is obliged to be false, rapacious, and cruel." — Niccolo Machiavelli
"War is addictive. Indeed, it is the most potent narcotic unleashed by mankind." — Chris Hedges, author and former war correspondent
"There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized peace." — Woodrow Wilson
"War-making is one of the few activities that people are not supposed to view “realistically”; that is, with an eye to expense and practical outcome. In all-out war, expenditure is all-out, unprudent—war being defined as an emergency in which no sacrifice is excessive." — Susan Sontag
"Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come." — Carl Sandberg
"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom." — Andrew B. Law
"It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons." — Douglas Adams in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
"If we let people see that kind of thing, there would never again be any war." — Pentagon official on why US military censored graphic footage from the Gulf War "Hey, you can't fight in here! This is the war room!" — President Merkin Muffley (Peter Sellers) in the film Dr. Strangelove
"War does not determine who is right—only who is left." — Bertrand Russell
"War will never cease until babies begin to come into the world with larger cerebrums and smaller adrenal glands." — H. L. Mencken
"Why does the Air Force need expensive new bombers? Have the people we've been bombing over the years been complaining?" — George Wallace
"What a country calls its vital economic interests are not the things which enable its citizens to live, but the things which enable it to make war. Petrol is much more likely than wheat to be a cause of international conflict." — Simone Weil
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity." — Marine Corps saying
"War is not a true adventure. It is a mere ersatz. Where ties are established, where problems are set, where creation is stimulated—there you have adventure. But there is no adventure in heads-or-tails, in betting that the toss will come out of life or death. War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus." — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
"War is bestowed like electroshock on the depressive nation; thousands of volts jolting the system, an artificial galvanizing, one effect of which is loss of memory. War comes at the end of the twentieth century as absolute failure of imagination, scientific and political. That a war can be represented as helping a people to 'feel good' about themselves, their country, is a measure of that failure." — Adrienne Rich
"In war you have to kill to avoid being killed. We're all human beings — Chinese, Japanese, English — but war is about killing. Baka-na senso! Stupid war!... All those men going off, leaving their wives and children. Stupid — giving your life for nothing!" — Japanese veteran of the war in China, caretaker at Yosenji temple, Obanazawa, Japan. From the book On the Narrow Road: Journey into a Lost Japan by Lesley Downer.
"The greatest threat to our world and its peace comes from those who want war, who prepare for it, and who, by holding out vague promises of future peace or by instilling fear of foreign aggression, try to make us accomplices to their plans." — Hermann Hesse
"The best way to destroy an enemy is to make him a friend." — Abraham Lincoln
"Whenever there’s a big war coming on, you should rope off a big field. And on the big day, you should take all the kings and their cabinets and their generals, put ’em in the center dressed in their underpants and let them fight it out with clubs." — Maxwell Anderson
"The real trouble with modern war is that it gives no one a chance to kill the right people." — Ezra Pound
"... [I]n any war a victory means another war, and yet another, until some day inevitably the tides turn, and the victor is the vanquished, and the circle reverses itself, but remains nevertheless a circle." — Pearl S. Buck Dot
"When war is declared, Truth is the first casualty." — Arthur Ponsonby
"A citizen of America will cross the ocean to fight for democracy, but won't cross the street to vote in a national election". — Bill Vaughan "
Five enemies of peace inhabit with us—avarice, ambition, envy, anger, and pride; if these were to be banished, we should infallibly enjoy perpetual peace." — Francesco Petrarch
"This is a war between good and evil. And we have made it clear to the world that we will stand strong on the side of good, and we expect other nations to join us. This is not a war between our world and their world. It is a war to save the world." — George W. Bush, U.S. President, Republican Party
"To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." — Theodore Roosevelt, U.S. President, Republican Party
Danae: "Sometimes I wonder how we got words. Like, where does 'war' come from?" Dad: "It's a universal acronym." Danae: "An acronym of what?" Dad: "We Are Right." — from the cartoon Non Sequitur by Wiley
"When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people?" — Frank Borman, U.S. astronaut
"If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other." — Mother Teresa
"War is a dangerous teacher and physical victory leads often to a moral defeat." — Shri Aurobindo
"WHAT kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children - not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women - not merely peace in our time but peace for all time. "I realise that the pursuit of peace is not as dramatic as the pursuit of war - and frequently the words of the pursuer fall on deaf ears. But we have no more urgent task. For, in the final analysis, our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this small planet." John F Kennedy, 1963, a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis
"Mankind must put an end to war, or war will put an end to mankind.... War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." — John F. Kennedy
"I am certain that after the dust of centuries has passed... we, too, will be remembered not for our victories or defeats in battles or politics, but for our contribution to the human spirit." — John F. Kennedy
"The basic problems facing the world today are not susceptible to a military solution." — John F. Kennedy
"Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures." — John F. Kennedy
"War will exist until that distant day when the conscientious objector enjoys the same reputation and prestige that the warrior does today." — John F. Kennedy
"The more we sweat in peace the less we bleed in war." — Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit
"There is nothing that war has ever achieved we could not better achieve without it." — Havelock Ellis
"Men were made for war. Without it they wandered greyly about, getting under the feet of the women, who were trying to organize the really important things of life." — Alice Thomas Ellis
Nations have recently been led to borrow billions for war; no nation has ever borrowed largely for education. Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both." — Abraham Flexner
"One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing; that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one." — Agatha Christie
"The grim fact is that we prepare for war like precocious giants and for peace like retarded pygmies." — Lester B. Pearson
"War is always the same. It is young men dying in the fullness of their promise. It is trying to kill a man that you do not even know well enough to hate. Therefore, to know war is to know that there is still madness in the world." — Lyndon Baines Johnson
"War is terrorism." — Lucy Hinton, high school student
"Yes, we are all different. Different customs, different foods, different mannerisms, different languages, but not so different that we cannot get along with one another." — J. Martin Kohe
"It is easier to lead men to combat, stirring up their passion, than to restrain them and direct them toward the patient labors of peace." — Andre Gide
"War is like love, it always finds a way". — Bertolt Brecht in Mother Courage
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages." — Thomas Alva Edison
"If you believe that all men are created equal, then a child's death in some other country is no less tragic than in the United States." — Bill Gates
"Wars are not acts of God. They are caused by man, by man-made institutions, by the way in which man has organized his society." — Frederick Moore Vinson
"If we don't end war, war will end us." — H. G. Wells
"Formerly, a nation that broke the peace did not trouble to try and prove to the world that it was done solely from higher motives.... Now war has a bad conscience. Now every nation assures us that it is bleeding for a human cause, the fate of which hangs in the balance of its victory.... No nation dares to admit the guilt of blood before the world". — Ellen Key
"Peace cannot be achieved through violence, it can only be attained through understanding." — Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What is human warfare but just this: an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party." — Henry David Thoreau
"Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army." — Edward Everett
"It is understanding that gives us an ability to have peace. When we understand the other fellow's viewpoint, and he understands ours, then we can sit down and work our differences." — Harry S. Truman
"It is forbidden to kill; therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." — Voltaire
"War is not nice." — Barbara Bush, wife of U.S. President George H. Bush, mother of U.S. President George W. Bush
"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die." — Herbert Hoover
"War is the unfolding of miscalculations." — Barbara W. Tuchman
"The guns and the bombs, the rockets and the warships, are all symbols of human failure." — Lyndon Baines Johnson
"What is the use of physicians like myself trying to help parents to bring up children healthy and happy, to have them killed in such numbers for a cause that is ignoble?" — Dr. Benjamin Spock
Men like war: they do not hold much sway over birth, so they make up for it with death. Unlike women, men menstruate by shedding other people's blood." — Lucy Ellman
"As long as war is regarded as wicked, it will always have its fascination. When it is looked upon as vulgar it will cease to be popular." — Oscar Wilde
"We hear war called murder. It is not: it is suicide." — Ramsay MacDonald
"I'm not sentimental about war. I see nothing noble in widows." — Paddy Chayefsky
"I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent." — Mohandas Gandhi
"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?" — Mohandas Gandhi
"An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind." — Mohandas Gandhi
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? Mahatma Gandhi (1869 - 1948), "Non-Violence in Peace and War"
"The politicians, who once stated that war was too complex to be left to the generals, now act as though peace were too complex to be left to themselves." — Pierre Trudeau
"The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations." — David Friedman
Hawkeye: "War isn't Hell. War is war, and Hell is Hell. And of the two, war is a lot worse." Father Mulcahy: "Why do you say that, Hawkeye?" Hawkeye: "Simple, Father. Tell me, who goes to Hell?" Father Mulcahy: "Sinners, I believe." Hawkeye: "Exactly. There are no innocent bystanders in Hell. War is full of them." — from the TV series M*A*S*H
"Look, all I know is what they taught me at command school. There are certain rules about a war and rule number one is young men die. And rule number two is doctors can't change rule number one." — Lt. Col. Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson) in the TV series M*A*S*H
Col. Potter: "By the way, what war is this?" Hawkeye: "The latest war to end all wars." from the TV series M*A*S*H
"Sometimes I think there ought to be a rule of war that says you must see someone up close before you get to shoot 'em." — Col. Sherman Potter (Harry Morgan) in the TV series M*A*S*H
"War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace." — Thomas Mann
"War is a most uneconomical, foolish, poor arrangement, a bloody enrichment of that soil which bears the sweet flower of peace...." — M. E. W. Sherwood Stupid
"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man." — Napoleon Hill
"Thanks to history books, I have realised that people over the years have been dying of war, and that enabled me to realise that there is nothing stupid like war." — Indian film star Kamal Hassan
"When you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all." — Anonymous
"Statesmen will invent cheap lies, putting blame upon the nation that is attacked, and every man will be glad of those conscience-soothing falsities, and will diligently study them, and refuse to examine any refutations of them; and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process of grotesque self-deception." — Mark Twain
"An inglorious peace is better than a dishonorable war." — Mark Twain
"Man is the only animal that deals in that atrocity of atrocities, War. He is the only one that gathers his brethren about him and goes forth in cold blood and calm pulse to exterminate his kind. He is the only animal that for sordid wages will march out ... and help to slaughter strangers of his own species who have done him no harm and with whom he has no quarrel.... And in the intervals between campaigns he washes the blood off his hands and works for 'the universal brotherhood of man'—with his mouth." — Mark Twain
"War! When I but think of this word, I feel bewildered, as though they were speaking to me of sorcery, of the Inquisition, of a distant, finished, abominable, monstrous, unnatural thing. When they speak to us of cannibals, we smile proudly, as we proclaim our superiority to these savages. Who are the real savages? Those who struggle in order to eat those whom they vanquish, or those who struggle merely to kill?" — Guy de Maupassant
"Our apologies, good friends, for the fracture of good order, the burning of paper instead of children. How many must die before our voices are heard, how many must be tortured, dislocated, starved, maddened? When, at what point, will you say no to this war?" — Daniel Berrigan on burning draft cards during the Vietnam War
"... [W]ar is utter damn nonsense—a vast cancer fed by lies and self seeking malignity on the part of those who don’t do the fighting." — John Dos Passos
"It is true that war is absolutely the best way to resolve conflict—provided that all other options have been explored and proven totally futile." — Anonymous
"General fear and anxiety create hatred and aggressiveness. The adaptation to warlike aims and activities has corrupted the mentality of man; as a result, intelligent, objective and humane thinking has hardly any effect and is even suspected and persecuted as unpatriotic." — Albert Einstein
"Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding." — Albert Einstein
"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." — Albert Einstein
"A permanent peace cannot be prepared by threats but only by the honest attempt to create a mutual trust. However strong national armaments may be, they do not create military security for any nation nor do they guarantee the maintenance of peace." — Albert Einstein
"Why of course the people don't want war.... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship.... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they're being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country." — Hermann Goering
"Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it compromises and develops the germ of every other. As the parent of armies, war encourages debts and taxes, the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended ... and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people." — James Madison
"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake." — Jeannette Rankin
"What is human warfare but just this: an effort to make the laws of God and nature take sides with one party." — Henry David Thoreau
"Cannon: An instrument used in the rectification of national boundaries." — Ambrose Bierce
"I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in." — George McGovern
"When the rich wage war it's the poor who die." — Jean-Paul Sartre
"War ... should only be declared by the authority of the people, whose toils and treasures are to support its burdens, instead of the government which is to reap its fruits." — James Madison
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power the world will know peace." — Jimi Hendrix
"Much violence is based on the illusion that life is a property to be defended and not to be shared." — Henri Nouwen
"Today the real test of power is not the capacity to make war but the capacity to prevent it." — Anne O'Hare McCormick
"...[W]ar is stupid. Underline it, make it seven feet high, and plaster it to a billboard, war is stupid." — Nicholas B. Morris
"War may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is always an evil, never a good. We will not learn to live together in peace by killing each other's children." — former U.S. President Jimmy Carter in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Peace Prize (10 December 2002)
"War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood. It degrades and stupefies with the sense that you are not responsible, that 'tis not yours to think and reason why, but to do and die, like the hundred thousand others doomed like yourself. War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder." — Alexander Berkman
"Never has there been a good war or a bad peace" — Benjamin Franklin Is
"Diplomats are just as essential in starting a war as soldiers are in finishing it." — Will Rogers
"Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it." — Anne O'Hare McCormick
"Laws are silent in a time of war." — Marcus Tullius Cicero
"Luck rules every human endeavor, especially war." — Titus Livius
"War is delightful to those who have had no experience of it." — Desiderius
Another victory like that and we are done for." — Pyrrhus
"War never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always." — Sophocles
"It is always easy to begin a war, but very difficult to stop one, since its beginning and end are not under the control of the same man." — Sallust
"Human war has been the most successful of our cultural traditions." — Robert Ardrey
"The power of our example is more important than the strength of our military." — Bill Clinton
"It seems like the less a statesman amounts to, the more he loves the flag." — Anonymous
"Peace is the happy natural state of man; war is corruption and disgrace." — James Thomson
"What war has always been is a puberty ceremony." — Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
"War is a most uneconomical, foolish, poor arrangement, a bloody enrichment of that soil which bears the sweet flower of peace...." — M. E. W. Sherwood
"War grows out of the desire of the individual to gain advantage at the expense of his fellow man." — Napoleon Hill
"I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded... I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed.... I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war." — Franklin D. Roosevelt
More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginnings of all wars. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 13 April 1945, the day of his death.
"I have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood running from the wounded... I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed.... I have seen children starving. I have seen the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war." — Franklin D. Roosevelt
"More than an end to war, we want an end to the beginning of all wars — yes, an end to this brutal, inhuman and thoroughly impractical method of settling the differences between governments." — Franklin D. Roosevelt
"When you've seen one nuclear war, you've seen them all." — Anonymous
"Should we not begin to redefine patriotism? We need to expand it beyond that narrow nationalism which has caused so much death and suffering. If national boundaries should not be obstacles to trade—we call it globalization—should they also not be obstacles to compassion and generosity?" — Howard Zinn
Never, never, never believe any war will be smooth and easy, or that anyone who embarks on the strange voyage can measure the tides nd hurricanes he will encounter. The Statesman who yields to war fever must realize that once the signal is given, he is no longer the master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable events.
Winston Churchill (1874-1965), My Early Life: A Roving Commission, 1930
I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward. George Washington
My first wish is to see this plague to mankind banished from off the Earth, and the sons and daughters of this world employed in more pleasing and innocent amusements than in preparing implements and exercising them for the destruction of mankind. George Washington, letter to David Humphreys, 25 July 1785
"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all." — George Washington
Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won."
Duke of Wellington, 1815
The world will never have lasting peace so long as men reserve for war the finest human qualities. Peace, no less than war, requires idealism and self-sacrifice and a righteous and dynamic faith.
John Foster Dulles, 9 March 1955
But in modern war you will die like a dog for no good reason. Ernest Hemingway
There never was a good war or a bad peace. Benjamin Franklin
I thought dying for your country was the worst thing that could happen to you. I think killing for your country can be a lot worse. Because that's the memory that haunts Bob Kerry
I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war. King George V
Never was so much false arithmetic employed on any subject, as that which has been employed to persuade nations that it is their interest to go to war. Were the money which it has cost to gain, at the close of a long war, a little town, or a little territory, the right to cut wood here, or to catch fish there, expended in improving what they already possess, in making roads, opening rivers, building ports, improving the arts, and finding employment for their idle poor, it would render them much stronger, much wealthier and happier. This I hope will be our wisdom. THomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia
I love peace, and I am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer. I love, therefore [the] proposition of cutting off all communications with the nation [England] which has conducted itself so atrociously. This, you will say, may bring on war. If it does, we will meet it like men; but it may not bring on war, and then the experiment will have been a happy one. Thomas Jefferson, letter to T. Coxe, 1794
But when we see two antagonists contending ad internecionea, so eager for mutual destruction as to disregard all means, to deal their blows in every direction regardless on whom they may fall, prudent bystanders, whom some of them may wound, instead of thinking it cause to join in the maniac contest, get out of the way as well as they can, and leave the cannibals to mutual ravin. It would have been perfect Quixotism in us to have encountered these Bedlamites, to have undertaken the redress of all wrongs against a world avowedly rejecting all regard to right. We have, therefore, remained in peace, suffering frequent injuries, but, on the whole, multiplying, improving, prospering beyond all example. It is evident to all, that in spite of great losses much greater gains have ensued. When these gladiators shall have worried each other into ruin or reason, instead of lying among the dead on the bloody arena, we shall have acquired a growth and strength which will place us hors d'insulte. Peace then has been our pr inciple, peace is our interest, and peace has saved the world this only plant of free and rational government now existing on it ... However, therefore, we may have been reproached for pursuing our Quaker system, time will affix the stamp of wisdom on it, and the happiness and prosperity of our citizens will attest its merit. And this, I believe, is the only legitimate object of government and the first duty of governors, and not the slaughter of men and devastation of the countries placed under their care in pursuit of a fantastic honor unallied to virtue or happiness; or in gratification of the angry passions or the pride of administrators excited by personal incidents in which their citizens have no concern."
Thomas Jefferson, letter to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811. (Emphasis added)
"Peace and friendship with all mankind is our wisest policy, and I wish we may be permitted to pursue it." — Thomas Jefferson
Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor, for patriotism is indeed a double-edged sword. It both emboldens the blood, just as it narrows the mind. And when the drums of war have reached a fever pitch and the blood boils with hate and the mind has closed, the leader will have no need in seizing the rights of the citizenry. Rather, the citizenry, infused with fear and blinded by patriotism, will offer up all of their rights unto the leader and gladly so. How do I know? For this is what I have done." Julius Caesar
Don't cheer, boys; the poor devils are dying. Philip, John Woodward, US naval officer. Restraining his victorious crew during the naval battle off Santiago in the Spanish-American War. Attrib., 1898
I've got to go to meet God - and explain all those men I killed at Alamein. Field Marshall Viscount Montgomery in 1976.
Men acquainted with the battlefield will not be found among the numbers that glibly talk of another war. I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, and its stupidity. Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, Ottawa, Canada, 10 January 1946
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. Dwight David Eisenhower, April 16, 1953.
"In the councils of government we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist." — Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his 1961 farewell address
"I like to believe that people, in the long run, are going to do more to promote peace than our governments. Indeed, I think that people want peace so much that one of these days government had better get out of their way and let them have it." — Dwight D. Eisenhower
"Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron." — Dwight D. Eisenhower, U.S. President, Republican Party
"When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing." — Dwight D. Eisenhower "The military don't start wars. Politicians start wars." — General William Westmoreland
"Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount." — General Omar Bradley
"The way to win an atomic war is to make certain it never starts." — General Omar Bradley
"It is my earnest hope — indeed the hope of all mankind — that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past, a world found upon faith and understanding, a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance, and justice." — General Douglas MacArthur
I know war as few other men now living know it, and nothing to me is more revolting. I have long advocated its complete abolition, as its very destructiveness on both friend and foe has rendered it useless as a method of settling international disputes. Douglas MacArthur, congress address, 19 April 1951
"It is part of the general pattern of misguided policy that our country is now geared to an arms economy which was bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear." —General Douglas MacArthur, Speech, May 15, 1951
“There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all hell. You can bear this warning voice to generations yet to come. I look upon war with horror.” — General William Tecumseh Sherman
War is barbarous at best. War is cruel and you cannot refine it. I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, more vengeance, more desolation. War is hell. William Tecumseh Sherman, 17 March 1879
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it." — Robert E. Lee
"War's a profanity, because let's face it, you've got two opposing sides trying to settle their differences by killing as many of each other as they can." — Gen. H. Norman Schwarzkopf
Classic War Quote by Benjamin Franklin
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
The pioneers of a warless world are the youth that refuse military service Albert Einstein
A country cannot simultaneously prepare and prevent war. Albert Einstein
Our only hope today lies in our ability to recapture the revolutionary spirit and go into a sometimes hostile world declaring eternal hostility to poverty, racism, and militarism. Martin Luther King, Jr.
They wrote in the old days that it is sweet and fitting to die for one's country. But in modern war, there is nothing sweet nor fitting in your dying. You will die like a dog for no good reason. Ernest Hemmingway
Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Neither side is glorious. On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under the earth, but to walk upon it - without crutches. Peter Weiss
Only the dead have seen the end of war.
Plato
History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap. Ronald Reagan
"It seems that 'we have never gone to war for conquest, for exploitation, nor for territory'; we have the word of a president [McKinley] for that. Observe, now, how Providence overrules the intentions of the truly good for their advantage. We went to war with Mexico for peace, humanity and honor, yet emerged from the contest with an extension of territory beyond the dreams of political avarice. We went to war with Spain for relief of an oppressed people [the Cubans], and at the close found ourselves in possession of vast and rich insular dependencies [primarily the Philippines] and with a pretty tight grasp upon the country for relief of whose oppressed people we took up arms. We could hardly have profited more had 'territorial aggrandizement' been the spirit of our purpose and heart of our hope. The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations." —Ambrose Bierce, Warlike America
"Every patriot believes his country better than any other country . . . In its active manifestation—it is fond of killing—patriotism would be well enough if it were simply defensive, but it is also aggressive . . . Patriotism deliberately and with folly aforethought subordinates the interests of a whole to the interests of a part . . . Patriotism is fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave and blind as a stone." —Ambrose Bierce, Collected Works
"COWARDICE, n. A charge often levelled by all-American types against those who stand up for their beliefs by refusing to fight in wars they find unconscionable, and who willingly go to prison or into exile in order to avoid violating their own consciences. These 'cowards' are to be contrasted with red-blooded, 'patriotic' youths who literally bend over, grab their ankles, submit to the government, fight in wars they do not understand (or disapprove of), and blindly obey orders to maim and to kill simply because they are ordered to do so—all to the howling approval of the all-American mob. This type of behavior is commonly termed 'courageous.'" —Chaz Bufe
"NATIONAL DEFENSE, n. In U.S. political discourse: 1) The pauperization of the nation through expenditures for deadly weapons systems; 2) The bombardment and invasion of small countries. The United States is, of course, the only nation entitled to such 'defense.' If the inhabitants of other countries resist the U.S. government's 'defensive' measures, they become guilty of 'internal aggression'; and if governments of other countries practice U.S.-style national defense, they become guilty of 'naked aggression.'" (U.S. government spokesmen repeatedly used the Orwellian term 'internal aggression' during the 1960s when referring to the resistance of the Vietnamese to the U.S. occupation of their country.) —Chaz Bufe,
"I spent thirty-three years and four months in active service in the country's most agile military force, the Marines. I served in all ranks from second lieutenant to major general. And during that period I spent most of my time being a high-class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism.
"I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it. Like all members of the military profession I never had an original thought until I left the service. My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military service.
"Thus I helped make Mexico, and especially Tampico, safe for American oil interests in 1914. "I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in. I helped in the raping of half-a-dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers and Co. in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested.
"During those years, I had, as the boys in the back room would say, a swell racket. I was rewarded with honors, medals, and promotion. Looking back on it, I feel that I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate a racket in three city districts. The Marines operated on three continents." —Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler (former Commandant, U.S. Marine Corps), Common Sense, November 1935
"War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle; therefore they take boys from one village and another village, stick them into uniforms, equip them with guns, and let them loose like wild beasts against each other." —Thomas Carlyle
" Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on Earth." —Eugene V. Debs, Speech, June 16, 1918
"The enemy aggressor is always pursuing a course of larceny, murder, rapine, and barbarism. We are always moving forward with high mission, a destiny imposed by the deity to regenerate our victims while incidentally capturing their markets, to civilize savage and senile and paranoidal peoples while blundering accidentally into their oil wells or metal mines." —John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching
"The so-called Christian virtues of humility, love, charity, personal freedom, the strong prohibitions against violence, murder, stealing, lying, cruelty—all these are washed away by war. The greatest hero is the one who kills the most people. Glamorous exploits in successful lying and mass stealing and heroic vengeance are rewarded with decorations and public acclaim. You cannot, when the war is proclaimed, pull a switch and turn the community from the moral code of peace to that of war and then, when the armistice is signed, pull a nother switch and reconnect the whole society with its old moral regulations again. Thousands of people of all ranks who have found a relish in the morals of war come back to you with these rudimentary instincts controlling their behavior while thousands of others, trapped in a sort of no man's land between these two moralities, come back to you poisoned by cynicism." —John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching
"Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot, consider themselves better, nobler, grander, more intelligent than the living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill, and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all others. The inhabitants of the other spots reason like manner, of course . . ." —Emma Goldman, Patriotism
"Sure, there were lots of bodies we never identified. You know what a direct hit by a shell does to a guy. Or a mine, or a solid hit with a grenade, even. Sometimes all we have is a leg or a hunk of arm. The ones that stink the worst are the guys who got internal wounds and are dead about three weeks with the blood staying inside and rotting, and when you move the body the blood comes out of the nose and mouth. Then some of them bloat up in the sun, they bloat up so big that they bust the buttons and then they get blue and the skin peels. They don't all get blue, some of them get black. But they all stunk. There's only one stink and that's it. You never get used to it, either. As long as you live, you never get used to it. And after a while, the stink gets in your clothes and you can taste it in your mouth. You know what I think? I think maybe if every civilian in the world could smell this stink, then maybe we wouldn't have any more wars." —Technical Sergeant Donald Haguall, 48th Quartermaster Graves Registration (quoted in Purnell's History of the Second World War)
"YOUNG MEN: The lowest aim in your life is to become a soldier. The good soldier never tries to distinguish right from wrong. He never thinks; never reasons; he only obeys. If he is ordered to fire on his fellow citizens, on his friends, on his neighbors, on his relatives, he obeys without hesitation. If he is ordered to fire down a crowded street when the poor are clamoring for bread, he obeys and see the grey hairs of age stained with red and the life tide gushing from the breasts of women, feeling neither remorse nor sympathy. If he is ordered off as a firing squad to execute a hero or benefactor, he fires without hesitation, though he knows the bullet will pierce the noblest heart that ever beat in human breast.
"A good soldier is a blind, heartless, soulless, murderous machine. He is not a man. His is not a brute, for brutes kill only in self defense. All that is human in him, all that is divine in him, all that constitutes the man has been sworn away when he took the enlistment roll. His mind, his conscience, aye, his very soul, are in the keeping of his officer. No man can fall lower than a soldier—it is a depth beneath which we cannot go." — Jack London
"Is a young man bound to serve his country in war? In addition to his legal duty there is perhaps also a moral duty, but it is very obscure. What is called his country is only its government and that government consists merely of professional politicians, a parasitical and anti-social class of men. They never sacrifice themselves for their country. They make all wars, but very few of them ever die in one. If it is the duty of a young man to serve his country under all circumstances then it is equally the duty of an enemy young man to serve his. Thus we come to a moral contradiction and absurdity so obvious that even clergymen and editorial writers sometimes notice it."
—H.L. Mencken, Minority Report
"Under the influence of politicians, masses of people tend to ascribe the responsibility for wars to those who wield power at any given time. In World War I it was the munitions industrialists; in World War II it was the psychopathic generals who were said to be guilty. This is passing the buck. The responsibility for wars falls solely upon the shoulders of these same masses of people, for they have all the necessary means to avert war in their own hands. In part by their apathy, in part by their passivity, and in part actively, these same masses of people make possible the catastrophes under which they themselves suffer more than anyone else. To stress this guilt on the part of the masses of people, to hold them solely responsible, means to take them seriously. On the other hand, to commiserate masses of people as victims, means to treat them as small, helpless children. The former is the attitude held by genuine freedom fighters; the latter that attitude held by power-thirsty politicians." —Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism
"Every miserable fool who has nothing at all of which he can be proud, adopts as a last resource pride in the nation to which he belongs; he is ready and happy to defend all its faults and follies tooth and nail, thus reimbursing himself for his own inferiority." —Arthur Schopenhauer, Aphorisms
"Do we owe our freedom to our fighting men? To be drafted is to be enslaved. How can we owe our freedom to slaves? They may have fought bravely and died with courage, but they haven't given us any freedom. We would have been in their debt if they had refused to fight foreigners and instead freed themselves from the American politicians who continue to enslave us." —Allen Thornton, Laws of the Jungle
"Patriotism in its simplest, clearest, and most indubitable meaning is nothing but an instrument for the attainment of the government's ambitious and mercenary aims, and a renunciation of human dignity, common sense, and conscience by the governed, and a slavish submission to those who hold power. That is what is really preached wherever patriotism is championed. Patriotism is slavery." —Leo Tolstoy, Christianity and Patriotism
"Men who can undertake to fulfill with unquestioning submission all that is decreed by men they do not know . . . cannot be rational; and the governments—that is, the men wielding such power—can still less be reasonable. They cannot but misuse such insensate and terrible power and cannot but be crazed by wielding it. For this reason peace between nations cannot be attained by this reasonable method of conventions and arbitrations so long as that submission of the peoples to governments, which is always irrational and pernicious, still continues. But the subjection of men to government will always continue as long as patriotism exists, for every ruling power rests on patriotism—on the readiness of men to submit to power . . ." —Leo Tolstoy, Christianity and Patriotism
"To destroy governmental violence only one thing is needed: it is that people should understand that the feeling of patriotism which alone supports that instrument of violence is a rude, harmful, disgraceful, and bad feeling, and above all is immoral. It is a rude feeling because it is natural only to people standing on the lowest level of morality and expecting from other nations such outrages as they themselves are ready to inflict. It is a harmful feeling because it disturbs advantageous and joyous peaceful relations with other peoples, and above all produces that governmental organization under which power may fall and does fall into the hands of the worst men. It is a disgraceful feeling because it turns man not merely into a slave but into a fighting cock, a bull, or a gladiator, who wastes his strength and his life for objects which are not his own, but his government's. It is an immoral feeling because, instead of confessing himself a son of God . . . or even a free man guided by his own reason, each man under the influence of patriotism confesses himself the son of his fatherland and the slave of his government, and commits actions contrary to his reason and conscience." —Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism and Government
"[D]iscipline consists in this, that the men who undergo the instruction and have followed it for a certain time are completely deprived of everything which is precious to a man—of the chief human property, rational freedom—and become submissive, machine-like implements of murder in the hands of their organized hierarchic authorities." —Leo Tolstoy, Patriotism and Government
Where is it written in the Constitution, in what article or section is it contained, that you may take children from their parents and parents from their children, and compel them to fight the battles of any war in which the folly and wickedness of the government may engage itself?
"Under what concealment has this power lain hidden, which now for the first time comes forth, with a tremendous and baleful aspect, to trample down and destroy the dearest right of personal liberty? Who will show me any Constitutional injunction which makes it the duty of the American people to surrender everything valuable in life, and even life, itself, whenever the purposes of an ambitious and mischievous government may require it? . . .
"A free government with an uncontrolled power of military conscription is the most ridiculous and abominable contradiction and nonsense that ever entered into the heads of men." —Daniel Webster, Speech in the House of Representatives, January 14, 1814
"Once lead this people into war and they'll forget there ever was such a thing as tolerance. To fight you must be brutal and ruthless and the spirit of ruthlessness will enter into the very fiber of our national life, infecting Congress, the courts, the policeman on the beat, the man in the street." —Woodrow Wilson (five days prior to asking Congress to declare war on Germany in 1917)
"There is, of course, in the feeling toward the State a large element of pure filial mysticism. The sense of insecurity, the desire for protection, sends one's desire back to the father and mother, with whom is associated the earliest feeling of protection. It is not for nothing that one's State is still thought of as Fatherland or Motherland, that one's relations towards it is conceived in terms of family affection. The war [World War I] has shown that nowhere under the shock of danger have these primitive childlike attitudes failed to assert themselves again, as much in this country as anywhere. If we have not the intense father-sense of the German who worships his Vaterland, at least in Uncle Sam we have a symbol of protecting, kindly authority . . . A people at war have become in the most literal sense obedient, respectful, trustful children again, full of that naive faith in the all-wisdom and all-power of the adult who takes care of them, imposes his mild but necessary rule upon them and to whom they lose their responsibility and anxieties. In this recrudescence of the child, there is great comfort, and a certain influx of power. On most people the strain of being an independent adult weighs heavily . . ."
—Randolph Bourne, The State
"GLORY, n. An exalted state achieved through participation in military operations, often by having one's guts blown out and dying in agony amidst the stench of one's own entrails. —Chaz Bufe, The Devil's Dictionaries ("American Heretic's Dictionary" section)
"PATRIOTISM, n. 1) The inability to distinguish between the government and one's 'country'; 2) A highly praiseworthy virtue characterized by the desire to dominate and kill; 3) A feeling of exultation experienced when contemplating heaps of charred 'enemy' corpses; 4) The first, last, and perennial refuge of scoundrels."
—Chaz Bufe, The Devil's Dictionaries ("American Heretic's Dictionary" section)
"To plunder, to slaughter, to steal, these things they misname empire; and where they make a desert, they call it peace."
—Calgacus
"No matter what the cause, even though it be to conquer with tanks and planes and modern artillery some defenseless black population, there will be no lack of poets and preachers and essayists and philosophers to invent the necessary reasons and gild the infamy with righteousness. To this righteousness there is, of course, never an adequate reply. Thus a war to end poverty becomes an unanswerable enterprise. For who can decently be for poverty? To even debate whether the war will end poverty becomes an exhibition of ugly pragmatism and the sign of an ignoble mind."
—John T. Flynn, As We Go Marching
"I believe in compulsory cannibalism. If people were forced to eat what they killed there would be no more war."
—Abbie Hoffman
Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. -Peter Weiss
Once and for all the idea of glorious victories won by the glorious army must be wiped out. Neither side is glorious. On either side they're just frightened men messing their pants and they all want the same thing - not to lie under the earth, but to walk upon it - without crutches.
"Either war is obsolete or men are." -R. Buckminster Fuller
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." -Classic War Quote by Benjamin Franklin
I am going to explain to you why we went to war. Why mankind always does to war. It is not social or political. It is not countries that go to war, but men. It is like salt. Once one has been to war, one has salt for the rest of one's life. Men love war because it allows them to look serious. Because it is the one thing that stops women from laughing at them. Night fell again. There was war to the south, but our sector was quiet. The battle was over. Our casualties were some thirteen thousand killed--thirteen thousand minds, memories, loves, sensations, worlds, universes--because the human mind is more a universe than the universe itself--and all for a few hundred yards of useless mud.