Quotes about war
page 13

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

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“It wasn't so easy though, ending the war. A war is a huge fire; the ashes from it drift far, and settle slowly.”

Source: The Blind Assassin

“Yeah? What'd you name all those cats?"

Death, Famine, Pestilence, War, and Mr. Whiskers."

You named your cats after the riders of the apocal--wait. Mr. Whiskers?"

Well, there are only four horsemen.”

Richelle Mead (1976) American writer

Source: Storm Born

Death, Cats, Waiting

“Every war is a murderous struggle between foes. And yet, no army has ever marched into battle believing that the Creator had sided with their enemy.”

Terry Goodkind book Wizard's First Rule

Source: Wizard's First Rule

“One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq with the war on terror.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

September 7, 2006 interview with Katie Couric http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhR04RkBFhs YouTube
2000s, 2006

Parting

“As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

“Any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Support

“War is life multiplied by some number that no one has ever heard of.”

Sebastian Junger (1962) American author, journalist and documentarian

Source: War

Life

“The war which is coming
Is not the first one. There were
Other wars before it.
When the last one came to an end
There were conquerors and conquered.
Among the conquered the common people
Starved. Among the conquerors
The common people starved too.”

Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956) German poet, playwright, theatre director

Source: Poems 1913-1956

People

“A prisoner of war is a man who tries to kill you and fails, and then asks you not to kill him.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

“Every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected. Every war constitutes an irony of situation because its means are so melodramatically disproportionate to its presumed ends.”

Paul Fussell book The Great War and Modern Memory

Source: The Great War and Modern Memory

“And I could see his internal struggle become an all out war. "It wouldn't have made a difference. Not with Adrian involved," he said….. "I meant it. I won't be that guy Rose. I won't be that man that takes someone else's girlfriend.”

Richelle Mead book Last Sacrifice

Source: Last Sacrifice

Guy

“When old friends get together, everything else fades to insignificance."- War, Famine, Pestilence, and Death”

Robert Lynn Asprin book Myth Directions

Source: Myth Directions

Death

“I'm fed up to the ears with old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.”

George S. McGovern (1922–2012) American politician, Congressman, senator, Democratic presidential candidate

Men, Dreams

“There’ll always be wars because men love wars. Women don’t, but men do..”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Love, Women, Men

“There is a war that makes us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

“If you need to stop an asteroid, you call Superman. If you need to solve a mystery, you call Batman. But if you need to end a war, you call Wonder Woman.”

Gail Simone (1974) writer

“So long as there are men, there will be wars.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Men

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

Will Rogers (1879–1935) American humorist and entertainer

The Autobiography of Will Rogers (1949)
Variant: You can't say that civilization don't advance, however, for in every war they kill you in a new way.

Way

“If you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel. That's literally true.”

Milton Friedman (1912–2006) American economist, statistician, and writer

One role of prohibition is in making the drug market more lucrative.
America's Drug Forum interview (1991)

“Him and God are supposed to be at war with each other. But if God hates sin and Satan punishes the sinners, aren’t they working the same side of the street? Aren’t the judge and the executioner on the same team?”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: Horns

God, Hate

“Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.”

Sinclair Lewis book Main Street

Source: Main Street

Pleasure, Nature

“I cannot have chaos erupting around me until I am prepared for it. I am a collector. I am an observer. I don't participate. My resources, and my standing, must be secure before I can allow the uncertainty of war to crash down upon us.”

Derek Landy Skulduggery Pleasant

Source: Skulduggery Pleasant

“War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god.”

Cormac McCarthy (1933) American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter

The judge
Blood Meridian (1985)
Source: Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West

God, Game

“A man goes to knowledge as he goes to war: wide-awake, with fear, with respect, and with absolute assurance. Going to knowledge or going to war in any other manner is a mistake, and whoever makes it might never live to regret it”

Carlos Castaneda (1925–1998) Peruvian-American author

Source: The Wheel of Time: Shamans of Ancient Mexico, Their Thoughts About Life, Death and the Universe, (1998), Quotations from The Teachings of Don Juan (Chapter 4)

Fear, Knowledge

“There is no man, and no place, without war. The only thing we can do is choose a side, and fight. That is the only choice we get - who we fight for, who we fight against. That is life.”

Gregory David Roberts book Shantaram

Source: Shantaram

Life, Fight

“All war represents a failure of diplomacy.”

Tony Benn (1925–2014) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1991/feb/28/the-gulf in the House of Commons (28 February 1991) 1990s

Failure

“Hestia shook her head. "I am here because when all else fails, when all the other mighty gods have gone off to war, I am all that's left. Home. Hearth. I am the last Olympian”

Rick Riordan book The Last Olympian

Source: The Last Olympian

God, Home

“Every time we walk along a beach some ancient urge disturbs us so that we find ourselves shedding shoes and garments or scavenging among seaweed and whitened timbers like the homesick refugees of a long war.”

Loren Eiseley (1907–1977) US philosopher (1907-1977)

Source: The Unexpected Universe

Shoe, Time

“In love we find out who we want to be, in war we find out who we are.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Love

“Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

"My Uncle Sosthenes"
Source: The Complete Short Stories Vol. 2 of 3

Religion

“The opposite of war isn't peace… It's creation!”

Jonathan Larson (1960–1996) American composer and playwright

Rent (1996)

Peace

“Remember that even in war there is a time for restraint. A time to hold back your sword.”

Suzanne Collins book Gregor and the Code of Claw

Source: Gregor and the Code of Claw

Time

“There’s no condition one adjusts to so quickly as a state of war.”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

“The Imperial Service could win a war without coffee, but would prefer not to have to.”

Lois McMaster Bujold Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Source: Captain Vorpatril's Alliance

Coffee

“One day President Roosevelt told me that he was asking publicly for suggestions about what the war should be called. I said at once 'The Unnecessary War.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948).
Post-war years (1945–1955)

“In War: Resolution. In Defeat: Defiance. In Victory: Magnanimity. In Peace: Good Will.”

Winston S. Churchill book The Second World War

Post-war years (1945–1955) Source: The Second World War, Volume I : The Gathering Storm (1948) Moral of the Work, p. ix http://books.google.de/books?id=HzlT3t05OHoC&pg=PR9#v=onepage&q&f=false

Peace, Victory

“Soldiers don't complain… I am not going to do it; I will pretend this is part of a war.”

Frances Hodgson Burnett A Little Princess

Source: A Little Princess

Parting

“For the sake of one soul. For one loved one. For one life." I called power into my blasting rod, and its tip glowed incandescent white. "The way I see it, there's nothing else worth fighting a war for.”

Jim Butcher book Grave Peril

Source: Grave Peril

Love, Life, Way, Soul

“War is not heroic. War is not exhilarating. War is full of despair. It is dark. It is dreadful. It is a thing of sorrow and gloom. That is why people fear war. That is why people choose to avoid it.
~Izuru Kira”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

People, Fear, Despair

“There is no greater evil than killing. I don't care whether they call it war or justice. Life is precious.”

Brian Jacques book Mossflower

Source: Mossflower

Life, Justice, Evil

“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Warren Buffett (1930) American business magnate, investor, and philanthropist

“How can you be a survivor, when you can't even remember the war?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

“Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat. Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars.”

John Steinbeck book The Moon Is Down

Source: The Moon Is Down

Men, Fight

“Men and boys always want to go fight. They are always looking for a reason to go to war. It is the saddest thing. They have this abiding notion that war is fun. And no history lesson will convince them differently.”

Kate DiCamillo book Because of Winn-Dixie

Source: Because of Winn-Dixie

Men, History, Boy, Fight

“There is a war between the ones who say there is a war and the ones who say there isn't.”

Leonard Cohen (1934–2016) Canadian poet and singer-songwriter

“Macon: “It’s true. And if that doesn’t work, use the Jedi Mind Trick. But only if you really have to.”
Halley: “The what?”
Macon: “The Jedi Mind Trick.” He looked at me. “Didn’t you ever see Star Wars?”

Sarah Dessen (1970) American writer

Source: Someone Like You

Star

“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 (1890–1976) English mystery and detective writer

Peaceful, Feeling

“Relax," Chiron told me. "Keep a clear head. And remember, you may be about to prevent the biggest war in human history."
"Relax," I said. "I'm very relaxed.”

Rick Riordan book The Lightning Thief

Source: The Lightning Thief

History

“It's not a war on drugs, it's a war on personal freedom.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Freedom, Personality

“How is it possible to have a civil war?”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

“Men make war to get attention. All killing is an expression of self-hate.”

Alice Walker (1944) American author and activist

Men, Hate

“Fool!" cried the hunchback. "You fell victim to one of the classic blunders. The most famous is 'Never get involved in a land war in Asia,' but only slightly less well known is this: 'Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line.”

William Goldman book The Princess Bride

Source: The Princess Bride

Death, Fools

“Words are the wellspring of the world, and language is the most powerful weapon in the ancient and still unfolding war between truth and lies.”

Dean Koontz (1945) American author

Source: Innocence

Truth, World

“Wars are poor chisels for carving out peaceful tomorrows.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

Peace

“At that moment, something shifted sweetly inside him. It was forgiveness, beautiful and effortless and complete. For Louie Zamperini, the war was over.”

Laura Hillenbrand book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Source: Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption

Beauty, Forgiveness

“I am waiting for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe for anarchy”

Lawrence Ferlinghetti book A Coney Island of the Mind

Source: A Coney Island of the Mind

World, Waiting

“I am a war president.”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

Source: 2010s, 2010, Decision Points (November 2010), p. 476-477
Context: It's too early to say how most of my decisions will turn out. As president, I had the honor of eulogizing Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan. President Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon, once regarded as one of the worst mistakes in presidential history, is now viewed as a selfless act of leadership. And it was quite something to hear the commentators who had once denounced President Reagan as a dunce and a warmonger talk about how the Great Communicator had won the Cold War. Decades from now, I hope people will view me as a president who recognized the central challenge of our time and kept my vow to keep the country safe; who pursued my convictions without wavering but changed course when necessary; who trusted individuals to make choices in their lives; and who used America's influence to advance freedom. And I hope they will conclude that I upheld the honor and dignity of the office I was so privileged to hold. Whatever the verdict on my presidency, I'm comfortable with the fact that I won't be around to hear it. That's a decision point only history will reach.

“He describes him in general terms, as the most incomprehensible and formidable among men; as engaged in schemes, reasonably suspected to be, in the highest degree, criminal, but such as no human intelligence is able to unravel: that his ends are pursued by means which leave it in doubt whether he be not in league with some infernal spirit: that his crimes have hitherto been perpetrated with the aid of some unknown but desperate accomplices: that he wages a perpetual war against the happiness of mankind, and sets his engines of destruction at work against every object that presents itself.”

Charles Brockden Brown (1771–1810) American novelist, historian and editor

Wieland; or, the Transformation (1798)

Men, Intelligence, Happiness

“The French regarded this as a betrayal. It was. They spoke of being cheated by their wartime allies. They were. Clemenceau whose outspoken sympathies for Britain and America (he had been a newspaper correspondent in the United States shortly after the Civil War, had learned American English and married an American) had earned charges from the Right before the war that he was an Anglo-Saxon "tool", was embittered and disillusioned. As the Premier who had pulled France together in the closing period of the war, he realized what so many Frenchmen tended to forget, that without British and American help the war could not in the end have been won. He saw too that without Anglo-American promises of military aid in the future it would be beyond France's power to repel the next German invasion. He had been promised that aid in return for giving up the security of the Rhine, which his generals had demanded. Now France had neither.”

William L. Shirer book The Collapse of the Third Republic

The Collapse of the Third Republic (1969)

Learning, Betrayal, Future, Help

“Then your leaders, though holding a majority in the other branch of Congress, were heroic enough to withdraw from their seats and fling down the gage of mortal battle. We called it rebellion; but we recognized it as courageous and manly to avow your purpose, take all the risks, and fight it out in the open field. Notwithstanding your utmost efforts to destroy it, the government was saved. Year by year, since the war ended, those who resisted you have come to believe that you have finally renounced your purpose to destroy, and are willing to maintain the government. In that belief you have been permitted to return to power in the two Houses.”

James A. Garfield (1831–1881) American politician, 20th President of the United States (in office in 1881)

1870s, Speech (1879)

Courage, Effort, Fight, Housing

“The more clearly we express it that the whole weight of our future victories will lie on our enemies, the more, in my opinion, will it tend to shorten the war. We have covered a considerable distance towards peace. The Entente no longer has any possibility of beating us economically. Do they think they can beat us militarily, now that our position in the West has become better that it ever was? If the statesmen of the Entente wanted understanding, they ought to have taken advantage of the situation now, when the Reich Chancellor has offered them the hand of understanding. They are playing a wanton game with their misguided peoples. Let the example of Russia be a warning to them. Russia, which offered us the hand of understanding, could have obtained a good peace of understanding if she had not risked this peace through the arrogance of Trotsky. May this struggle bring us victory, but may it also bring the benefits of this victory for Germany's future.”

Gustav Stresemann (1878–1929) German politician, statesman, and Nobel Peace Prize laureate

1910s, Speech in the Reichstag, 18 March 1918

People, Lie, Peace, Game

“We are not born of the passions of war or of the fervours of revolution. And we grew quietly into the realization that, set as we are in a great wide land, with all our differences, there are certain traditions and ideals which we had in common, and which could best be preserved in a distinct society of our own.”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address to the Canadian Club of Vancouver, October 14, 1952
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Passion

“There can be no real peace when living with someone who has already declared war, no peace but capitulation. And even that, as we see around us, doesn't lead to further peace but to further degradation and exploitation. We're responsible for not only what we do but for what is in our power to stop. Before we can speak of peace, we have to speak honestly of stopping, by any and all means possible, those who have declared war on the world and on us. Those who destroy wont stop because we ask nicely. There is only one language that they understand, and everyone here knows what it is. Yet we don't speak of it openly.”

Derrick Jensen book A Language Older Than Words

A Language Older Than Words (2000)

World, Peace, Understanding

“I've always understood that we went to war on account of the thing we quarreled with the north about. I've never heard of any other cause of quarrel than slavery.”

John S. Mosby (1833–1916) Confederate Army officer

Letter https://archive.is/jcaoZ (1894), as quoted in The Confederate Battle Flag: America’s Most Embattled Emblem https://books.google.com/books?id=zs0VJTbNwfAC&pg=PA67#v=onepage&q&f=false (2005), by John M. Coski Letter (1894)

“Kunti, or Pritha, is the daughter of Shoora of the Vrishnis, given away when just a child to her father’s childless friend Kuntibhoja. This rankles deep within her; she voices her resentment pointedly both before and after the Kurukshetra war. Growing up in Kuntibhoja’s apartments, she finds no mother; Kuntibhoja himself hands her over, in adolescence, to the vagaries of the eccentric, w:Irascibleirascible and fiery sage Durvasa. Should she displease the sage, she is warned, it will dishonour her guardian’s clan as well as her own.”

Kunti character from Indian epic Mahabharata

Five Holy Virgins, Five Sacred MythsOf Kunti and Satyawati Sexually Assertive Women of the Mahabharata

Daughters

“The most pertinent fact about the new state of things after Constantine and Augustine is not that Christians were no longer persecuted and began to be privileged, nor that emperors built churches and presided over ecumenical deliberations about the Trinity; what matters is that the two visible realities, church and world, were fused. There is no longer anything to call "world"; state, economy, art, rhetoric, superstition, and war have all been baptized.”

Constantinianism Policies

John Howard Yoder, "The Otherness of the Church" (1961) in A Reader in Ecclesiology (2012), p. 200

World, Art, Reality

“…Do not think the war that we are waging is the Islamic State’s war alone. Rather, it is the Muslims’ war altogether. It is the war of every Muslim in every place, and the Islamic State is merely the spearhead in this war. It is but the war of the people of faith against the people of disbelief…”

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi (1971–2019) leader of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant

As quoted in "Isis leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi resurfaces in audio urging supporters to join terror group", Independent (15 May 2015)
2014, 2015
Source: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-resurfaces-in-audio-urging-supporters-to-join-terror-group-10251955.html

People, Faith, Thinking

“The occupation of Iraq is completely self-perpetuating: The worse things get the more we are obliged to stay. And the longer we stay the worse things get. Wonderful, no? Being trapped in Iraq, moreover, has clearly prevented us from tackling Iran with any traction. One argument commonly made for staying in Iraq makes no sense to me at all. It's McCain's "if we leave, they will follow us home." But if we stay, they can follow us home as well. And by staying, we have clearly created more of them to follow us. The second argument that fails to convince is that by leaving, we give al Qaeda a propaganda coup. Yes, we would, and it would be intellectually dishonest to deny that. Any argument for withdrawal needs to take that into account. But by staying and losing, we also give al Qaeda a propaganda coup. And by constantly giving al Qaeda an anti-imperial narrative, we also prevent Muslims and Arabs from recognizing them for what they are: not anti-imperial liberators but theo-fascists.
It's becoming clearer and clearer to me that if we want to win this long war, we have to leave Iraq. Sooner rather than later.”

Andrew Sullivan (1963) Journalist, writer, blogger

"Iraq and Gaza, Ctd" http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2007/06/iraq_and_gaza_c.html, The Daily Dish (14 June 2007)

Home, Sense

“I understand that the bombing ended the war, and I think that it couldn't be helped.”

Fumio Kyūma (1940) Japanese politician

"Kyuma: Atomic Bombs Ended World War II" http://web.archive.org/web/20070705190151/http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/06/30/ap/world/main3001345.shtml, CBS News (2007-06-30).

Understanding, Thinking, Help

“We are talking here about the future: about the lives of people in the world without wars, without social oppression, without national inequality, without suppression of human’s abilities. In other word, it is about the future that we all call Communism. We strive to imagine (and show to the viewer) the reality of the 21st century - the life of future humans developing, solving their difficulties and problems but being already on the new levels of cognition and morality. But the foundation of that future is being laid now. We strive to represent the future people as vivid and free, in the unity of their joys and cares, poetry and prose of their life. We are in no way satisfied with the primitive and unconvincing image of "people of the future", which can be observed in some works of literature and cinema. At the same time, we consider our work to be polemical with the many books and movies produced by the bourgeois world, which tend to see the future in an apocalyptic or technocratic way, affirming a sort of disbelief in the strength and capabilities of a human being.”

Andrei Tarkovsky (1932–1986) Soviet and Russian film-maker, writer, film editor, film theorist, theatre and opera director

Letter to the central committee of the CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) https://varjag2007su.livejournal.com/2591915.html?utm_source=fbsharing&utm_medium=social (20 October 1970).

Life, People, Books, World

“The twentieth century has witnessed with surprise, not merely the promulgation of these ferocious doctrines, but their enforcement with brutal vigour by the Government and by the populace. No past services, no proved patriotism, even wounds sustained in war, could procure immunity for persons whose only crime was that their parents had brought them into the world. Every kind of persecution, grave or petty, upon the world-famous scientists, writers, and composers at the top down to the wretched little Jewish children in the national schools, was practised, was glorified, and is still being practised and glorified.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

"Hitler and His Choice", The Strand Magazine (November 1935), quoted in Martin Gilbert, Prophet of Truth: Winston S. Churchill, 1922–1939 (London: Minerva, 1990), p. 681
The 1930s

Children, World, School, Parent

“Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be Commander-in-Chief? Donald Trump can't even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. When he's gotten a tough question from a reporter. When he's challenged in a debate. When he sees a protestor at a rally. Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons. I can't put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started – not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men – the ones moved by fear and pride.”

Hillary Clinton (1947) American politician, senator, Secretary of State, First Lady

Presidential campaign (April 12, 2015 – 2016), 2016 Democratic National Convention (July 28, 2016)

Men, Fear, Imagination, Question

“The century of revolution in the United States after the Civil War was economic, not political, freeing households from an unremitting daily grind of painful manual labor, household drudgery, darkness, isolation, and early death. Only one hundred years later, daily life had changed beyond recognition. Manual outdoor jobs were replaced by work in air-conditioned environments, housework was increasingly performed by electric appliances, darkness was replaced by light, and isolation was replaced not just by travel, but also by color television images bringing the world into the living room. Most important, a newborn infant could expect to live not to age forty-five, but to age seventy-two. The economic revolution of 1870 to 1970 was unique in human history, unrepeatable because so many of its achievements could happen only once.”

Robert J. Gordon (1940) American economist

Source: The Rise and Fall of American Growth, 2016, p. 1 ; Lead paragraph

Life, Death, Pain, Age

“First, we didn't know ourselves. We thought we were going into another Korean war, but this was a different country. Secondly, we didn't know our South Vietnamese allies. We never understood them, and that was another surprise. And we knew even less about North Vietnam. Who was Ho Chi Minh? Nobody really knew. So, until we know the enemy and know our allies and know ourselves, we'd better keep out of this dirty kind of business. It's very dangerous.”

Maxwell D. Taylor (1901–1987) United States general

As quoted in The Certain Trumpet: Maxwell Taylor and the American Experience in Vietnam (1991) by Douglas Kinnard, p. 198

Business, Country

“The World War II generation faced threats head-on. Now, by inactivity or through liberal self-loathing, we help those who are trying to kill us.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Scorched Earth: Restoring the Country after Obama (2016)

World, Help

“Milosevic was convinced that he could create Greater Serbia on the ruins of Yugoslavia, which is why he entered the war adventure that left thousands and thousands dead, a destroyed economy, infrastructure, homes, cities and villages. That politics did not succeed. Dodik, basically, wants to achieve Milosevic’s aims, but not with artillery, but thinks that some sort of politics will lead to people saying: okay, let them break away, let them link with Serbia. That cannot pass.”

Stjepan Mesić (1934) Former Croatian and Yugoslav president

President: Dodik Carries Out Milosevic's Politics, Dalje, 28 February 2009, 17 January 2013 http://www.javno.com/en-croatia/president--dodik-carries-out-milosevics-politics_238621, Criticizing Republika Srpska and its leader Milorad Dodik.

People, Home, Thinking, Dead

“The now famous slogan 'keep calm and carry on' poster from 1939 was designed as a motivational poster for people living in cities expecting to be bombed by the Nazis. But the UK wasn't just 'keeping calm': we had taken a stand like no other country in the world and declared war on a barbaric regime which was a global threat to peace and security. Today, as we wait to hear news from Manchester following the slaughter and maiming of innocent children, we have people calling for us to do nothing. But it's not the same 'carry on' as in 1939: they want us to accept terror attacks as a part of life we should now accept. Well, I don't accept it. How many people are we going to sacrifice on the alter (sic) of political correctness before we build up the courage to confront what most people will happily admit to their friends and family: that we are facing a continuing threat from radical Islam which hashtags and tea lights will not stop?”

Jane Collins (1962) British politician

Jane Collins MEP responds to terror attacks in Manchester http://jane-collins.org/news.php?id=79. Item on official website (May 23, 2017).

Life, Children, People, World

“It is a curious thing that relatively little attention has been directed toward working out methods for keeping the peace in a disarmed world. The technological The technological developments of the last twenty years have made disarmament a major concern of most nations, for it has become apparent that war is no longer an effective means for settling disputes between the great powers.”

John R. Platt (1918–1992) American physicist

Alexander Rich and John R. Platt (1966) "How to Keep the Peace" in: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. April 1966. p. 14

World, Peace

“What we're gonna find out, Bob, in the next six to nine months is whether we have liberated a country or uncorked a civil war.”

Thomas Friedman (1953) American journalist and author

Face the Nation, October 3, 2004
"The next … months" in Iraq

Country

“We Germans carried our hatred from the First World War to the Second World War, and now you are about to carry the hatred about the murder of 5 million people on to another World War.”

Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953) German Nazi official

To Leon Goldensohn, April 6, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" - by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004

People, World

“We fight wars not to have peace, but to have a peace worth having. Slavery is peace. Tyranny is peace. For that matter, genocide is peace when you get right down to it. The historical consequences of a philosophy predicated on the notion of no war at any cost are families flying to the Super Bowl accompanied by three or four trusted slaves and a Europe devoid of a single living Jew.”

Bill Whittle (1959) author, director, screenwriter, editor

HISTORY https://web.archive.org/web/20030401221233/http://ejectejecteject.com/archives/000039.html (29 March 2003) 2000s

Family, Peace, Fight, Flying

“We don't want to start a nuclear war unless we really have to, now do we Jack?”

Peter Sellers (1925–1980) British film actor, comedian and singer

As "Captain Mandrake" to Colonel Jack Ripper in Dr. Strangelove (1964)
Performances

“You see, essentially, you cannot win the war on terror by military force. It is first and foremost a battle of ideas. It is secondly a law enforcement effort and a cooperative effort among nations. And only as a last resort do you use military force. This president has distorted the capabilities of the United States Armed Forces. He's used our men and women in uniform improperly in Guantanamo and engaged in actions that I think are totally against the Uniform Code of Military Justice and against what we stand for as the American people.”

Wesley Clark (1944) American general and former Democratic Party presidential candidate

92nd Street Y Cultural Center (2007)

Women, Men, People, Justice

“I do not feel guilty of any war crimes, I have only done my duty as an intelligence organ, and I refuse to serve as an ersatz for Himmler.”

Ernst Kaltenbrunner (1903–1946) Austrian-born senior official of Nazi Germany executed for war crimes

Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" - Page 5 - by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995

Feeling, Intelligence

“Can humans exist without some people ruling and others being ruled? The founders of political science did not think so. "I put for a general inclination of mankind, a perpetual and restless desire for power after power, that ceaseth only in death," declared Thomas Hobbes. Because of this innate lust for power, Hobbes thought that life before (or after) the state was a "war of every man against every man"—"solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." Was Hobbes right? Do humans have an unquenchable desire for power that, in the absence of a strong ruler, inevitably leads to a war of all against all? To judge from surviving examples of bands and villages, for the greater part of prehistory our kind got along quite well without so much as a paramount chief, let alone the all-powerful English leviathan King and Mortal God, whom Hobbes believed was needed for maintaining law and order among his fractious countrymen.”

Marvin Harris (1927–2001) American anthropologist

Our Kind: Who We Are, Where We Came From, Where We Are Going (1989)

Life, Death, God, People

“When I behold the scientific and so-called philosophers full of selfish feelings, and of a tenency to war against circumstances and Providence, I say to myself: They are not true priests, they are but half prophets — it not absolutely false ones. They have read the great page simply with the physical eye, and with none of the spirit within. The intellectual, the moral, the religious seem to me all naturally bound up and interlinked together in one great and harmonious whole… That God is one, and that all the works and the feelings He has called into existence are ONE; this is a truth (a biblical and scriptural truth too) not in my opinion developed to the apprehension of most people in its really deep and unfanthomable meaning. There is too much tendency to making separate and independent bundles of both the physical and the moral facts of the universe. Whereas, all and everything is naturally related and interconnected. A volume could I write you on this subject.”

Ada Lovelace (1815–1852) English mathematician, considered the first computer programmer

In a letter to Andrew Crosse, as quoted in Eugen Kölbing's Englische Studien, Volume 19 https://archive.org/stream/englischestudien19leipuoft#page/158/mode/1up (1894), Leipzig; O.R. Reisland, "Byron's Daughter", p. 158.

God, People, Truth, Feeling

“As China is the one nation with the size, population, ideology and power to contest the United States for hegemony in Asia, is war inevitable? Answer: No more inevitable than was war between Germany and Great Britain in 1914.”

Patrick Buchanan (1938) American politician and commentator

2000s, Where the Right Went Wrong (2004)

“The duty of its citizens, then, appears to me too plain to admit of doubt. All should unite in honest efforts to obilterate the effects of the war and restore the blessing of peace. They should remain, if possible, in the country; promote harmony and good feeling, qualify themselves to vote and elect to the State and general legislatures wise and patriotic men, who will devote their abilities to the interests of the country and the healing of all dissensions. I have invariably recommended this course since the cessation of hostilities, and have endeavored to practice it myself.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Letter to Governor Letcher
Variant: The interests of the State are therefore the same as those of the United States. Its prosperity will rise or fall with the welfare of the country. The duty of its citizens, then, appears to me too plain to admit of doubt. All should unite in honest efforts to obliterate the effects of war, and to restore the blessings of peace. They should remain, if possible, in the country; promote harmony and good feeling; qualify themselves to vote; and elect to the State and general Legislatures wise and patriotic men, who will devote their abilities to the interests of the country, and the healing of all dissensions. I have invariably recommended this course since the cessation of hostilities, and have endeavored to practice it myself.

Men, Hostility, Peace, Feeling

“Father, father
We don't need to escalate.
You see, war is not the answer
For only love can conquer hate.
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today.”

Marvin Gaye (1939–1984) American singer-songwriter and musician

What's Going On.
Song lyrics, What's Going On (1971)
Variant: Mother, mother
There's too many of you crying.
Brother, brother, brother
There's far too many of you dying.
You know we've got to find a way
To bring some lovin' here today.

Love, Hate, Way

“The Army of Northern Virginia. Under the superb command of Marse Robert that army's battle flag came close to being a national flag of an independent Confederate States of America. Thank God it did not. But neither were those who fought under that banner executed, imprisoned, permanently disenfranchised, or exiled, as the losers in most other civil wars have been. As Lincoln advised, U. S. Grant, and William T. Sherman 'let 'em up easy'. Thereafter, the battle flag was flown for some bad purposes, as the emblem of the Klan and the Democratic Party's southern wing.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention https://archive.is/QBuxT (22 June 2015), by M. Scheuer. 2010s

God

“We were not faced (in the cold war) in a conflict with people who are prepared to die for their cause. We weren't in conflict with people whose idea is to kill as many as they could.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

Radio interview (November 2008)

People, Idea

“That is why so many Sorelians, like many people on the Left both before and after the war, slid into fascism. When these leftists of all shapes and colors came to the conclusion that the working class had definitely beaten a retreat, they did not follow it into this attitude. Their socialism remained revolutionary when that of the proletariat had ceased to be so. Having to choose between the proletariat and revolution, they chose revolution; having to choose between a proletarian but moderate socialism and a nonproletarian but revolutionary and national socialism, they opted for the nonproletarian revolution, the national revolution.”

Zeev Sternhell (1935) Israeli historian

Source: The Birth of Fascist Ideology: From Cultural Rebellion to Political Revolution, 1994, p. 27

People, Color

“It's coming soon and soon, mother, it's nearer every day,
When only men who work and sweat will have a word to say;
When all who earn their honest bread in every land and soil
Will claim the Brotherhood of Man, the Comradeship of Toil;
When we, the Workers, all demand: `What are we fighting for?”

Robert W. Service Ballads of a Bohemian

. . .
Then, then we'll end that stupid crime, that devil's madness -- War."
Ballads of a Bohemian (1921), Michael

Men, Stupidity, Fight, Madness

“If civilization has an opposite, it is war.”

Ursula K. Le Guin Hainish Cycle

Source: Hainish Cycle, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Chapter 8 “Another Way into Orgoreyn” (p. 101)

“Nobody who has lived through the rise of the violent anti-Semitism which led to Hitler can refuse Mrs. Thatcher admiration for her courageous and outspoken warning. When I grew up in Vienna the established Jewish families were a generally respected group and all decent people would frown upon the occasional anti-Jewish outbursts of a few popular politicians. It was the sudden influx of large numbers of Galician and Polish Jews [during World War I] … which in a short period changed the attitude. They were too visibly different to be readily absorbed.”

Friedrich Hayek (1899–1992) Austrian and British economist and Nobel Prize for Economics laureate

Letter to The Times after Thatcher claimed that British people were afraid of being "swamped" by people of a different culture. (11 February 1978), p. 15
1960s–1970s

People, World, Family, Courage

“Above all, Fascism, in so far as it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism — born of a renunciation of struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the people who have the courage to meet it. All other trials are substitutes, which never really put a man in front of himself in the alternative of life and death.”

Benito Mussolini book The Doctrine of Fascism

"The Doctrine of Fascism" (1932), credited to Mussolini but ghostwritten by Giovanni Gentile; quoted in Fascism, Anti-Fascism, and the Resistance in Italy : 1919 to the Present (2004) by Stanislao G. Pugliese, p. 89
1930s

Life, Death, People, Peace