A
holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war
diminishes, war debases all those who wage it. - Elie
Wiesel
A
mind at peace does not engender wars. -
Sophocles
Accursed
be he that first invented war. - Christopher
Marlowe
After
a long, hopeless war, people will settle for peace, at almost any
price. - Salman
Rushdi
All
the entertainment and talk of history is nothing almost but fighting
and killing: and the honour and renown that is bestowed on conquerors
(who for the most part are but the great butchers of mankind) farther
mislead growing youth, who by this means come to think slaughter the
laudable business of mankind, and the most heroic of virtues. - John
Locke
All war is symptom of man’s
failure as a thinking animal. - John
Steinbeck
All war represents a failure of diplomacy. - Tony Benn
All
wars of interference, arising from an officious intrusion into the
concerns of other states; all wars of ambition, carried on for the
purposes of aggrandizement; and all wars of aggression, undertaken
for the purpose of forcing an assent to this or that set of religious
opinions; all such wars are criminal in their very outset, and have
hypocrisy for their common base. - Charles
Caleb Colton
Always
remember, however sure you are that you could easily win, that there
would not be a war if the other man did not think he also had a
chance. - Winston
Churchill
Anyone
who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide. -
Eleanor
Roosevelt
Armies
are not bad things in themselves; it's war that's evil. - Juan
Gomez-Jurado
As
long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is
inevitable. - Albert
Einstein
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
Colourful
demonstrations and weekend marches are vital but alone are not
powerful enough to stop wars. Wars will be stopped only when soldiers
refuse to fight, when workers refuse to load weapons onto ships and
aircraft, when people boycott the economic outposts of Empire that
are strung across the globe. -
Arundhati
Roy
Duelling
was abolished because man's conscience told him that to be opposed to
a man with less knowledge of how to use his weapon, was so certain of
killing him, the odds being so unequal, that in reality it was
"murder." What difference is there when a strong nation
goes to war with a weak one? And is not this generally the case with
wars? The chances are not even; it is only a matter of time; if so,
is not war generally wholesale murder? We must in time consider wars
as acts of barbarism, the acts of savages. Men will see that war for
honour is as foolish between nations as if done between individuals.
- James
Platt
Even
a successful war is a loss to most families. - Edward
Counsel
Even
when just, war is the worst necessity. The method is savage, and it
recoils terribly, as much on the victor as the vanquished. - James
Platt
Eventually,
you hope. Obviously, we're not in a position at the moment for the
eradication of war to seem like anything but a far-off dream. But at
one time, the eradication of slave markets in the United States
seemed very far off. I mean, people have to begin somewhere. We can
change. We can evolve as a species. It's not simple, and it's a very
long and drawn-out process, but you can hope. - Suzanne
Collins
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
labourers, 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
Eisenhower
Every
war involves a greater or less relapse into barbarism. War, indeed,
in its details, is the essence of inhumanity. It dehumanizes. It may
save the state, but it destroys the citizen. - Christian
Nesell Bovee
For
most of history, war has been a more or less functional institution,
providing benefits for those societies that were good at it, although
the cost in money, in lives, and in suffering was always significant.
Only in the past century have large numbers of people begun to
question the basic assumption of civilized societies that war is
inevitable and often useful. - Gwynne
Dyer
For both victor and vanquished, war leaves
only a sense of endless futility. -
Unknown
If a general has to explain
everything to every soldier before they will fight, the war will be lost for
sure. - Unknown
He
who joyfully marches to music rank and file has already earned my
contempt. He has been given a large brain by mistake, since for him
the spinal cord would surely suffice. This disgrace to civilization
should be done away with at once. Heroism at command, senseless
brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance and all the loathsome
nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism, how violently I hate
all this, how despicable and ignoble war is; I would rather be torn
to shreds than be part of so base an action! It is my conviction that
killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder. -
Albert
Einstein
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, for vengeance, for
desolation. War is hell. -
William
Tecumseh Sherman
I
cannot get accustomed to war; my brain refuses to understand and
explain a thing that is senseless in its basis. Millions of people
gather at one place and, giving their actions order and regularity,
kill each other, and it hurts everybody equally, and all are unhappy
– what is it if not madness? - Leonid
Andreyev
I
do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but I do
know that World War IV will be fought with rocks. - Albert
Einstein
I
find war detestable but those who praise it without participating in
it even more so. - Romain
Rolland
I
hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has
seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity. -
Dwight
D. Eisenhower
I
have seen war. I have seen war on land and sea. I have seen blood
running from the wounded. I have seen men coughing out their gassed
lungs. I have seen the dead in the mud. I have seen cities destroyed.
I have seen two hundred limping exhausted men come out of line –
the survivors of a regiment of one thousand that went forward
forty-eight hours before. I have seen children starving. I have seen
the agony of mothers and wives. I hate war. - Franklin
D. Roosevelt
If you think of humanity as one large body, then war is like suicide, or at best, self-mutilation. - Jerome P. Cabb
In
order for us human beings to commit ourselves personally to the
inhumanity of war, we find it necessary first to dehumanize our
opponents, which is in itself a violation of the beliefs of all
religions. Once we characterize our adversaries as beyond the scope
of God's mercy and grace, their lives lose all value. We deny
personal responsibility when we plant landmines and, days or years
later, a stranger to us – often a child – is crippled or killed.
From a great distance, we launch bombs or missiles with almost total
impunity, and never want to know the number or identity of the
victims. - Jimmy
Carter
In
the days of peace every precaution should be taken to insure that
there are no forces making for war. Just as we now forbid the
trafficking in certain drugs, in the sale of poisons, just as we
forbid the making of any imprint that suggests a coin or currency,
just as experience has demonstrated that men may not make profit out
of certain things because of the danger of abuse, so in the gravest
of all dangers laws should be passed taking from those who might gain
from war or preparations for war every hope that advantage could come
to them by such a calamity. - Frederic
Clemson
In
time of war, when truth is so precious, it must be attended by a
bodyguard of lies. - Winston
Churchill
In war, there are no unwounded soldiers. - Unknown
It
is a much easier thing to unloose the demon war than to chain him up
again. - M.
D. Conway
It is far easier to
make war than to make peace. - Georges Clemenceau
It
is only through an abandonment of the idea that those entrusted with
power have an exclusive right to decide upon war, and the
substitution of a public opinion equipped with all the facts and
taken into the confidence of the ruling classes, that peace can be
assured to the world. - Frederic
Clemson Howe
It’s
funny how those who are most pro-war are almost always the guys who
never had to fight in one. Jerp,e
P. Crabb
Let's
face it – if mothers ruled the world, there wouldn't be any goddamn
wars in the first place. - Sally
Field
Mankind
must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind. -
John
F. Kennedy
Men
who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons
of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of
agricultural implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the
soil. - Ambrose
Bierce
Men
who fight wars in winter don’t live till spring. - Ursula
K. Le Guin
Military
glory – that attractive rainbow that rises in showers of blood. -
Abraham
Lincoln
Naturally,
the common people don't want war ... but after all it is the leaders
of a 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 pacifists for lack of patriotism and
exposing the country to danger. It works the same in every country. -
Hermann
Goering
Never think that war, no matter how
necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime. -
Ernest Hemingway
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 realise that once the signal is given, he is no longer the
master of policy but the slave of unforeseeable and uncontrollable
events. - Winston
Churchill
No
bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making
the other poor dumb bastard die for his country. -
George
S. Patton
No
catalogue of horrors ever kept men from war. Before the war you
always think that it's not you that dies. But you will die, brother,
if you go to it long enough. - Ernest
Hemingway
No
nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.
- James Madison
No
one won the last war, and no one will win the next war. - Eleanor
Roosevelt
Older men declare war. But it is
youth that must fight and die. And it is youth that must inherit the
tribulation, the sorrow, and the triumphs that are the aftermath of war. - Herbert
Clark Hoover
One
day History will pass judgment on each of the nations at war; she
will weigh their measure of errors, lies, and heinous follies. Let us
try to make ours light before her! - Romain
Rolland
Only the dead have seen an end to
war. - Plato
People
do not want war. War springs from causes wholly outside the lives,
interests, and feelings of the people. Frederic-Clemson
Howe
Preventing
war is much better than protesting against the war. Protesting the
war is too late. - Thich
Nhat Hanh
Religious
wars are basically people killing each other over who has the better
imaginary friend. - Napoleon
Bonaparte
Short
of changing human nature ... the only way to achieve a practical,
liveable peace in a world of competing nations is to take the profit
out of war. - Richard
Nixon
Since war begin in the minds of
men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed. -
Unknown
So
a war begins. Into a peace-time life, comes an announcement, a
threat. A bomb drops somewhere, potential traitors are whisked off
quietly to prison. And for some time, days, months, a year perhaps,
life has a peace-time quality, into which war-like events intrude.
But when a war has been going on for a long time, life is all war,
every event has the quality of war, nothing of peace remains. - Doris
Lessing
So
long as there are men there will be wars. - Albert
Einstein
The
abolition of war is no longer to be set down as a creation of fancy,
a dream of enthusiastic philanthropy. War rests on opinion; and
opinion is more and more withdrawing its support. War rests on
contempt of human nature; on the long mournful habit of regarding the
mass of human beings as machines, or as animals; having no higher use
than to be shot at and murdered for the glory of a chief, for the
seating of this or that family on a throne, for the petty interests
and selfish rivalries which have inflamed states to conflict. Let the
worth of a human being be felt, and a main pillar of war will fall. -
William
E. Channing
The
act of war is the last option of a democracy. - Joseph
C. Wilson
The
belief in the possibility of a short decisive war appears to be one
of the most ancient and dangerous of human illusions. - Robert
Wilson Lynd
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 finest battle plans in the
world last only as long as it takes to make contact with the enemy. - Unknow
The quickest way of ending a war is to lose it. - George Orwell
The
term "just war" contains an internal contradiction. War is
inherently unjust, and the great challenge of our time is how to deal
with evil, tyranny, and oppression without killing huge numbers of
people. - Howard
Zinn
There are no warlike people, just
warlike leaders. - Ralph Bunche
There
has been no war without atrocity. War is atrocity, pure and simple:
only greed, nationalism and faith help us pretend otherwise. -
Michael
Marshall
There is nothing that war has ever
achieved that we could not better achieve without it. - Henry Havelock Ellis
There
would be an end of war and preparations for war if the cost were
borne by those responsible for war. There would be an end of
armaments and preparedness if incomes and inheritances and the landed
estates of the feudal classes paid for the protection which their
privileges enjoy. War and preparations for war are possible only
because the ruling classes are able to shift a great part of the cost
onto the poor by indirect taxation and loans. War expenditures are
tolerated only because the burdens are concealed in the increased
cost of the things people consume. "The art of plucking the
goose without making it cry out" has been developed to a high
state of perfection at the hands of the war makers. - Frederic
Clemson Howe
There's
never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people
who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people
believe that they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only
because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is
what makes them dangerous. - Neil
Gaiman
They
sent forth men to battle, but no such men return; and home, to claim
their welcome, come ashes in an urn. - Aeschylus
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
Hemingway
This
is a war universe. War all the time. That is its nature. There may be
other universes based on all sorts of other principles, but ours
seems to be based on war and games. - William
S. Burroughs
Those
who ignore history's lessons in the ultimate folly of war are forced
to do more than relive them ... they may be forced to die by them. -
Dan
Simmons
To
all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear
loathsome and inhuman. -
Alfred
Adler
Truth,
it has been said, is the first casualty of war. -
Philip Snowden
Unjust
war is to be abhorred; but woe to the nation that does not make ready
to hold its own in time of need against all who would harm it! And
woe thrice over to the nation in which the average man loses the
fighting edge, loses the power to serve as a soldier if the day of
need should arise! - Theodore
Roosevelt
Victorious
warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to
war first and then seek to win. -
Sun
Tzu
Want
is both parent and child of war. - Edward
Counsel
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
War
being the greatest of evils, all its accessories necessarily partake
of the same character. - Herman
Melville
War
can only be abolished through war ... in order to get rid of the gun
it is necessary to take up the gun. - Mao
ZeDong
War
ends nothing. - Zairean
Proverb
War
had become nothing more than slaughtering soldiers from a safe
distance. When this failed to produce victory, civilians too became
targeted for annihilation. It took more than a century, two world
wars and the invention of the ultimate weapon, the atomic bomb,
before the impact of this change started to become fully realized:
war had become 'total war'. Warfare in the twentieth century is now
an industry. It is bureaucratized, to the extent that its main
decisions are being taken anonymously and committed to paper by
people far removed from the actual killing zones. - Hylke
Tromp
War
is a brutal and fierce means of pacification; it means the
suppression of resistance by the destruction or enslavement of the
conquered. - Henri-Frederic
Amiel
War is a game with a good deal of
chance in it. From the little I have seen of it, I should say that nothing in
war ever goes right except by accident. - Winston Churchill
War is a poor
chisel to carve out tomorrow. - Martin Luther King Jr.
War
is a severe doctor; but it sometimes heals grievances. - Edward
Counsel
War
is an admission of failure. - K.
J. Parker
War
is like love, it always finds a way. - Bertolt
Brecht
War
is mainly a catalogue of blunders. - Winston
Churchill
War
is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the
greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man. -
Alfred
Adler
War is nothing but the
continuation of politics by other means. - Karl von Clausewitz
War
is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace. - Thomas
Mann
War
is regarded as nothing but the continuation of state policy with
other means. - Carl
von Clausewitz
War
is the highest form of struggle for resolving contradictions, when
they have developed to a certain stage, between classes, nations,
states, or political groups, and it has existed ever since the
emergence of private property and of classes. - Mao
ZeDong
War
is the most readily available form of chaos. - Frank
Herbert
War
is the science of destruction. - John Abbott
War
is what happens when language fails. - Margaret
Atwood
War
itself is, of course, a form of madness. It’s hardly a civilized pursuit. It’s amazing how we spend so much time inventing devices to
kill each other and so little time working on how to achieve peace. -
Walter Cronkite
War
makes men barbarous because, to take part in it, one must harden
oneself against all regret, all appreciation of delicacy and
sensitive values. One must live as if those values did not exist, and
when the war is over one has lost the resilience to return to those
values. - Cesare
Pavese
War
makes rattling good history; but Peace is poor reading. - Thomas
Hardy
War
may sometimes be a necessary evil. But no matter how necessary, it is
always an evil, never a good. We will not learn how to live together
in peace by killing each other's children. - Jimmy
Carter
War
must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would
devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor
the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love
only that which they defend. - J.
R. R. Tolkien
War
must never be a condition but, rather, a temporary scourge which we
suffer as a child does a fever, knowing that health follows the long
night of pain and that peace is health. - Dan
Simmons
War
never takes a wicked man by chance, the good man always. - Sophocles
War
seldom enters but where wealth allures. - John
Dryen
War
settles nothing. - Dwight
D. Eisenhower
War will cease when men refuse to
fight. -
F. Hansen
War
will make corpses of us all. - Faramir
War:
first, one hopes to win; then one expects the enemy to lose; then,
one is satisfied that he too is suffering; in the end, one is
surprised that everyone has lost. - Karl
Kraus
Wars
against nations are fought to change maps; wars against poverty are
fought to map change. -
Muhammad
Ali
Wars
damage the civilian society as much as they damage the enemy.
Soldiers never get over it. -
Paul
Fussell
Wars
do not end wars any more than an extraordinarily large conflagration
does away with the fire hazard. - Henry
Ford
Wars
grew and mutated, finding ways to stay alive; they hung on with the
grim tenacity of a weed growing in a crack in a wall, feeding on
whatever nutrients their roots and tendrils could find. - K.
J. Parker
Wars
of pen and ink often lead to wars of cannon and bayonets. - Edward
Counsel
We
need to decide that we will not go to war, whatever reason is
conjured up by the politicians or the media, because war in our time
is always indiscriminate, a war against innocents, a war against
children. War is terrorism, magnified a hundred times. - Howard
Zinn
What
a cruel thing war is… to fill our hearts with hatred instead of
love for our neighbours. -
Robert
E. Lee
What
happened in World War II was what happened in war generally, and that
was whatever the initiating cause, and however clear the moral reason
is for the war in which one side looks better than the other, by the
time the war ends both sides have been engaged in evil. - Howard
Zinn
When
a great war has cut off the young men of a nation it never can be
told thereafter what losses of scholars, poets, thinkers and great
designers the country and the world have suffered. - James
Vila Blake
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. - Dwight.
D. Eisenhower
When
the rich wage war, it is the poor who die. - Jean-Paul
Sartre
Wisdom
born of experience should tell us that war is obsolete. There may
have been a time when war served as a negative good by preventing the
spread and growth of an evil force… If we assume that life is worth
living, if we assume that mankind has the right to survive, then we
must find an alternative to war. - Martin
Luther King Jr.
With
the indiscriminate nature of modern military technology (no such
thing as a "smart bomb," it turns out) all wars are wars
against civilians, and are therefore inherently immoral. This is true
even when a war is considered "just," because it is fought
against a tyrant, against an aggressor, to correct a stolen boundary.
- Howard
Zinn
You
can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake. - Jeannette
Rankin
