War Quotes

History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
Abba Eban
Israeli diplomat (1915-2002)

Probably, no nation is rich enough to pay for both war and civilization. We must make our choice; we cannot have both.

Abraham Flexner

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter, and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.

Abraham Lincoln

I destroy my enemies when I make them my friends.

Abraham Lincoln

Military glory–that attractive rainbow, that rises in showers of blood–that serpent’s eye, that charms to destroy…

Abraham Lincoln
Force is all-conquering, but its victories are short-lived.

Abraham Lincoln
Allow the president to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion, and you allow him to do so whenever he may choose to say he deems it necessary for such a purpose—and you allow him to make war at pleasure.

Abraham Lincoln
We must recognize the chief characteristic of the modern era–a permanent state of what I call violent peace.

Admiral James D. Watkins
Make the lie big, make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually they will believe it.

Adolph Hitler
In war, truth is the first casualty.

Aeschylus
Any excuse will serve a tyrant.

Aesop
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 great armies, accumulated to provide security and preserve the peace, carried the nations to war by their own weight.

A. J. P. Taylor
No war is inevitable until it breaks out.

A. J. P. Taylor
No matter what political reasons are given for war, the underlying reason is always economic.

A. J. P. Taylor
Wars based on principle are far more destructive…the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.

Alan Watts
from the book “The Way of Zen”
When a war breaks out, people say: “It’s too stupid, it can’t last long.” But though a war may be “too stupid,” that doesn’t prevent its lasting.

Albert Camus
The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants.

Albert Camus
The evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.

Albert Camus
It is the job of thinking people not to be on the side of the executioners.

Albert Camus
We used to wonder where war lived, what it was that made it so vile. And now we realize that we know where it lives…inside ourselves.

Albert Camus
Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

Albert Einstein
Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.

Albert Einstein
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one.

Albert Einstein
It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder.

Albert Einstein

The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing.

Albert Einstein
Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding.

Albert Einstein
How vile and despicable war seems to me! I would rather be hacked to pieces than take part in such an abominable business.

Albert Einstein
Force always attracts men of low morality.

Albert Einstein
It is unfortunately none too well understood that, just as the State has no money of its own, so it has no power of its own.

Albert J. Nock
What is absurd and monstrous about war is that men who have no personal quarrel should be trained to murder one another in cold blood.

Aldous Huxley
Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The demands of internal growth are incomparably more important to us…than the need for any external expansion of our power.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
The next war … may well bury Western civilization forever.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Even if we are spared destruction by war, our lives will have to change if we want to save life from self-destruction.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Anyone who has proclaimed violence his method inexorably must choose lying as his principle.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
This quote is often mis-attributed to Mikhail Gorbachev, who merely quoted the remark from Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel prize Harvard address.
War paralyzes your courage and deadens the spirit of true manhood.

Alexander Berkman
War means blind obedience, unthinking stupidity, brutish callousness, wanton destruction, and irresponsible murder.

Alexander Berkman
Those who stand for nothing fall for anything.

Alexander Hamilton
O peace! how many wars were waged in thy name.

Alexander Pope
No protracted war can fail to endanger the freedom of a democratic country.

Alexis de Tocqueville
All those who seek to destroy the liberties of a democratic nation ought to know that war is the surest and shortest means to accomplish it.

Alexis de Tocqueville
Distorted history boasts of bellicose glory . . . and seduces the souls of boys to seek mystical bliss in bloodshed and in battles.

Alfred Adler
War is organized murder and torture against our brothers.

Alfred Adler
It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them.

Alfred Adler
To all those who walk the path of human cooperation war must appear loathsome and inhuman.

Alfred Adler
War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man.

Alfred Adler
Our modern states are preparing for war without even knowing the future enemy.

Alfred Adler
…Violence as a way of gaining power…is being camouflaged under the guise of tradition, national honor [and] national security…

Alfred Adler

At least we’re getting the kind of experience we need for the next war.

Allen Dulles
The slightest acquaintance with history shows that powerful republics are the most warlike and unscrupulous of nations.

Ambrose Bierce
Since the end of the World War II, the United States has fought three “small” wars…we lost all three of them and for the same reason–hubris.

Andrew Greely
Andrew Greely is a columnist at the Chicago Sun-Times. You can read his articles at http://www.suntimes.com/index/greeley.html
Search for the truth is the noblest occupation of man; its publication is a duty.

Anne Louise Germaine de Stael
Today the real test of power is not capacity to make war but capacity to prevent it.

Anne O’Hare McCormick
A great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.

Anonymous (German)
(quote from ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)
Brute force is not our salvation, especially as directed by State central planning and done with little regard for the innocents…

Anthony Gregory
Anthony Gregory is a writer and musician from Berkeley, CA. You can read his articles at www.lewrockwell.com
The real triumph of civilization is the extent to which coercion is banished from human relations.

Anthony Gregory
Anthony Gregory is a writer and musician from Berkeley, CA. You can read his articles at www.lewrockwell.com
War is not an adventure. It is a disease. It is like typhus.

Antoine De Saint-Exupery
Make wars unprofitable and you make them impossible.

A. Philip Randolph
Randolph (1889-1979) was an African American civil rights leader. (quote from ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)
Because I do it with one small ship, I am called a terrorist. You do it with a whole fleet and are called an emperor.

A pirate, from St. Augustine’s “City of God”
Old men declare war because they have failed to solve complex political and economic problems.

Arthur Hoppe
Hoppe (1925-2000) was an American writer. (quote from ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)
All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident.

Arthur Schopenhauer
Statism needs war; a free country does not. Statism survives by looting; a free country survives by producing.

Ayn Rand
Do not ever say that the desire to “do good” by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.

Ayn Rand
Why should we hear about body bags, and deaths…I mean, it’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?

Barbara Bush
Mrs. Bush spoke these words on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” March 18, 2003.
No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

Barbara Ehrenreich
What the people want is very simple – they want an America as good as its promise.

Barbara Jordan
War is the unfolding of miscalculations.

Barbara Tuchman
You’ve got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you’re going to hit civilians.

Barry Goldwater
The world cannot continue to wage war like physical giants and to seek peace like intellectual pygmies.

Basil O’Connor
War is never a solution; it is an aggravation.

Benjamin Disraeli
A highwayman is as much a robber when he plunders in a gang as when single; and a nation that makes an unjust war is only a great gang.

Benjamin Franklin
Speaking to Benjamin Vaughan, 14 March 1785.
I hope….that mankind will at length, as they call themselves responsible creatures, have the reason and sense enough to settle their differences without cutting throats…

Benjamin Franklin
Those who give up essential liberties for temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin

All wars are follies, very expensive and very mischievous ones.

Benjamin Franklin
When will mankind be convinced and agree to settle their difficulties by arbitration?

Benjamin Franklin
There never was a good war or a bad peace.

Benjamin Franklin
Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

Benjamin Franklin
We Americans have no commission from God to police the world.

Benjamin Harrison
from an 1888 address to Congress
The Atomic Age is here to stay–but are we?

Bennett Cerf
Let us not deceive ourselves; we must elect world peace or world destruction.

Bernard M. Baruch
War does not determine who is right, only who is left.

Bertrand Russell
Either man will abolish war, or war will abolish man.

Bertrand Russell
Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man has a right to kill me because he lives on the other side of the water, and because his ruler has quarrel with mine, although I have none with him?

Blaise Pascal
The terrorist is the one with the small bomb.

Brendan Behan
Peace is constructed, not fought for.

Brent Davis
After each war there is a little less democracy left to save.

Brooks Atkinson
Atkinson was an American journalist who lived from 1864-1984. (quote from ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)
Blind faith in your leaders or in anything will get you killed.

Bruce Springsteen
This was part of Springsteen’s introduction to his 1985 version of Edwin Starr’s song ‘War.’
Coercive practices that threaten our neighbor(s) also threaten us.

Butler Shaffer
The state has, in order to control us, introduced division into our thinking, so that we come to distrust others and look to the state for protection.

Butler Shaffer
In this war – as in others – I am less interested in honoring the dead than in preventing the dead.

Butler Shaffer
No nation ever had an army large enough to guarantee it against attack in time of peace, or ensure it of victory in time of war.

Calvin Coolidge
The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and the means can never be considered in isolation from their purposes.

Carl P. G. von Clausewitz
Politics is the womb in which war develops.

Carl P. G. von Clausewitz
War is not an independent phenomenon, but the continuation of politics by different means.

Carl P. G. von Clausewitz
A rational army would run away.

Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu
Commonly known just as ‘Montesquieu,’ Charles (1869-1755) was a social commentator and thinker of the French Enlightenment.
The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so dangerous to public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy.

Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu from “The Spirit of Laws” (1748)
If a war be undertaken…before the resources of peace have been tried and proved vain to secure it, that war has no defense, it is a national crime.

Charles Eliot Norton
The voice of protest…is never more needed than when the clamor of fife and drum…is bidding all men…obey in silence the tyrannous word of command.

Charles Eliot Norton

War should be made a crime, and those who instigate it should be punished as criminals.

Charles Evans Hughes
The deterioration of every government begins with the decay of the principles on which it was founded.

Charles-Louis De Secondat
From “The Spirit of Laws,” 1748
[War] is a positive, precise and specific evil, of gigantic proportions …making within the sphere of its influence all true grandeur impossible.

Charles Sumner
From his 1845 speech “The True Grandeur of Nations.”
Almost all war making states borrow extensively, raise taxes, and seize the means of combat- including men–from reluctant citizens…

Charles Tilly
Name me an emperor who was ever struck by a cannonball.

Charles V of France
The politicians in this world… have at their command weapons of mass destruction far more complex than their own thinking processes.

Charley Reese
The truth is that neither British nor American imperialism was or is idealistic. It has always been driven by economic or strategic interests.

Charley Reese
We…are not really free if we can’t control our own government and its policies. And we will never do that if we remain ignorant.

Charley Reese
War, n: A time-tested political tactic guaranteed to raise a president’s popularity rating by at least 30 points. It is especially useful during election years and economic downturns.

Chaz Bufe
War in the end is always about betrayal, betrayal of the young by the old, of soldiers by politicians, and of idealists by cynics.

Chris Hedges
In war, we always deform ourselves, our essence.

Chris Hedges
The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment.

Chris Hedges
After victory, you have more enemies.

Cicero
True patriotism hates injustice in its own land more than anywhere else.

Clarence Darrow
Hell hath no fury like a non-combatant.

C.L. Montague
Quote from “Among the Dead Cities,” by A.C. Grayling (Walker & Co., 2006).
War should be the politics of last resort. And when we go to war, we should have a purpose that our people understand and support.

Colin Powell
Chauvinism is a proud and bellicose form of patriotism…which equates the national honor with military victory.

Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps
The dangerous patriot…is a defender of militarism and its ideals of war and glory.

Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps
The dangerous patriot…drifts into chauvinism and exhibits blind enthusiasm for military actions.

Colonel James A. Donovan, Marine Corps
You cannot be on one hand dedicated to peace and on the other dedicated to violence. Those two things are irreconcilable.

Condoleeza Rice
Comment trying to convince mideast policy makers Russia, the EU and the UN to stop aid to the new Hamas Palestinian government; 1/30/06.
Setting a good example is a far better way to spread ideals than through force of arms.

Congressman Ron Paul
War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.

Congressman Ron Paul
As a rule of thumb, if the government wants you to know it, it probably isn’t true.

Craig Murray
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised “for the good of its victims” may be the most oppressive.

C. S. Lewis
Do not waste time bothering whether you “love” your neighbor; act as if you did.

C.S. Lewis
Lewis (1898-1963) was an Irish author and scholar, most famous for his ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ series. (From ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)

Peace will be realized only by forging bonds of trust between people at the deepest level, in the depths of their very lives.

Daisaku Ikeda
From his proposals for peace. Ikeda is President of Soka Gakkai International
All forms of violence, especially war, are totally unacceptable as means to settle disputes between and among nations, groups and persons.

Dalai Lama
I am a steadfast follower of the doctrine of non-violence which was first preached by Lord Buddha, whose divine wisdom is absolute…

Dalai Lama
When the largest industry in the world is no longer War, I will accept Darwin’s theory of Evolution.

Dale S. Mugford
Today the real test of America’s power and wisdom is not our capacity to make war but our capacity to prevent it.

Dale Turner
from an article in The Seattle Times, 1/11/03.
Societies can be sunk by the weight of buried ugliness.

Daniel Goleman
There is nothing politically right that is morally wrong.

Daniel O’Connell
Tis nobler to lose honor to save the lives of men than it is to gain honor by taking them.

David Borenstein
You cannot win a War on Terrorism. It’s like having a war on jealousy.

David Cross
Cross is a comedian, most well known for his roles on the television series “Arrested Development” and “Mr. Show.” This quote is from his 2002 comedy album.
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
The heights of popularity and patriotism are still the beaten road to power and tyranny…

David Hume
You are not going to get peace with millions of armed men. The chariot of peace cannot advance over a road littered with cannon.

David Lloyd
War creates peace like hate creates love.

David L. Wilson
Remember that a government big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take away everything you have.

Davy Crockett
From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step.

Denis Diderot
The question in my mind is how many additional American casualties is Saddam worth? And the answer is not very damned many.

Dick Cheney
Speaking to the Discovery Institute after the first Gulf War, on 8/14/1992, when he was Secretary of Defense.
There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it, and that’s just a fact.

Donald Rumsfeld
Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war.

Donald Rumsfeld
It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives.

Dorothy Thompson
Peace…is the product of Faith, Strength, Energy, Will, Sympathy, Justice, Imagination, and the triumph of principle.

Dorothy Thompson
Peace has to be created, in order to be maintained. It will never be achieved by passivity and quietism.

Dorothy Thompson
Dress it as we may…huzza it, and sing swaggering songs about it, what is war, nine times out of ten, but murder in uniform?

Douglas Jerrold
The best defense is no offense.

Dr. Ivan Eland
We must pursue peaceful end through peaceful means.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
“Rules of engagement” are a set of guidelines for murder.

Dr. Teresa Whitehurst

Conflict cannot survive without your participation.

Dr. Wayne Dyer
Nothing except a battle lost can be half as melancholy as a battle won.

Duke of Wellington
Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. Frankly, I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
from 1953
We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
There is no glory in battle worth the blood it costs.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
May we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Disarmament, with mutual honor and confidence, is a continuing imperative.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Together we must learn how to compose difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
This world of ours…must avoid becoming a community of dreadful fear and hate, and be, instead, a proud confederation of mutual trust and respect.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
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 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
How far can you go without destroying from within what you are trying to defend from without?

Dwight D. Eisenhower
War settles nothing.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
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
You can’t have this kind of war. There just aren’t enough bulldozers to scrape the bodies off the streets.

Dwight D. Eisenhower
The time not to become a father is eighteen years before a war.

E. B. White
Wisdom is better than weapons of war.

Ecclesiastes 9:18
Tyrants seldom want pretexts.

Edmund Burke
I venture to say no war can be long carried on against the will of the people.

Edmund Burke
A Patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

Edward Abbey
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.

Edward Abbey
Our “neoconservatives” are neither new nor conservative, but old as Babylon and evil as Hell.

Edward Abbey
A naturalist and author, Abbey lived from 1927-1989.
The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other–instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.

Edward Abbey
A naturalist and author, Abbey lived from 1927-1989.

Education is a better safeguard of liberty than a standing army.

Edward Everett
As long as mankind shall bestow more liberal applause on their destroyers than on their benefactors, the thirst for military glory will remain the vice of the most exalted characters.

Edward Gibbon
Violence is an admission that one’s ideas and goals cannot prevail on their own merits.

Edward M. Kennedy
Kennedy (b. 1932) is a U.S. Senator (D, MA). (from ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)
We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.

Edward R. Murrow
All the gods are dead except the god of war.

Eldridge Cleaver
It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe it. And it isn’t enough to believe in it. One must work at it.

Eleanor Roosevelt
Roosevelt (1884-1962) was the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and an outspoken political activist in her own right. (From ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)
All wars eventually act as boomerangs and the victor suffers as much as the vanquished.

Eleanor Roosevelt
from “My Day,” February 7, 1939
Rulers who want to unleash war know very well that they must procure or invent a first victim.

Elias Canetti
My theory is, strong people don’t need strong leaders.

Ella Baker
Baker (1903-1986) was an African American civil rights worker. (quote from ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)
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
Most quarrels are inevitable at the time; incredible afterwards.

E. M. Forster
History is littered with wars which everybody knew would never happen.

Enoch Powell
The first casualty of war is not truth, but perspective. Once that’s gone, truth, like compassion, reason, and all the other virtues, wanders around like a wounded orphan.

Ente Grillenhaft
from “Treatise on Reason and Hysteria”
War is the blackest villainy of which human nature is capable.

Erasmus
Dulce bellum inexpertis (War is delightful to the inexperienced).

Erasmus, the 16th-century scholar
History is replete with examples of empires mounting impressive military campaigns on the cusp of their impending economic collapse.

Eric Alterman
Alterman is an American journalist, born in 1960. (quote from ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)
A hospital alone shows what war is.

Erich Maria Remarque
The 1st panacea of a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the 2nd is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; a permanent ruin.

Ernest Hemingway
No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

Ernest Hemingway
You can wipe out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

Ernest Hemingway
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
from “Notes on the Next War,” published in Esquire Magazine, 1935.
For me war has become a flat, black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and an exhaustion of the spirit.

Ernie Pyle
No war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people.

Eugene Debs
(1855-1926)
God hates violence. He has ordained that all men fairly possess their property, not seize it.

Euripides
Wars should be over in three days or less…and the American people must be all for it from the outset.

Evan Thomas

I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask, ‘Mother, what was war?’

Eve Merriam
‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

FA Hayek
We must get away from the idea that America is to be the leader of the world in everything.

Francis John McConnell
We need a type of patriotism that recognizes the virtues of those who are opposed to us.

Francis John McConnell
All wars come to an end, at least temporarily. But the authority acquired by the state hangs on; political power never abdicates.

Frank Chodorov
The State acquires power… and because of its insatiable lust for power it is incapable of giving up any of it. The State never abdicates.

Frank Chodorov
The pertinent question: if Americans did not want these wars should they have been compelled to fight them?

Frank Chodorov
It is not that power corrupts but that power is a magnet to the corruptible.

Frank Herbert
All governments suffer a recurring problem: Power attracts pathological personalities.

Frank Herbert
The evils of government are directly proportional to the tolerance of the people.

Frank Kent
In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth.

Franklin D. Roosevelt
The life of the nation is secure only while the nation is honest, truthful, and virtuous.

Frederick Douglass
If my soldiers were to begin to think, not one of them would remain in the army.

Frederick the Great
Wars are the hobbies of half-informed children who have somehow come into possession of the levers of power.

Fred Reed
You can read Fred Reed’s articles on LewRockwell.com: http://www.lewrockwell.com/reed/reed-arch.html
When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.

Fredric Bastiat
Governments have never learned anything from history, or acted on principles deducted from it.

Friedrich Hebbel, German poet and dramatist
Under conditions of peace the warlike man attacks himself.

Friedrich Nietzsche
The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

Friedrich Nietzsche
If, finally, violence meets with violence, we have confirmation of the age old adage that war though it kills many men, makes many more men evil.

Fritz Medicus
The winds that blow our billions away return burdened with themes of scorn and dispraise.

Garet Garrett
With no notice to the American people…this country entered the war…Stranger than the fact was the passive acceptance of it.

Garet Garrett
Is it security you want? There is no security at the top of the world.

Garet Garrett
Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

Gary Wills
I want to scare the hell out of the rest of the world.

General Colin Powell

In war, as it is waged now, with the enormous losses on both sides, both sides will lose. It is a form of mutual suicide.

General Douglas MacArthur
MacArthur was an American army general who lived 1880-1964. (quote from ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)
I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on the endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations.

General Douglas MacArthur
MacArthur was an American army general who lived 1880-1964. (quote from ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ edited Eric Groves, Sr., pub. Quirk Books, 2008)
Our country is now geared to an arms economy bred in an artificually induced psychosis of war hysteria and an incessant propaganda of fear.

General Douglas MacArthur
Always there has been some terrible evil at home or some monstrous foreign power that was going to gobble us up if we did not blindly rally behind it.

General Douglas MacArthur
Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear – kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor – with the cry of grave national emergency.

General Douglas MacArthur
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 artificially induced psychosis of war hysteria and nurtured upon an incessant propaganda of fear.

General Douglas MacArthur
As far as I am concerned, war itself is immoral.

General Omar Bradley
U.S. Five Star General.
War: A wretched debasement of all the pretenses of civilization.

General Omar N. Bradley
We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.

General Omar N. Bradley
Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.

General Omar N. Bradley
War is a racket. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

General Smedley Butler
War is a racket. It always has been. It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious.

General Smedley Butler
There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket.

General Smedley Butler
War is just a racket…I believe in adequate defense at the coastline and nothing else.

General Smedley Butler
My mental faculties remained in suspended animation while I obeyed the orders of the higher-ups. This is typical with everyone in the military.

General Smedley Butler (USMC, Ret.)
People who are anxious to bring on war don’t know what they are bargaining for; they don’t see all the horrors that must accompany such an event.

General Stonewall Jackson
1824-1863. Confederate General of the US Civil War.
It is painful enough to discover with what unconcern they speak of war and threaten it. I have seen enough of it to make me look upon it as the sum of all evils.

General Stonewall Jackson
1824-1863. Confederate General of the US Civil War.
Putting aside all the fancy words and academic doubletalk, the basic reason for having a military is to do two jobs –to kill people and to destroy.

General Thomas S. Power
Any forces that would impose their will on other nations will certainly face defeat.

General Vo Nguyen Giap (Vietnam)
War is at best barbarism. Its glory is all moonshine…War is hell.

General William Tecumseh Sherman
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.

General William Tecumseh Sherman
War is fear cloaked in courage.

General William Westmoreland
The military doesn’t start wars. The politicians start wars.

General William Westmoreland
Vietnam was the first war ever fought without censorship. Without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.

General William Westmoreland
Cruelty must be whitewashed by a moral excuse, and pretense of reluctance.

George Bernard Shaw

Man is the only animal of which I am thoroughly and cravenly afraid…There is no harm in a well-fed lion. It has no ideals, no sect, no party…

George Bernard Shaw
I can tell you this: If I’m ever in a position to call the shots, I’m not going to rush to send somebody else’s kids into a war.

George H. W. Bush
There can be no public or private virtue unless the foundation of action is the practice of truth.

George Jacob Holyoake
Holyoke (1817-1906) was an English secularist.
I’m fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.

George McGovern
The war is waged against its own subjects and its object is not the victory…but to keep the very structure of society intact.

George Orwell
from his book ‘1984,’ published in 1949.
The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continuous.

George Orwell
from his book ‘1984,’ published in 1949.
During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.

George Orwell
Political language. . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable

George Orwell
from his ‘Politics and the English Language.’
All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting.

George Orwell
This quote comes from “Homage to Catalonia,” Orwell’s 1936 eyewitness account of the Spanish Civil War.
The nationalist not only does not disapprove of atrocities committed by his own side, he has a remarkable capacity for not even hearing about them.

George Orwell
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

George Orwell
This quote is spoken by the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s novel, “1984.”
War is a way of shattering to pieces…materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable and…too intelligent.

George Orwell
This quote is spoken by the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s novel, “1984.”
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labor.

George Orwell
This quote is spoken by the character of Emmanuel Goldstein in Orwell’s novel, “1984.”
Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

George Orwell
War against a foreign country only happens when the moneyed classes think they are going to profit from it.

George Orwell
It is far easier to make war than peace.

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

Georges Clemenceau
Hate is able to provoke disorders, to ruin a social organization, to cast a country into a period of bloody revolutions; but it produces nothing.

Georges Sorel
My first wish is to see this plague of mankind, war, banished from the earth.

George Washington
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all.

George Washington
President Washington lived from 1732-1799. (From ‘The Anti-War Quote Book,’ Quirk Books, Ed. by Eric Groves Sr.)
Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

George Washington
The constitution vests the power of declaring war in Congress; therefore no offensive expedition of importance can be undertaken until after they shall have deliberated upon the subject and authorized such a measure.

George Washington
It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any portion of the foreign world.

George Washington
Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force…Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

George Washington
Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.

George Washington