Quotes about war (6951 quotes, page 21)

“In any conflict, your fate will depend on your action. Do not destroy oil wells, a source of wealth that belongs to the Iraqi people. Do not obey any command to use weapons of mass destruction against anyone, including the Iraqi people. War crimes will be prosecuted. War criminals will be punished. And it will be no defense to say, "I was just following orders."”

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

Ultimatum to Iraq (17 March 2003) http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/mar/18/iraq.usa1
2000s, 2003

Fate , People , Dependency , Wealth

“Everything the British Empire built here will be history. Most of it already is, but it’s a history that has left its mark. In the War Cemetery at Sai Wan Bay you can see it clearly: understated but indelible. The armed forces of Imperial Japan tried to enslave the whole of the East, including Japan itself. Caught up in the terrible war that raged in Asia and the Pacific, a lot of our people who came out here to fight never came home. They died in a good cause. But if the people in this graveyard were somehow to learn that yet another tyranny was on the way, they would find it hard to rest in peace. One of them is my father, who has lain here now for fifty years. He lived and died under our old empire without ever thinking that it was wonderful beyond question. But he thought that it created more than it destroyed, and he was right. The best hope of our last colony is that when the men from the mainland finally take over they will not try to rewrite history by pretending we were never here. Some of us will always be here.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

On the then imminent transfer of sovereignty over Hong Kong from the British Empire to the People's Republic of China. From Clive James' Postcard from Hong Kong.
Television and radio

Men , People , Peace , Hope

“Except for times Fred worked with real professional dancers like Cyd Charisse, it was a twenty five year war.”

Fred Astaire (1899–1987) American dancer, singer, actor, choreographer and television presenter

Hermes Pan, Astaire's principal choreographic collaborator, quoted in Davidson, Bill. The Real and the Unreal. New York: Harper and Bros., 1961. p. 186. (M).

Time

“Whatever name you give it; will, or steady purpose, or onepointedness of the mind, you come back to earnestness, sincerity, honesty. (…) We are complex beings, at war within and without. We contradict ourselves all the time, undoing today the work of yesterday. No wonder we are stuck. A little of integrity would make a lot of difference.”

Nisargadatta Maharaj (1897–1981) Indian guru

Will
Source: I am That, P.119.

Time , Sincerity

“Here's why I think there's something a little odd with George [Bush]. Because a lot of the times when he speaks, his words don't match his face. Something is askew. You can't talk about the war with a smile on your face. He does it constantly. If you're the President, you should go "We're going to talk about the war, I must have a frowny face." The only time you can smile when you're talking about the war in Iraq is when you go, "Well, two Iraqis walk into a bar, hahaha."”

Lewis Black (1948) American stand-up comedian, author, playwright, social critic and actor

Red, White, and Screwed (2006)

Smile , Thinking , Time

“All American and Israeli goods and products should be boycotted in a way that undermines American and Israeli interests so as to act as deterrence to their war against Muslims and Islam that is being waged under the pretense of fighting terrorism. This boycott should become an overwhelming trend that makes these two states feel that their economies are in a real and actual danger.”

Mohammad Hussein Fadlallah (1935–2010) Lebanese faqih

Muslim News June 28, 2002 http://archive.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index.php?article=697

Way , Feeling , Fight

“Americans, 150 years after the Civil War began, are still getting it wrong.”

James W. Loewen (1942) American historian

"Getting the Civil War Right" http://www.tolerance.org/magazine/number-40-fall-2011/feature/getting-civil-war-right (2011)
2010s, 2011

“While we talk, the sun is getting older. It will explode in 4.5 billion years. … In comparison everything else seems insignificant. Wars, conflicts, political tension, shifts in opinion, philosophical debates, even passions—everything’s dead already if this infinite reserve from which you now draw energy to defer answers, if in short thought as a quest, dies out with the sun. … The inevitable explosion to come, the one that’s always forgotten in your intellectual ploys, can be seen in a certain way as coming before the fact to render these ploys … futile. … In 4.5 billions years there will arrive the demise of your phenomenology and your utopian politics, and there’ll be no one there to toll the death knell or hear it. It will be too late to understand that your passionate, endless questioning always depended on a “life of the mind.” … Thought borrows a horizon and orientation, the limitless limit and the end without end it assumes, from the corporeal, sensory, emotional and cognitive experience of a quite sophisticated but definitely earthly existence. With the disappearance of the earth, thought will have stopped—leaving that disappearance absolutely unthought of. … The death of the sun is a death of mind. … There’s no sublation or deferral if nothing survives. … The sun, our earth, and your thought will have been no more than a spasmodic state of energy, an instant of established order, a smile on the surface of matter in a remote corner of the cosmos. … Human death is included in the life of the mind. Solar death implies an irreparably exclusive disjunction between death and thought: if there’s death, then there’s no thought.”

Jean-François Lyotard (1924–1998) French philosopher

Source: Thought Without a Body? (1994), pp. 286-289

Life , Death , Smile , Way

“He would never forgo inquiry into the causes of the war, and measures to prevent similar calamities in future. This was due to the people, least, in the enjoyment of peace, they should forget their former sufferings from war, and again yield themselves up to delusion. Both the present and the American war were owing to a court party in this country, that hated the very name of liberty; and to an indifference, amounting to barbarity, in the minister, to the distresses of the people. It was some consolation to him that he had done his utmost to prevent the war, and to know that those who provoked it could not but feel, even while they were endeavouring to persuade others of the contrary, that they must, in no very long space of time, adopt the very course which he was recommending as fit to be adopted now.”

Charles James Fox (1749–1806) British Whig statesman

Speech in the House of Commons (30 December 1794), quoted in J. Wright (ed.), The Speeches of the Rt. Hon. C. J. Fox in the House of Commons. Volume V (1815), p. 339-340.
1790s

Hate , People , Peace , Feeling

“Because if we make the wrong choice, then the danger is that we'll get hit again, that we'll be hit in a way that will be devastating from the standpoint of the United States, and that we'll fall back into the pre-9/11 mind set if you will, that in fact these terrorist attacks are just criminal acts, and that we're not really at war. I think that would be a terrible mistake for us.”

Dick Cheney (1941) American politician and businessman

Speaking about the choice Americans would soon make in the presidential election at a Des Moines, Iowa campaign appearance on September 7, 2004 whitehouse.archives.gov http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2004/09/20040907-8.html.
2000s, 2004

Way , Thinking

“That we are overdone with banking institutions which have banished the precious metals and substituted a more fluctuating and unsafe medium, that these have withdrawn capital from useful improvements and employments to nourish idleness, that the wars of the world have swollen our commerce beyond the wholesome limits of exchanging our own productions for our own wants, and that, for the emolument of a small proportion of our society who prefer these demoralizing pursuits to labors useful to the whole, the peace of the whole is endangered and all our present difficulties produced, are evils more easily to be deplored than remedied.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to Abbe Salimankis (1810) ME 12:379 The Writings of Thomas Jefferson "Memorial Edition" (20 Vols., 1903-04) edited by Andrew A. Lipscomb and Albert Ellery Bergh, Vol. 12, p. 379; also quoted at "Thomas Jefferson on Politics & Government: Money & Banking" at University of Virginia http://etext.virginia.edu/jefferson/quotations/jeff1325.htm
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

World , Peace , Evil

“Unfortunately, it appeared that she was going to be around when they learned the hard way that interstellar wars of aggression were much easier to lose than to win.”

Charles Stross book Singularity Sky

Source: Singularity Sky (2003), Chapter 8, “Confessions” (p. 188)

Way , Learning , Appearance

“Although 50 years of European peace since the end of World War II may augur well for the future, it must be remembered that there were also more than 50 year of peace between the Congress of Vienna and the Franco-Prussian War. Moreover, contrary to the hopes and assumptions of Jean Monnet and other advocates of European integration, the devastating American Civil War shows that a formal political union is no guarantee against an intra-European war.”

Martin Feldstein (1939–2019) American economist

"EMU and international conflict", 1997

World , Peace , Hope , Future

“I think that the only way that we deal with Syria is to join hands with Russia to diplomatically bring that at an end. But when we’ve aligned ourselves with — when we’ve supported the opposition of the Free Syrian Army — the Free Syrian Army is also coupled with the Islamists. And then the fact that we’re also supporting the Kurds and this is — it’s just — it’s just a mess. And that this is the result of regime change that we end up supporting. And, inevitably, these regime changes have led a less-safe world. … That has to be the solution, is joining hands with Russia to bring — to bring this civil war to an end.”

Gary Johnson (1953) American politician, businessman, and 29th Governor of New Mexico

2016

World , Way , Support , Thinking

“I know for a fact that this idea of the Jews causing the war and the Jews being so all important is nonsense. But that was Hitler's idea, and…was pure fantasy. As I say, Hitler is a riddle to me and will always remain so.”

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946) German general

To Leon Goldensohn. From "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn - Page 190

Idea

“The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001 and still goes on. That terrible morning, 19 evil men, the shock troops of a hateful ideology, gave America and the civilized world a glimpse of their ambitions. They imagined, in the words of one terrorist, that September the 11th would be the beginning of the end of America. By seeking to turn our cities into killing fields, terrorists and their allies believed that they could destroy this nation's resolve and force our retreat from the world. They have failed.”

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

2000s, 2003, Mission Accomplished (May 2003)

Men , Hate , World , Imagination

“Liquefied coal, gosh. Hitler during the Second World War — I guess because he was concerned about losing his oil — liquefied coal. That technology is still there.”

Mitt Romney (1947) American businessman and politician

[2007-04-20, Romney's Energy Gaffe, Ryan Sager, The New York Sun, http://www.nysun.com/national/romneys-energy-gaffe/52883/]
2007 campaign for Republican nomination for United States President

World

“The tragedy of Africa seemingly has no end. Viewing it from afar, the casual Western onlooker can be forgiven if the scenes begin to meld: Ethiopian famine in 1987, Somalian civil war and ensuing famine in 1992, and now Central Africa in 1997. The pictures and footage assume the role of media footnotes: snapshots of hopelessness, disaster, and death that seem as far away as the moon and as unrealistic as some science fiction film. Yet, like the African crises before it, the tragedy of Central Africa is very real and, in a global age, perhaps not as distant as some would like to think. With a foreign policy appropriately rooted in some sense of humanitarian decency, the Central African crisis will not be easily ignored by American policymakers. It screams for remedy.”

Michael Johns (1964) American businessman

"Africa Deserves a Closer Look," The World and I, February 1997, by Michael Johns.

Death , Age , Thinking , Sense

“The exploits of Mahmud Ghaznavi in the field of forced proselytization were cherished for long. His example was presented as the model before all good Muslim rulers, as early as the fourteenth century by Ziyauddin Barani in his Fatawa-i-Jahandari and as late as the close of the eighteenth century by Muhammad Aslam in his Farhat-un-Nazirin. There were forcible conversion both during the war and in peace. Sikandar Butshikan in Kashmir to Tipu Sultan in Mysore, Mahmud Beghara in Gujarat to Jalaluddin Muhammad in Bengal, all Muslim rulers carried on large-scale forcible conversions through jihad.”

K. S. Lal book The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India

Source: The Legacy of Muslim Rule in India (1992), Chapter 8

Peace

“We do not want to harm any human being, not even our worst enemy. Our walk of life is to live in truth and righteousness of God, in peace and unity. … If all the world were like us there would be no war and no injustice.”

Jacob Hutter (1500–1536) Tyrolean Anabaptist leader and founder of the Hutterites

Letter to Governer Kuna von Kunstadt, as reported in William Roscoe Estep, The Anabaptist Story (1996), p. 133

Life , God , Truth , World

“I don't think that the figure 2000 is an important milestone, in the first place. And in the second place, I don't think that this can be determined by public opinion. The righteousness of the war was not demonstrated by public support for it in the beginning, nor its wisdom altered by the evident decline in public support for it. I don't pay attention to the opinion polls, or indeed to the casualty figures, because I know that this is an inevitable war, a war that was going to have to happen — and was, in my opinion, both just and necessary.”

Christopher Hitchens (1949–2011) British American author and journalist

Scotland Live (2005-10-31): On the 2003 invasion of Iraq
2000s, 2005

Wisdom , Support , Thinking

“The Chinese courts have tried many Japanese officers for their crimes against the Chinese. These men committed thousands of crimes against Koreans. They killed and persecuted thousands of our people for refusing to help the Japanese war effort. They forced Koreans into the coal mines as slave laborers and let them die of tuberculosis and neglect.”

Seishirō Itagaki (1885–1948) Japanese general

Quoted in "Korea would Try 2 Japanese Chiefs" from "New York Times" article - November 30, 1948.

Men , People , Effort , Help

“We broke our hearts,
in the war between
St. George and the dragon,
but both, in equal part,
are welcome to come along.
I'm inviting everyone.”

Joanna Newsom (1982) American musician

81
Have One On Me (2010)

Heart , Parting

“The Sultan now received information that there was a city in Hindustan called Thanessar, and there was a great temple there in which there was an idol called Jagarsom, whom the people of Hindustan worshipped. He collected a large force with the object of carrying on a religious war, and in the year AH 402 marched towards Thanessar. The son of Jaipal having received intelligence of this, sent an envoy and represented through him, that if the Sultan would relinquish this enterprise, he would send fifty elephants as tribute. The Sultan paid no heed to this offer, and when he reached Thanessar he found the city empty. The soldiers ravaged and plundered whatever they could lay hands upon, broke the idols and carried Jagarsom to Ghaznin. The Sultan ordered that the idol should the placed in front of the place of prayer, so that people would trample upon it.”

Mahmud of Ghazni (971–1030) Sultan of Ghazni

The Tabqat-i-Akbari translated by B. De, Calcutta, 1973, Vol. I, p. 7
Quotes from Muslim medieval histories

People , Intelligence

“I learned the right way to live from my parents. I never heard any hate in my house. I never heard my father say a mean word to my mother, or my mother to my father, either. During the war, when food was hard to get, my parents fed their children first and they ate what was left. They always thought of us.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

As quoted in "Clemente, 32, Pays Tribute to Parents" by Les Biederman, in The Sporting News (September 3, 1966), p. 12
Other, <big><big>1960s</big></big>, <big>1966</big>

Hate , Children , Food , Way

“With Russia and America out of the League sanctions are a mistake. I've always thought so. You can't enforce them against a first-class power. The very people like Bob Cecil who have made us disarm, and quite right too, are now urging us forward to take action. But where will action lead us to? If we withdraw Ambassadors that's only the first step. What's the next? and the next? If you have economic boycott you'll have war declared by Japan and she will seize Singapore and Hongkong and we can't, as we are placed, stop her. You'll get nothing out of Washington but words, big words, but only words.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Conversation with Thomas Jones (27 February 1932) after the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, quoted in Thomas Jones, A Diary with Letters. 1931-1950 (Oxford University Press, 1954), p. 30.
1932

People

“He was born a pauper to a pawn on a Christmas day
When the New York Times said God is dead
And the war's begun.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Levon
Song lyrics, Madman Across the Water (1971)

God , Time , Christmas , Dead

“One of the most important things the United States did in the aftermath of World War II was to help returning veterans with housing. In 1945, in my home state of Oregon, we established the Veterans Home Loan Program, which for over 60 years has provided more than 300,000 loans. This has changed the lives of Oregon veterans and revitalized communities.”

Earl Blumenauer (1948) American politician

Earl Blumenauer (December 18, 2007), " House Restores Oregon Veterans Provisions Cut by Senate http://blumenauer.house.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=323". Press Release. Congressman Earl Blumenauer's Website, Representing the 3rd Congressional District of Oregon. United States House of Representatives.

World , Home , Communication , Change

“We're in the midst of the greatest crisis we've ever seen and if we don't stop laughing about it and deal with it, we're going to find ourself in the midst of chaos, confusion and civil war. It's time we started acting like grownups.”

Alan Keyes (1950) American politician

Interview with KHAS-TV, Hastings, Nebraska, February 19, 2009. As transcribed verbatim...jt from MSNBC: Keith Olberman's "Countdown" February 20,09.
2009

Time

“On the 60th anniversary of the Korean War, I remain grateful to America for having participated in the war. At that time, the Republic of Korea was one of the most impoverished countries, with an annual per capita income of less than $40. In 2009, my country became a member of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's Development Assistance Committee, the first aid recipient to become a donor and in only one generation. The Republic of Korea is engaged in peacekeeping missions in 14 countries to promote global peace. It will host the G-20 summit in November, and in 2012 the second nuclear security summit.”

Lee Myung-bak (1941) 10th President of South Korea

A Note of Thanks (2010)

Peace , Time , Country

“We cannot go forward and build up this new world order, and this is our war aim, unless we begin to think differently…one must stop thinking in terms of property and power and begin thinking in terms of community and creation. Property is the old-fashioned way of thinking of a country as a thing, and a collection of things in that thing, all owned by certain people and constituting property; instead of thinking of a country as the home of a living society with the community itself as the first test.”

J.B. Priestley (1894–1984) English writer

BBC Radio Broadcast, July 21, 1940. Reprinted in Priestley, Postscripts, William Heinemann Limited, 1940, and All England Listened: The Wartime Broadcasts of J.B. Priestley, Chilmark Press, 1968.

People , World , Way , Home

“In contrast to earlier gay law reform and equality-oriented movements, the 1970s LGBT liberation movement did not seek to ape heterosexual values or secure the acceptance of sexual orientation and gender identity minorities within the existing sexual conventions. Indeed, it repudiated the prevailing sexual morality and institutions - rejecting not only heterosexism (heterosexual supremacism) but also male machismo, with its oppressive predisposition to rivalry, toughness and aggression; the extreme expressions of which are the rapist, queer-basher, racist murderer and war criminal.
The "radical drag" and "gender-bender" politics of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) in the early 1970s glorified and promoted male gentleness. A conscious, if sometimes exaggerated, attempt to renounce the oppressiveness of masculinity and male privilege, it rejected straight macho values; identifying them with the subordination of women and LGBT people. The GLF was truly revolutionary because it attempted to subvert male-female gender roles and straight patriarchy. It denounced the ethos of masculine competitiveness, domination and violence; instead affirming the worthwhileness of male sensitivity and affection between men and, in the case of lesbians, the intrinsic value of an eroticism and love independent of maleness.
These ideas led me to propose that without the construction of a cult of machismo and a mass of aggressive male egos, neither sexual, gender, class, racial, speciesist nor imperialist oppression are possible.”

Peter Tatchell (1952) British gay rights activist

Machismo Underpins War and Tranny http://www.petertatchell.net/masculinity/machismo-underpins-war-and-tyranny.htm, Official Website

Love , Women , Men , People

“A nuclear war does not defend a country and it does not defend a system. I've put it the same way many times; not even the most accomplished ideologue will be able to tell the difference between the ashes of capitalism and the ashes of communism.”

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006) American economist and diplomat

The Ashes of Capitalism and the Ashes of Communism (1986)

Way , Communication , Time , Country

“Ay, down to the dust with them, slaves as they are!
From this hour let the blood in their dastardly veins,
That shrunk at the first touch of Liberty's war,
Be wasted for tyrants, or stagnate in chains.”

Thomas Moore (1779–1852) Irish poet, singer and songwriter

On the Entry of the Austrians into Naples (1821).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“He (Rigaud) the unpleasant impression that he was returning to his point of departure, to the scene of his unhappy childhood, and that he was sensing the invisible presence of his mother, just when he had managed to forget the wretched woman: all his memory of her were unpleasant. And r once again he would have to remain a prisoner in the garden for hours upon hour …the thought made him shiver. The war was playing a dirty trick on him in forcing him to return to the prison that had been his childhood, from which he had escaped so long ago. Reality was now resembling the nightmares he regularly had: it was the beginning of new term in the school dormitory…..”

Patrick Modiano (1945) French writer

Source: Honey Moon (1990), p. 57

School , Departure , Reality , Sense

“I made a mistake. I underestimated the influence of Vice President Cheney, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, and the rest of the neocons; I vastly underestimated their disingenuousness and incompetence. So George W. Bush went to war again, and just the way the neocons wanted him to- without significant international backing.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Page 342
2000s, Promises to Keep (2008)

Way

“In the war on terror we did everything wrong that we could have done.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

Radio interview (November 2008)

“We now look into history with the generous pride of the nationalist, not with the cramped prejudice of the partisan. We do homage to Irish valour, whether it conquers on the walls of Derry, or capitulates with honour before the ramparts of Limerick; and, sir, we award the laurel to Irish genius, whether it has lit its flames within the walls of old Trinity, or drawn its inspiration from the sanctuary of Saint Omer’s. Acting in this spirit, we shall repair the errors and reverse the mean condition of the past. If not, we perpetuate the evil that has for so many years consigned this Country to the calamities of war and the infirmities of vassalage, "We must tolerate each other," said Henry Grattan, the inspired preacher of Irish nationality — he whose eloquence, as Moore has described it, was the very music of Freedom — "We must tolerate each other, or we must tolerate the common enemy…"But, sir, whilst we must endeavour wisely to conciliate let us not, to the strongest foe, nor in the most tempting emergency, weakly capitulate…Let earnest truth, stern fidelity to principle, love for all who bear the name of Irishmen, sustain, ennoble and immortalise this cause. Thus shall we reverse the dark fortunes of the Irish race, and call forth here a new nation from the ruins of the old.Thus shall a Parliament moulded from the soil, pregnant with the sympathies and glowing with the genius of the soil, be here raised up. Thus shall an honourable kingdom be enabled to fulfil the great ends that a bounteous Providence hath assigned her—which ends have been signified to her in the resources of her soil and the abilities of her sons.”

Thomas Francis Meagher (1823–1867) Irish nationalist & American politician

Legislative "Union" with Greath Britain (1846)

Love , Truth , Music , Error

“A multitude of whelps came forth from the lair of this barbaric lioness, in three cyuls, as they call them, that is, in their ships of war.”
Tum erumpens grex catulorum de cubili laeanae barbarae, tribus, ut lingua eius exprimitur, cyulis, nostra longis navibus.

Gildas De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae

Section 23.
De Excidio Britanniae (On the Ruin of Britain)

“One of my heroes, almost necessarily from what I'm saying, of course, is Borges, who is a supreme master of doing thing -- being a data bank -- and the beauty of this economy is that he could have written War and Peace in three or four pages; who knows, it might have been a better book.”

Peter Greenaway (1942) British film director

From an interview in Art and Design, no. 49
Interviews

Books , Peace , Beauty

“Based on my experience with the administration in the months leading up to the war, I have little choice but to conclude that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.”

Joseph C. Wilson (1949–2019) American ambassador

What I Didn't Find in Africa (2003)

Intelligence

“As for me, I cease not to advocate peace. It may be on unjust terms, but even so it is more expedient than the justest of civil wars.”
Equidem ad pacem hortari non desino; quae vel iniusta utilior est quam iustissimum bellum cum civibus.

Marcus Tullius Cicero Epistulae ad Atticum

Epistulae ad Atticum (Letters to Atticus) Book VII, Letter 14, section 3; as translated by E.O. Winstedt in the Loeb Classical Library http://archive.org/stream/letterstoatticus02ciceuoft#page/68/mode/2up

Peace

“There are two very attractive facts about Ghazwah-tal Hind. The first is that, a Muslim, who participates in it with Iman and sincerity, to support the Truth and to subdue falsehood, will be declared as free from Jahannam by Allah‑swt. If he is killed in it, he will be included in the most chosen of the Shuhada and if he lives, he will receive the certificate of freedom from Jahannam. Secondly; Although it will be a very intense and protracted war, it will end in victory for Islam and the Muslims. Pakistan will no longer remain a small Muslim country but the entire al-Hind will turn into an Islamic state. The Renaissance of Islam will commence here and Truth will prevail over the entire world.”

Ameer Muhammad Akram Awan (1934–2017) Pakistani Sufi leader

Truth , World , Support , Freedom

“The people of the United States came out of the Korean War sadder and wiser than when they went in. Authorities have stated that two things happened in the Korean War which may yet brand it as the greatest blunder the Communist strategists ever made. First, it awakened the United States to the necessity of vigorously rearming and staying armed so long as the Communist threat exists. Second, it demonstrated to the people of the United States the inherent weaknesses of the United Nations.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

People

“We hear warmongering every day, every day we hear threats and attempts to scare us… We don’t want war and never wanted, but at that time [i. e. during Nagorno-Karabakh war] we had to defend our Motherland. If the time comes again, this time our blow will be final and deadly.”

Serzh Sargsyan (1954) Armenian politician, 3rd President of Armenia

President Serzh Sargsyan speaks after the military exercises http://www.president.am/events/news/eng/?pn=16&id=1304 (November 11, 2010)

Time

“Some anti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth. This resentment may be incurable. But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U. S. political, economic, and military power has played in denying such freedoms to others. U. S. foreign policy has to be rethought. It needs not tweaking but overhauling. We need: a historical reckoning with crimes committed, sponsored, or permitted by the United States. [.. ] A country has to look back before it can move forward. Instituting a doctrine of the mea culpa would enhance our credibility by showing that American decision-makers do not endorse the sins of their predecessors. When Brandt went down on one knee in the Warsaw ghetto [in 1970], his gesture was gratifying to World War II survivors, but it was also ennobling and cathartic for Germany. Would such an approach be futile for the United States?”

Samantha Power (1970) Irish-American academic, author and diplomat

Article in The New Republic (2003), as quoted in the Wall Street Journal http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323844804578527181938275090.html?mod=googlenews_wsj.

World , Decision , Freedom , Country

“I remember this, that King James had behind him the letter of the law just as completely as Mr. Asquith has now. He made sure of it. He got the judges on his side by methods not dissimilar from those by which Mr. Asquith has a majority in the House of Commons on his side. There is another point to which I would specially refer. In order to carry out his despotic intention the King had the largest army which had ever been seen in England. What happened? There was no civil war. Why? Because his own army refused to fight for him.”

Bonar Law (1858–1923) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Dublin (28 November, 1913).

Law , Fight , Housing

“Fifteen years ago, when the Cold War ended, many of us hoped for a new world order to emerge. A world order rooted in human solidarity — a world order that would be equitable, inclusive and effective.
But today we are nowhere near that goal. We may have torn down the walls between East and West, but we have yet to build the bridges between North and South — the rich and the poor.”

Mohamed ElBaradei (1942) Egyptian law scholar and diplomat, former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and Nobel …

Nobel lecture (2005)

World , Hope

“Since 1968, the Baath have been trashing the only idea that can hold the great social diversity of Iraq together: the idea of Iraq. Their answer to the question "Who am I?" was: You are either one of us, or you are dead. True to their word, they killed anyone who dared to say he was a Kurd or a Shiite or a leftist, or a democrat and a liberal. Contrary to what many Iraqi Shiites tend to think nowadays, the Baath never wanted to build a Sunni confessional state in Iraq. Anti-Shiite sectarianism was introduced on a large scale after the uprising of 1991. The state that the Baath built in Iraq up until the 1991 Gulf War was worse than sectarian. It thrived on the distrust, suspicion and fear that it went about inculcating in everyone. In this sense it was consistently egalitarian. Atomizing society by breeding hate and a thirst for revenge was the regime's highest ambition and principal tool of social control. Every Iraqi -- Kurd or Arab, Muslim or Christian, Shiite or Sunni -- became both complicit in the Baathist enterprise and its victim at the same time.”

Kanan Makiya (1949) American orientalist

"The Shiite Obligation", Wall Street Journal (February 7, 2005)

Hate , Fear , Idea , Question

“The field of Architecture has given rise to a second major principle relating to the Life Cycle of Systems. This principle has emerged from the observation that temporary buildings erected to house Navy personnel in World War I continued to see yeoman service in World War II as well as in subsequent ventures, and are now a permanent, if fading, feature of Constitution Avenue in Washington… We conclude: A temporary patch will very likely be permanent.”

John Gall (1925–2014) American physician

Source: Systemantics: the underground text of systems lore, 1986, p. 36

Life , World , Housing

“Plan A is to hitch a ride out of here. But if they want a war, then plan B is to win it.”

Lee Child book Worth Dying For

Worth Dying For, (2010).

“As opposed to this two-stage transformation-slave to feudal and feudal to capitalist-in Europe, India remained tied to the same old order under which the overwhelming majority of the people belonged to the oppressed and backward castes. This is the essence of what Marx called India’s ‘unchanging’ society where the village was not touched by the wars and upheavals at the higher levels, the British conquest being the first revolution.”

E. M. S. Namboodiripad (1909–1998) Indian politician

History, Society, and Land Relations: Selected Essays

People

“In the old days people had no time to harm the environment because they were busy doing harm to themselves, in the War, for instance.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

60
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)

People , Business , Time

“Worthy sons and daughters these. Fit successors to those who christened our banners in the immortal beginning. Worthy sons of those who saved the Union and nationality when civil war wiped out the ambiguity from the Constitution. Ready sons of those who drew the sword for humanity's sake the first time in the world in 1898. The four million defenders on land and sea were worthy of the best traditions of a people never warlike in peace and never pacifist in war. They commanded our pride. They have our gratitude, which must have genuine expression. It's not only a duty -- it's a privilege to see that the sacrifices made shall be requited, and that those still suffering from casualties and visibilities shall be abundantly aided and restored to the highest capabilities of citizenship and its enjoyments.”

Warren G. Harding (1865–1923) American politician, 29th president of the United States (in office from 1921 to 1923)

1920s, The American Soldier (1920)

People , World , Peace , Suffering

“My own conviction is that if the transfer cannot be made without civil war, it cannot be made at all, and that there is a reasonable probability that, if the government is supported by a considerable majority of citizens and if it is re-enforced by a powerful labor movement and cooperative movement, the change may be brought about without armed resistance from the owning class. The program that I have outlined is, of course, that of the Socialist Party of America, although not all Socialists will agree with everything that I have written.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Property (1935)

Support , Change

“Jump blind and you might find yourself on the rim of a raging volcano, or smack in the middle of a battlefield during a savage war, or on a swiftly tilting ice floe in a tempest-tossed sea.”

Stephen R. Lawhead (1950) American writer

Source: The Skin Map (2010), p. 131

Rage , Sea

“By contrast, as Hayek explained in The Road to Serfdom—in his famous chapter ‘Why’ the worst get on top—centralized government power attracts aggressive, domineering personalities. They are the most likely to gain power. And the more power they have, naturally the less subject they are to restraint. The greater the likelihood such a country will pursue aggressive policies. The highest risks of war occur when two dictators face each other. There’s likely to be a struggle for supremacy.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Nature , Personality , Country

“And the music came back with the carnival, the music you've heard as far back as you can remember, ever since you were little, that's always playing somewhere, in some corner of the city, in little country towns, wherever poor people go and sit at the end of the week to figure out what's become of them, sometimes here, sometimes there, from season to season, it tinkles and grinds out the tunes that rich people danced to the year before. It's the mechanical music that floats down from the wooden horses, from the cars that aren't cars anymore, from the railways that aren't at all scenic, from the platform under the wrestler who hasn't any muscles and doesn't come from Marseille, from the beardless lady, the magician who's a butter-fingered jerk, the organ that's not made of gold, the shooting gallery with the empty eggs. It's the carnival made to delude the weekend crowd. We go in and drink the beer with no head on it. But under the cardboard trees the stink of the waiter's breath is real. And the change he gives you has several peculiar coins in it, so peculiar that you go on examining them for weeks and weeks and finally, with considerable difficulty, palm them off on some beggar. What do you expect at the carnival? Gotta have what fun you can between hunger and jail, and take things as they come. No sense complaining, we're sitting down aren't we? Which ain't to be sneezed at. I saw the same old Gallery of the Nations, the one Lola caught sight of years and years ago on that avenue in the park of Saint-Cloud. You always see things again at carnivals, they revive the joy of past carnivals. Over the years the crowds must have come back time and again to stroll on the main avenue of the park of Saint-Cloud…taking it easy. The war had been over long ago. And say I wonder if that shooting gallery still belonged to the same owner? Had he come back alive from the war? I take an interest in everything. Those are the same targets, but in addition, they're shooting at airplanes now. Novelty. Progress. Fashion. The wedding was still there, the soldier too, and the town hall with its flag. Plus a few more things to shoot at than before.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

27
Journey to the End of the Night (1932)

Hunger , People , Music , Cars

“We cannot here analyze the entire contradictory and tragic history of the events of the last twenty years, in the course of which the Arabs and Israel, along with historically justified actions, carried out reprehensible deeds, often brought about by the actions of external forces.
Thus, in 1948, Israel waged a defensive war. But in 1956, the actions of Israel appeared reprehensible. The preventive six-day war in the face of threats of destruction by merciless, numerically vastly superior forces of the Arab coalition could have been justifiable. But the cruelty to refugees and prisoners of war and the striving to settle territorial questions by military means must be condemned.”

Andrei Sakharov (1921–1989) Soviet nuclear physicist and human rights activist

Progress, Coexistence and Intellectual Freedom (1968), Dangers, Vietnam and the Middle East

History , Question , Appearance

“In order to win this war, we need to understand that the terrorists and extremists are opportunists. They will grab onto any cause to incite hatred and to justify the killing of innocent men, women and children. If we weren't in Iraq, they would be using our relationship and friendship with Israel as a reason to recruit, or the Crusades, or cartoons as a reason to commit murder. They recruit based upon lies and excuses. And they murder because of their raw desire for power. They hope to impose their dominion over the broader Middle East and establish a radical Islamic empire where millions are ruled according to their hateful ideology. We know this because al-Qaeda has told us. The terrorist Zawahiri, number two man in the al-Qaeda team, al-Qaeda network, he said, we'll proceed with several incremental goals. The first stage is to expel the Americans from Iraq; the second stage is to establish an Islamic authority, then develop it and support it until it achieves the level of caliphate; the third stage, extend the jihad wave to secular countries neighboring Iraq; and the fourth stage, the clash with Israel. This is the words of the enemy. The President of the United States and the Congress must listen carefully to what the enemy says in order to be able to protect you. It makes sense for us to take their words seriously if our most important job is the security of the United States. Mister Zawahiri has laid out their plan. That's why they attacked us on September the 11th. That's why they fight us in Iraq today. And that is why they must be defeated.”

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

As quoted in "FLASHBACK 2006: Media Elites Slam Bush For Predicting Rise Of Islamic Caliphate In Iraq" http://dailycaller.com/2016/05/24/flashback-2006-media-elites-slam-bush-for-predicting-rise-of-islamic-caliphate-in-iraq/ (24 May 2016), The Daily Caller
2000s, 2006, Remarks at Bob Riley for Governor Luncheon (2006)

Women , Men , Hate , Friendship

“Probably the greatest single weakness of the Sino-Soviet bloc is her shaky economy. Here is a soft spot where peaceful pressures could be devastating. No amount of Soviet propaganda can cover up the obvious collapse of the Chinese communes and the sluggish inefficiency of the Soviet collectivized farms. Every single Soviet satellite is languishing in a depression. Even Pravda has openly criticized the lack of bare essentials and the shoddy quality of Russian-made goods. These factors of austerity and deprivation add to the hatred and misery of the people which constantly feed the flames of potential revolt. Terrorist tactics have been used by the Red leaders to suppress uprisings. In spite of the virtual "state of siege" which exists throughout the Soviet empire, there are many outbreaks of violent protest. All of this explains why the Soviet leaders are constantly pleading for "free trade," "long-term loans," "increased availability of material goods from the West." Economically, Communism is collapsing but the West has not had the good sense to exploit it. Instead, the United States, Great Britain and 37 other Western powers are shipping vast quantities of goods to the Sino-Soviet bloc. Some business leaders have had the temerity to suggest that trade with the Reds helps the cause of peace. They suggest that "you never fight the people you trade with." Apparently they cannot even remember as far back as the late Thirties when this exact type of thinking resulted in the sale of scrap iron and oil to the Japanese just before World War II. After the attack on Pearl Harbor it became tragically clear that while trade with friends may promote peace, trade with a threatening enemy is an act of self-destruction. Have we forgotten that fatal lesson so soon?”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

People , World , Peace , Communication

“While National Socialism brought about a new version and formulation of European culture, Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself. It is not only anti-bourgeois, it is anti-cultural. It means, in the final consequence, the absolute destruction of all economic, social, state, cultural, and civilizing advances made by western civilization for the benefit of a rootless and nomadic international clique of conspirators, who have found their representation in Jewry.”

Joseph Goebbels (1897–1945) Nazi politician and Propaganda Minister

Speech at the Nazi party Congress at Nuremberg (September 1935) http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb58.htm
1930s

“The Executive order that was issued on February 19, 1942, was for the sole purpose of prosecuting the war with the Axis Powers, and ceased to be effective with the end of those hostilities. Because there was no formal statement of its termination, however, there is concern among many Japanese-Americans that there may yet be some life in that obsolete document. I think it appropriate, in this our Bicentennial Year, to remove all doubts on that matter, and to make clear our commitment in the future.”

Gerald Ford (1913–2006) American politician, 38th President of the United States (in office from 1974 to 1977)

1970s, Proclamation 4417 (1976)

Life , Hostility , Thinking , Future

“Our people have had the honor to be among those who founded the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Despite the innumerable errors, both large and small, it is an undeniable fact that only as a part of the USSR have our people been able to survive Turkish invasion, live within secure borders, and progress economically and culturally. In spite of the current criticisms expressed from every quarter, it is a fact that the inhabitants of the Armenian Soviet Socialist Republic today enjoy a higher standard of living and more security than have Armenians at any other time in their three thousand year history. And all of this has taken place in the face of enormous challenges, including foreign invasion, economic isolation, civil war and an unimaginably costly World War.”

Monte Melkonian (1957–1993) National Hero of Armenia

“National Self-Determination or National Suicide?” p. 165. The article was originally written in Armenian, dated October 24, 1988, and posted form Poissy Prison, in France. It was first published in the first edition of The Right to Struggle, 1990.
The Right to Struggle (1993)

People , World , Error , History

“Then this song came on—I will never forget it—it was called "The Funk Soul Brother." And I will always remember that because it was also all of the lyrics… and, er, it was that school of songwriting, you know, very easy on the words in case they get wasted, I don't know what— there's a shortage, and… it sounded like a million fire engines chasing ten million ambulances through a war zone and was played at a volume that made the empty chair beside me bleed. And it went, erm, "Funk soul brother… right about now… yeah… it's the, it's the funk soul brother… check it out. It's, er, well… it's the funk soul brother, essentially. He's, er, he's coming. He's coming at you. It's the… well… it's the funk soul brother." And after a while, I began to penetrate the meaning of this song, you know? I gathered that somebody was about to arrive, and everybody else was terribly excited—maybe he was bringing cake, or something, they didn't say—but the thing was, you see, he wasn't there yet. Ha ha, that was the hook! And I'm not saying it's a bad song, you know, or anything like that. All I'm saying is that if you get, I don't know, a broom, say, and dip it in some brake fluid, put the other end up my arse, stick me on a trampoline in a moving lift, and I would write a better song on the walls. That's all I'm saying.”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

On The Rockafeller Skank by Fatboy Slim
Monster (2004)

School , Soul , Forgetting

“In a most generous and humane manner you, Mr. Field Marshal, plead the cause of those members of the Jewish people who were once compelled, by the requirements of universal military service, to serve in the war.
I entirely understand these lofty sentiments, Mr. Field Marshal. But, with the greatest respect, may I point out that members and supporters of my movement, who are Germans, for years were driven from all government positions, without consideration for their wives and children or their war service… Those responsible for this cruelty were the same Jewish [political] parties which today complain when their supporters are denied the right to official positions, with a thousand times more justification, because they are of little use in these positions but can do limitless harm…”

Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) Führer and Reich Chancellor of Germany, Leader of the Nazi Party

1930s

Children , People , Understanding , Support

“Mr. Greenwood, when moving the Amendment yesterday, told us that the war would shake many strongly held views. I fear that this war will do very much more than that. The war will bring about changes which may be fundamental and revolutionary in the economic and social life of this country. On that we are all agreed.”

Anthony Eden (1897–1977) British Conservative politician, prime minister

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1939/dec/06/debate-on-the-address to the House of Commons (6 December 1939)

Life , Fear , Change , Country

“For the early Church, "church" and "world" were visibly distinct yet affirmed in faith to have one and the same lord. This pair of affirmations is what the so-called Constantinian transformation changes (I here use the name of Constantine merely as a label for this transformation, which began before AD200 and took over 200 years; the use of his name does not mean an evaluation of his person or work). 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.”

John Howard Yoder (1927–1997) 20th century American Mennonite theologian

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

World , Faith , Art , Reality

“It was a dramatization of total chaos, a functional definition of confusion, an unchoreographed dance of sad violence. It was war.”

Dan Simmons book The Fall of Hyperion

Source: The Fall of Hyperion (1990), Chapter 7 (p. 51)

Sadness , Dance

“In the early 1990s Muslims were engaged in more intergroup violence than were non-Muslims, and two-thirds to three-quarters of intercivilizational wars were between Muslims and non-Muslims. Islam's borders are bloody and so are its innards.”

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) American political scientist

Source: The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (1996), Ch. 10 : From Transition Wars to Fault Line Wars § 3 : Incidence: Islam’s Bloody Borders p. 258 * Footnote 10: No single statement in my Foreign Affairs article attracted more critical comment than: "Islam has bloody borders." I made that judgment on the basis of a casual survey of intercivilizational conflicts. Quantitative evidence from every disinterested source conclusively demonstrates its validity.

“The propaganda [the Communist Party of Yugoslavia] used and the authority the party had won during the national liberation war and during the initial steps of the construction of Yugoslavia after the war gave the Yugoslavian working class the impression that this party was in the vanguard. In reality it was not the vanguard of the working class but of a new bourgeois class that had begun to settle in. This class relied strongly on the prestige of the national liberation war of the peoples of Yugoslavia for its own counter-revolutionary aims, while it obscured the perspectives of the construction of the new society. Such a degenerate party like this was bound to lead Titoite Yugoslavia on anti-Marxist paths.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Writings, Yugoslav "Self-Administration" - Capitalist Theory and Practice

People , Reality

“Our people… will give you all the necessaries of war they produce, if, instead of the bankrupt trash they now are obliged to receive for want of any other, you will give them a paper promise funded on a specific pledge, and of a size for common circulation.”

Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826) 3rd President of the United States of America

Letter to James Monroe, 1815. ME 14:228
Posthumous publications, On financial matters

People

“The Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think…Throughout the Mahabharata … Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviors such as war…. The Gita is a dishonest book …”

Wendy Doniger (1940) American Indologist

Wendy Doniger, Quoted in Philadelphia Inquirer, 19 November, 2000. Quoted in Antonio de Nicolas, Krishnan Ramaswamy, and Aditi Banerjee (eds.) (2007), Invading the Sacred: An Analysis Of Hinduism Studies In America (Publisher: Rupa & Co., p. 13), also in Rajiv Malhotra: Wendy's Child Syndrome https://rajivmalhotra.com/library/articles/risa-lila-1-wendys-child-syndrome/, also in Rajiv Malhotra, Academic Hinduphobia: A Critique of Wendy Doniger's Erotic School of Indology (2016)

Books , Behavior , Thinking

“Even in 1832 there were those in the South who confessed that the tariff was only a battlefield, not the war. If they did not fight their ground and win on the tariff, soon enough they would be fighting for something even closer to their hearths, slavery itself.”

William C. Davis (1946) American historian

Source: Look Away!: A History of the Confederate States of America (2002), p. 10

Fight

“Rather than calling attention to the house of mirrors, that passes for empirical truth (as postmodern acadimics did), and rather than fighting for better mirrors (as the ID warriors did), today's media activists are concentrating on shattering the impenetrable shiny surfaces of branded culture, picking up the pieces and using them as sharp weapons in a war of actions, not ideas.”

Naomi Klein (1970) Canadian author and activist

Source: No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies 1999, Chapter Five: "The Patriarchy Gets Funky"

Truth , Idea , Fight , Housing

“We have never cherished illusions about our enemies, we have not embraced and kissed them, we have not flattered them and we have not caressed them, we have never bowed to them. Our Party and Government have always maintained a firm, principled, Marxist-Leninist stand towards the enemies of peace and socialism; they have sharply and constantly exposed the imperialists, whether U. S. or British, French or Italian, and their policy of war and aggression; they have been irreconcilable with and have energetically and unreservedly supported the just cause of the peoples who have risen in struggle against imperialism. They have rendered all their support to the fraternal Algerian, Cuban, Congolese, Laotian and other peoples in their sacred struggle against imperialism, resolutely condemning all the aggressive attempts of imperialism.”

Enver Hoxha (1908–1985) the Communist leader of Albania from 1944 until his death in 1985, as the First Secretary of the Party of L…

Speeches, 20th Party Anniversary Address

People , Peace , Support , Kiss

“Well, the New York Times editorial board, that reliable abettor of all the liars, haters, and fantasists, aka Democrats, who detest the American South and lust to rewrite America's history into party-serving fiction, has endorsed dumping Andrew Jackson in favor of rewarding a woman with his place on the twenty dollar bill. So fundamentally important to the nation is this switch that the Board’s reputedly adult members have decided that the only group sober and knowledgeable enough to decide how to destroy another piece of American history and further persecute the South is 'the nation's schoolchildren' who should be made to 'nominate and vote on Jackson’s replacement. Why not give them another reason to learn about women who altered history and make some history themselves by changing American currency?' Why of course, what geniuses! And, then, why not let these kids — who cannot figure out that the brim of baseball cap goes in the front — go on to decide other pressing national issues. Maybe they can replace General Washington on the $1 bill with a Muslim woman and thereby end America's war with Islam. As the saying goes, you could not make this stuff up. Now Andrew Jackson was not the most unblemished of men, but he risked his life repeatedly for his country; killed its enemies; expanded U. S. territory in North America; defeated the British at New Orleans; was twice elected president; and faced down and was prepared to hang the South Carolina nullifiers when he believed they were seeking to undermine and break the Union. Jackson is one of those southern fellows, and so he is now a target for banishment from our currency and eventually our history because he did not treat slaves and Indians as if they were his equals and, indeed, inflicted pain on both. But he also was, along with Thomas Jefferson, another insensitive chap toward blacks and Indians, the longtime icon of the Democratic Party and its great self-praising and fund-raising feast, the annual 'Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner', which was, of course, a fervent tribute to those that General Jackson would have hanged without blinking.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

As quoted in Michael Scheuer's Non-Intervention http://non-intervention.com/1689/democrats-scourge-the-south-after-the-battle-flag-it%e2%80%99s-on-to-old-hickory/ (9 July 2015), by M. Scheuer.
2010s

Life , Women , Men , Pain

“I took the position of organizing 126 Democrats who voted against the Iraq war resolution. And I happen to think it was the right position.Today we're faced with over 500 casualties, a cost of over $200 billion, and it could rise — the casualties could go into the thousands and the costs could go over a half trillion if we stay there for years, as a number of people on this stage intend to see happen.”

Dennis Kucinich (1946) Ohio politician

Democratic National Candidates Debate, Goffstown, New Hampshire (22 January 2004)

People , Thinking

“I make that --- twice now, on a Monday I let returning Iraqi injured soldiers come to the premises. The most beautiful people I've ever seen. But they're missing arms and legs, they're with their wives, sometimes they're with their girlfriends. And the tears are coming down the faces of these people. I mean, thousands and maybe hundreds of thousands, and the Iraqis that have been just maimed and killed. This war is a horrible thing. Now, President Bush says he's religious. And yet 400,000 people, the way I count it, have died, and probably millions have been badly maimed and injured. What's going on? What's going on? And the day we pull out it's going to explode. We're keeping the lid on a little bit. It's still a catastrophe, but the day we pull out, because they're in a civil war. Whether we want to admit it or not, they're in a civil war.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

Interview on "The Situation Room" with Wolf Blitzer http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0703/16/sitroom.03.html (16 March 2007)
2000s

People , Beauty , Way , Tear

“[T]rade, not democracy, is the best antidote to war.”

Ilana Mercer South African writer

"The Warmongers: Not Looking Out For Us" http://www.wnd.com/2013/09/the-warmongers-not-looking-out-for-us WorldNetDaily.com, September 26, 2013.
2010s, 2013

Democracy

“Muhammad Kasim marched from Dhalila, and encamped on the banks of the stream of the Jalwali to the east of Brahmanabad. He sent some confidential messengers to Brahmanabad to invite its people to submission and to the Muhammadan faith, to preach to them Islam, to demand the Jizya, or poll-tax, and also to inform them that if they would not submit, they must prepare to fight…
They sent their messengers, and craved for themselves and their families exemption from death and captivity. Muhammad Kasim granted them protection on their faithful promises, but put the soldiers to death, and took all their followers and dependents prisoners. All the captives, up to about thirty years of age, who were able to work, he made slaves, and put a price upon them…
When the plunder and the prisoners of war were brought before Kasim, and enquiries were made about every captive, it was found that Ladi, the wife of Dahir, was in the fort with two daughters of his by his other wives. Veils were put on their faces, and they were delivered to a servant to keep them apart. One-fifth of all the prisoners were chosen and set aside; they were counted as amounting to twenty thousand in number, and the rest were given to the soldiers. Protection was given to the artificers, the merchants, and the common people, and those who had been seized from those classes were all liberated. But he (Kasim) sat on the seat of cruelty, and put all those who had fought to the sword. It is said that about six thousand fighting men were slain, but, according to some, sixteen thousand were killed, and the rest were pardoned.”

Muhammad bin Qasim (695–715) Umayyad general

Source: The Chach Nama, in: Elliot and Dowson, History of India as told by its own Historians, Volume I, p. 176-181. ( also quoted in Bostom, A. G. M. D., & Bostom, A. G. (2010). The Legacy of Jihad: Islamic Holy War and the Fate of Non-Muslims. Amherst: Prometheus.) note: Quotes from The Chach Nama

Dependency , Death , Men , People

“I do not think anyone would question my sincerity when I say that there is hardly anything I would not sacrifice for peace, but there is one thing which I must except and that is the liberty which we have enjoyed for hundreds of years and which we will never surrender…No greater mistake could be made than to suppose that, because it believes war to be a senseless and cruel thing, this nation has so lost its fibre that it will not take part to the utmost of its power in resisting such a challenge if it were ever made.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Birmingham (17 March 1939), quoted in The Times (18 March 1939), p. 12.
Prime Minister

Peace , Question , Thinking , Parting

“As for the article, much has changed in 32 years and much has not. The essential argument holds: no set of realistically achievable geographic borders produces safety for Israel. Rather, the security requirement is that any of the territory taken in the Six-Day War and given back as part of a peace settlement should be effectively demilitarized. Of course, the Sinai Peninsula was returned to Egypt long ago in exactly this way, resulting in relative quiet along Israel's southern border and creating a fundamental shift in the regional balance of forces. This opportunity was not skillfully exploited, so the result has been a "cold peace."”

Merrill McPeak (1936) United States Air Force general

But it is nevertheless peace and has served the interests of both sides.
How to Secure Israel: Demilitarized land for peace is the key to a settlement (April 2008)

Peace , Way , Change , Parting

“I am convinced the days of reckless corruption in this country are numbered. Even now, history is drawing a line in the sand and there is a war that rages. Consider whether you will fight on the right side when the rule of integrity is finally realised. Because that day is coming. As much as integrity, impartiality is a good principle to espouse and a difficult practice to achieve. Yet achieve it you must. The purpose of the police is to enforce the law, and the law favours no man. Your decisions as such, must never be subject to the charge of discrimination.”

Uhuru Kenyatta (1961) Kenyan politician

On modernizing police in Kenya, quoted in " President Kenyatta promises modernization of police service https://citizentv.co.ke/news/president-kenyatta-promises-modernization-of-police-service-115214/", CitizenTV (February 19, 2016).

Law , History , Decision , Rage

“[Human]] history is the story of that 'Good Fight', of the effort of man to attain that universal liberty to which, he feels himself born. All wars are but battles in this war. It is fought by the tongue and pen as earnestly as with the sword and shell. It is called by various names. The combatants rally under various banners. Whatever in human nature is hopeful, generous, aspiring, the love of God and trust in man, is arrayed on one side. The meaner passions, the baser purpose, stand upon the other.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

Love , God , Hope , Feeling

“Between emotion and logic resides the fate of thousands of the mostly unknown… who will surely then and now be asked to settle through violence what words alone cannot. Remember them, for the Peloponnesian War was theirs alone.”

Victor Davis Hanson (1953) American military historian, essayist, university professor

2000s, A War Like No Other - How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War (2005)

Fate

“Today 'nationalism' is out of fashion among the opinion-formers. Thanks to a superficial misreading of history, it is accused of having been responsible for two world wars and has widely come to be regarded as a political sin of the first magnitude, fortunately found only in such antiquated and obsolete figures as General de Gaulle. In fact the real danger comes from ideologies not nationalism; for while a nation may properly respect the nationhood of others, an ideology knows no frontiers…Once [the Tories] lose their claim to be, in the fullest sense, the 'national party', they are left, as they are in danger of being left today, either as the party of the 'individual' – a noble but to most people an austere and forbidding creed – or else as the party of the middle classes, which condemns them to a permanent minority.”

Nigel Lawson (1932) British Conservative politician and journalist

'A Tract for the Tories', The Spectator (1967), quoted in The View from No. 11: Memoirs of a Tory Radical (London: Bantam, 1992), p. 8.

People , World , History , Fashion

“The stock of money, prices and output was decidedly more unstable after the establishment of the Reserve System than before. The most dramatic period of instability in output was, of course, the period between the two wars, which includes the severe (monetary) contractions of 1920-1, 1929-33, and 1937-8. No other 20 year period in American history contains as many as three such severe contractions.
This evidence persuades me that at least a third of the price rise during and just after World War I is attributable to the establishment of the Federal Reserve System… and that the severity of each of the major contractions — 1920-1, 1929-33 and 1937-8 is directly attributable to acts of commission and omission by the Reserve authorities…
Any system which gives so much power and so much discretion to a few men, [so] that mistakes — excusable or not — can have such far reaching effects, is a bad system. It is a bad system to believers in freedom just because it gives a few men such power without any effective check by the body politic — this is the key political argument against an independent central bank…
To paraphrase Clemenceau, money is much too serious a matter to be left to the central bankers.”

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

As quoted in The Money Masters (1995)

Men , Money , World , History

“The fact that he was a Lorrainer, born and brought up in sight of the German eagle waving over the ravished provinces of France, bred in him an implacable enmity for Germany and all Germans. Anti-clericalism was with him a conviction; anti-Germanism was a passion. That gave him a special hold on France that had been ravaged by the German legions in the Great War. It was a disaster to France and to Europe. Where a statesman was needed who realised that if it is to be wisely exploited victory must be utilised with clemency and restraint, Poincaré made it impossible for any French Prime Minister to exert these qualities. He would not tolerate any compromise, concession or conciliation. He was bent on keeping Germany down. He was more responsible than any other man for the refusal of France to implement the disarmament provisions of the Treaty of Versailles. He stimulated and subsidised the armaments of Poland and Czecho-Slovakia which created such a ferment of uneasiness in disarmed Germany. He encouraged insurrection in the Rhineland against the authority of the Reich. He intrigued with the anti-German elements in Britain to thwart every effort in the direction of restoring goodwill in Europe and he completely baffled Briand's endeavour in that direction. He is the true creator of modern Germany with its great and growing armaments, and should this end in another conflict the catastrophe will have been engineered by Poincaré. His dead hand lies heavy on Europe to-day.”

Raymond Poincaré (1860–1934) 10th President of the French Republic

David Lloyd George, The Truth about the Peace Treaties. Volume I (London: Victor Gollancz, 1938), p. 252.
About

Effort , Passion , Victory , Dead

“[Mussolini’s] desire for revenge against the bourgeoisie was genuine enough; his intention was to inject the germs of social revolution into Italian society in order to ensure that, if Italy should lose the war, whoever won would have a difficult time of it. In this way, fascism, which had once invented the myth of having saved Italy from bolshevism, ended up deliberately (and more successfully) doing the exact opposite.”

Denis Mack Smith (1920–2017) British historian

Source: Mussolini, 1983, p. 312

Way , Revenge , Time

“Davis was winning a position as a leader in the Senate. Successor to Calhoun, he had become the spokesman for southern nationalism… not independence but domination from within the Union. This movement had been given impetus by the Mexican War. Up til then the future of the country pointed north and west, but now the needle trembled and suddenly swung south. The treaty signed at Guadalupe Hidalgo brought into the Union a new southwestern domain, seemingly ripe for slavery and the southern way of life: not only Texas down to the Rio Grande, the original strip of contention, but also the vast sun-cooked area that was to become Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, Utah, part of Colorado, and California with its new-found gold. Here was room for expansion indeed, with more to follow; for the nationalists looked forward to taking what was left of Mexico, all of Central America down to Panama, and Yucatan and Cuba by extension. Yet the North… had no intention of yielding the reigns. The South would have to fight for this… using States Rights for a spear and the Constitution for a shield. Jefferson Davis, who had formed his troops in a V at Buena Vista and continued the fight with a boot full of blood, took a position, now as then, at the apex of the wedge.”

Shelby Foote book The Civil War: A Narrative

The Civil War: A Narrative, Volume 1: Fort Sumter to Perryville (1958)

Life , Way , Sun , Future

“We can take Jesus seriously and strive earnestly to follow him, or we can prepare to wage atomic war, but it is utterly impossible to do both at the same time.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

What Does God Want Us to Do About Russia? (1948)

Time

“I know I will be severely criticized by the interventionists in America when I say we should not enter a war unless we have a reasonable chance of winning…. We are no better prepared today than France was when the interventionists persuaded her to attack the Siegfried Line….
It is not only our right but it is our obligation as American citizens to look at this war objectively and to weigh our chances for success if we should enter it. I have attempted to do this, especially from the standpoint of aviation; and I have been forced to the conclusion that we cannot win this war for England, regardless of how much assistance we extend.”

Burton K. Wheeler (1882–1975) American politician and lawyer

Speech, reported in Robert G. Torricelli, Andrew Carroll, In Our Own Words: Extraordinary Speeches of the American Century (2000), p. 126.

Chance , Success

“The Palestinians are a despotic, undemocratic grouping which promotes a religious war against Israel, a democracy, through terror.”

Melanie Phillips (1951) British journalist

http://www.melaniephillips.com/diary/archives/001241.html

Democracy

“A fairly large part, if not, indeed, the very nucleus, of the Fascist movement has been built up of ex-Socialists who abandoned their party because of, or in consequence of, the war. This observation is particularly true of the younger element in the Socialistic party, including young men of a practical turn, often restless in temperament, who had rallied to the Socialist party not so much because of its positive economic program, as because of its negative program of protest against the aimless individualism of the Liberal regime, and who found in Fascism the means for effectuating their desire to take a part and to reconstruct.”

Corrado Gini (1884–1965) Italian statistician

"The Scientific Basis of Fascism", in Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 42 (Academy of Political Science, 1927), p. 104.

Men , Parting

“When the war ends, I intend to push for full equality, the Negro vote and much more. Congress shall mandate the seizure of every foot of rebel land and every dollar of their property. We’ll use their confiscated wealth to establish hundreds of thousands of free Negro farmers, and at their side soldiers armed to occupy and transform the heritage of traitors. We'll build up a land down there of free men and free women and free children and freedom. The nation needs to know that we have such plans.”

Thaddeus Stevens (1792–1868) American politician

Lincoln (2012).
In fiction

Women , Men , Children , Freedom

“In a few weeks, or at most a few months, thanks to the skill of the Allied Commanders and the bravery of their men, the objects for which we and they have endured more than four years of sacrifice and suffering have been attained. The lands upon which the enemy had laid his cruel and predatory hand are in course of being evacuated. The exiled peoples are returning in joyous crowds across the war frontiers to their homes. The military power of the enemy is broken. His resources are spent. His armaments are in course of being surrendered. Hope breathes again in the souls of the unhappy peoples whom he has trampled in the mire. The impious spirit that claimed that Might was superior to Right and that there was no law but that of successful violence in the world has been exorcised, let us hope for ever. The conflict for international honour, righteousness, and freedom has been won, and the authors of this vast and wicked conspiracy against the liberties of mankind are fugitives on the face of the earth. My Lords, this is a great hour. It has been a wonderful victory. Are we presumptuous if we see in it the judgment of a Higher Power upon panoplied arrogance and enthroned wrong?”

George Curzon, 1st Marquess Curzon of Kedleston (1859–1925) British politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1918/nov/18/the-armistice-address-to-his-majesty in the House of Lords (18 November 1918).

Men , People , World , Law

“War seldom enters but where wealth allures.”

John Dryden book The Hind and the Panther

Pt. II, line 706.
The Hind and the Panther (1687)

Wealth

“I do not know of anything in modern poetry as violently hostile to contemporary life as was the poetry of T. S. Eliot, which so perfectly fitted the mood of the young people between the two wars. I also find much more benevolence towards humanity in younger historians than there was in Spengler or in Toynbee. Still, it is not difficult to sense the disgust of the intellectuals at the new prosperous working class, 'with their eyes glued to the television screen,' who have become indifferent to radical ideas.”

Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography

Source: Inventing the Future (1963), p. 18

Life , Hostility , People , Idea

“This is a challenge to the entire trade union movement in Ireland - a declaration of war on the wages and working conditions of all workers.”

Joe Higgins (1949) Irish socialist politician

On the outsourcing of jobs by Irish Ferries in November 2005. Irish Independent http://www.independent.ie/national-news/troubled-waters-for-taoiseach-as-wave-of-job-cuts-begins-232717.html

Quotes about war page 21

Quotes about war
page 21