war quotes

Albert Camus: 

[I]n such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.

Aldous Huxley: 

A democracy which makes or even effectively prepares for modern, scientific war must necessarily cease to be democratic. No country can be really well prepared for modern war unless it is governed by a tyrant, at the head of a highly trained and perfectly obedient bureaucracy.

Alfred Tennyson: 

Till the war-drum throbb`d no longer, and the battle-flags were furl`d; In the parliament of man; the Federation of the world.

Annie Dillard: 

"One of the main reasons that it is so easy to march men off to war," says Ernest Becker, is that "each of them feels sorry for the man next to him who will die."

Aristotle: 

We make war that we may live in peace.

Barbara Kingsolver: 

Wars and elections are both too big and too small to matter in the long run. The daily work - that goes on, it adds up.

Barbara Kingsolver: 

There's a graveyard in northern France where all the dead boys from D-Day are buried. The white crosses reach from one horizon to the other. I remember looking it over and thinking it was a forest of graves. But the rows were like this, dizzying, diagonal, perfectly straight, so after all it wasn't a forest but an orchard of graves. Nothing to do with nature, unless you count human nature.

Benjamin Franklin: 

There never was a good war or a bad peace.

Blaise Pascal: 

Can anything be stupider than that a man has the right to kill me because he lives on the other side of a river and his ruler has a quarrel with mine, though I have not quarrelled with him?

Colman McCarthy: 

Everyone's a pacifist between wars. It's like being a vegetarian between meals.

Croesus: 

In peace the sons bury their fathers, but in war the fathers bury their sons.

David Friedman: 

The direct use of force is such a poor solution to any problem, it is generally employed only by small children and large nations.

Dorothy Thompson: 

They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war -- as though the absence of war was the same as peace.

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. The 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. [1953] 

Dwight 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.
April 16, 1953


Ecclesiastes: 

For everything there is a season,
And a time for every matter under heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die;
A time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal;
A time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh;
A time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to throw away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, And a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to seek, and a time to lose;
A time to keep, and a time to throw away;
A time to tear, and a time to sew;
A time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate,
A time for war, and a time for peace.
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8


Eleanor Roosevelt: 

When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

Franklin Delano Roosevelt: 

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.

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.

George Bernard Shaw: 

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

George W. Bush: 

No, I know all the war rhetoric, but it's all aimed at achieving peace.

George W. Bush: 

I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war.

George Washington: 

There is nothing so likely to produce peace as to be well prepared to meet the enemy.

George Washington: 

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.

Georges Clemenceau: 

War is too serious a matter to entrust to military men.

Gertrude Stein: 

A nice war is a war where everybody who is heroic is a hero, and everybody more or less is a hero in a nice war. Now this war is not at all a nice war.
1943


Harry Emerson Fosdick: 

I hate war for its consequences, for the lies it lives on and propagates, for the undying hatreds it arouses, for the dictatorships it puts in the place of democracies, and for the starvation that stalks after it. I hate war, and never again will I sanction or support another.

Hermann Goering: 

Naturally the common people don't want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine 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 to 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 any country. quote verified at snopes.com

Howard Nemerov: 

Religion and science both profess peace (and the sincerity of the professors is not being doubted), but each always turns out to have a dominant part in any war that is going or contemplated.

Howard Thurman: 

During times of war, hatred becomes quite respectable, even though it has to masquerade often under the guise of patriotism.

Isaac Asimov: 

Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.

Isaac Asimov: 

It is not only the living who are killed in war.

James Russell Lowell: 

We kind o' thought Christ went agin war an' pillage.

Jeanette Rankin: 

You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.

John Adams: 

I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.

John F. Kennedy: 

The wave of the future is not the conquest of the world by a single dogmatic creed but the liberation of the diverse energies of free nations and free men.

John F. Kennedy: 

It is an unfortunate fact that we can secure peace only by preparing for war.

John F. Kennedy: 

Unconditional war can no longer lead to unconditional victory. It can no longer serve to settle disputes. It can no longer be of concern to great powers alone. For a nuclear disaster, spread by winds and waters and fear, could well engulf the great and the small, the rich and the poor, the committed and the uncommitted alike. Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind.

John Stuart Mill: 

War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. The person who has nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature, and has no chance of being free unless made or kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.

Martha Gelhorn: 

War is a malignant disease, an idiocy, a prison, and the pain it
causes is beyond telling or meaning; but war was our condition
and our history, the place we had to live in.

Omar N. Bradley: 

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.

Patrick Henry: 

It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace--but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death! March 23, 1775

R. Buckminster Fuller: 

Either war is obsolete or men are.

Ralph Bunche: 

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.

Ralph Waldo Emerson: 

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

Robert E. Lee: 

It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it.

Ronald Reagan: 

History teaches that war begins when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.

Simone Weil: 

A self-respecting nation is ready for anything, including war, except for a renunciation of its option to make war. 

Spinoza: 

Peace is not the absence of war; it is a virtue; a state of mind; a disposition for benevolence; confidence; and justice.

Theodore Roosevelt: 

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. (1918)

Thomas Jefferson: 

The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.

Thomas Paine: 

If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace.

Will Rogers: 

You can't say civilization don't advance -- for in every war, they kill you in a new way.