Quotes about war
page 42

“The Indians and Pakistanis exchange insults and beat their chests in order to inflame a 60 year old rivalry, and claim that their respective countries can offer the people they have occupied—and make no mistake, it is an occupation, and an illegal one to boot—a better future than their enemy can. But far from wanting to offer, and indeed being able to offer the Kashmiri people economic security, all that they are supplying the ordinary people of Kashmir are untold war crimes and misery. It is a sickening example of murderous aggression against a whole peoples for the sake of pride, and one that was being largely overlooked by the world until the spectre of nuclear holocaust came over the continent.”

Munir Butt (1940–2015) British diplomat

Source: Speech to the American-Kashmiri Alliance, New York, 2002.[citation needed]

People, World, Future, Country

“You know, the media and the politicians would have us believe that there's something inherently immoral about terrorism. That is, they would have us believe that it's not immoral for us to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, but it is immoral for someone like Bin Laden to blow up a government building in Washington with a truck bomb. It's okay for us to take out an air-raid shelter full of women and children in Baghdad with a smart bomb, but it's cowardly and immoral for an Iraqi or Iranian agent to pop a vial of sarin in a New York subway tunnel. Really, what should we expect? They don't have aircraft carriers and cruise missiles and stealth bombers. So should we expect them to just sit there and take their punishment when we wage war on them? I think that it is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to hit back at us in the only way they can. It actually takes more courage to be a terrorist behind enemy lines than it does to push the firing button for a cruise missile a hundred miles away from your target. And yet we certainly will see Bill Clinton and every other Jew-serving politician in our government on television denouncing as a "cowardly act" the first terrorist bomb which goes off in the United States as a result of a war against Iraq. And don't be surprised when the FBI and the CIA announce that they have studied the evidence carefully and have determined that it was Iranian terrorists who built the bomb, so that the Jews will have an excuse for expanding the war to take out Iran as well as Iraq.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts 1990s, 1990

Women, Children, World, Way

“The cost in human lives of every armed conflict is staggering, but the economic cost of wars can continue for generations.”

Alfred de Zayas (1947) American United Nations official

Disarm and develop – UN expert urges win-win proposition for States and peoples.
2014

“War loses a great deal of its romance after a soldier has seen his first battle. I have a more vivid recollection of the first than the last one I was in. It is a classical maxim that it is sweet and becoming to die for one's country; but whoever has seen the horrors of a battlefield feels that it is far sweeter to live for it.”

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

War Loses Its Romance (1887), as quoted at the Veterans Memorial at the Lackawanna County Courthouse in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

Feeling, Country

“Years ago when I left college, I went to war. And I learned in war the price that is paid when diplomacy fails. And I made a decision that if I ever was lucky enough to be in a position to make a difference, I would try to do so.”

John F. Kerry (1943) politician from the United States

On finalizing the Iran Deal https://medium.com/the-iran-deal/introduction-fcb13560dfb9#.cxqrwquur

Decision, Learning

“I feel, as time goes on, not that the war has produced fewer evils than I feared at the time, for the conviction grows on me that the evils are unmeasured. As year succeeds year we shall more and more see how great was the calamity, how inexplicable the crime which brought that war on humanity. There was one bright side to it. The horrors of that war did at least persuade mankind that some great effort must be made to prevent its repetition. Those who with the facile scepticism or easy cynicism of the arm-chair deride the efforts—humble, imperfect, but honest which are being made all the world over to render the repetition of those horrors impossible must be careful that they do not make themselves shares in the great crime from which we have already so bitterly suffered.”

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) British Conservative politician and statesman

Speech (1921), quoted in Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, First Earl of Balfour, K.G., O.M., F.R.S., Etc. 1906–1930 (London: Hutchinson & Co. Ltd, 1936), p. 230.

World, Fear, Feeling, Effort

“The laws of war do not apply only to the suspected criminals of vanquished nations. There is no moral or legal basis for immunizing victorious nations from scrutiny. The laws of war are not a one-way street.”

Telford Taylor (1908–1998) American lawyer

The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir

Law, Way, Victory

“It's real simple. Basically, their message is to stop warring on each other and to stop warring on the planet to be kind to each other and the planet, because we're headed for major environmental collapse. And they've also expressed deep concern about the leadership of the planet. They've made it very clear: You're being led by the oil industry and the war industry.”

James Gilliland (1952) American academic and author

James explaining one of the messages he says he receives from the extraterrestrials.

“New discord has arisen in Europe of late years from the fact that Germany is not satisfied with the result of the late War. I have indicated several times that Germany got off lightly after the Great War. I know that that is not always a fashionable opinion, but the facts repudiate the idea that a Carthaginian peace was in fact imposed upon Germany. No division was made of the great masses of the German people. No portion of Germany inhabited by Germans was detached, except where there was the difficulty of disentangling the population of the Silesian border. No attempt was made to divide Germany as between the northern and southern portions which might well have tempted the conquerors at that time. No State was carved out of Germany. She underwent no serious territorial loss, except the loss of Alsace and Lorraine, which she herself had seized only 50 years before. The great mass of the Germans remained united after all that Europe had passed through, and they are more vehemently united to-day than ever before. You may talk of the War indemnity; what has happened there? I suppose that the Germans paid, in round terms, £1,000,000,000. But they had borrowed £2,000,000,000 at the same time, and there are no signs of their paying back.”

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

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1933/apr/13/adjournment-easter-1#column_2790 in the House of Commons (13 April 1933) The 1930s

People, Peace, Idea, Fashion

“We are still waging Peloponnesian wars. Our control of the material world and our positive science have grown fantastically. But our very achievements turn against us, making politics more random and wars more bestial.”

George Steiner (1929–2020) American writer

Source: The Death of Tragedy (1961), Ch. I (p. 6).

World, Science

“In Catch-22, the figure of the black market and the ground of war merge into a monster presided over by the syndicate. When war and market merge, all money transactions begin to drip blood.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1970s, Take Today : The Executive as Dropout (1972), p. 211

Money

“Wars will remain while human nature remains. I believe in my soul in cooperation, in arbitration; but the soldier’s occupation we cannot say is gone until human nature is gone.”

Rutherford B. Hayes (1822–1893) American politician, 19th President of the United States (in office from 1877 to 1881)

Diary (11 August 1890)
Diary and Letters of Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1922 - 1926)

Soul, Nature

“An occasion such as this which has brought us here can not but direct our consideration to these things. It has been a painful and difficult experience, this by which another race has been recruited to the standard of civilization and enlightenment; for that is really what has been going on; and the episodes of Negro slavery in America, of civil war, and emancipation, and, following that, the rapid advancement of the American colored people both materially and spiritually, must be recognized as parts of a long evolution by which all mankind is gradually being led to higher levels, expanding its understanding of its mission here, approaching nearer and nearer to the realization of its full and perfected destiny.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, The Progress of a People (1924)

Pain, People, Color, Understanding

“When I came back to Ottawa I found myself faced with a very difficult parliamentary situation… I think it is fair to say that Mr St Laurent, on the basis of private discussions with the Opposition leaders, did not expect any serious division in the House of Commons over our policies on Suez. However, bitter division there was, and we were condemned strongly for deserting our two mother countries. The Conservative attack was led by Howard Green (who in June 1959 was to become Secretary of State for External Affairs). Green accused us of being the "chore boy" of the United States, of being a better friend to Nasser than to Britain and France, and claimed that our government "by its actions in the Suez crisis, has made this month of November 1956, the most disgraceful period for Canada in the history of this nation," and that it was "high time Canada had a government which will not knife Canada's best friends in the back." Any feeling of exaltation and conceit or euphoria at our success in avoiding a general war in the Middle East (if in fact we had avoided it by our actions) was dissipated for me by the vigour of the assaults on my conduct, my wisdom, my rectitude, my integrity, and my everything else by an embattled Conservative Opposition. It was a very vigorous debate reflected in the general election of the next year. But I have always believed, and I think the great weight of Canadian opinion strongly approved what we had done. Further, I am absolutely certain and will remain certain in my own mind that the New Commonwealth would have soon shattered over the issue had the British not backed down.”

Lester B. Pearson (1897–1972) 14th Prime Minister of Canada

Memoirs, Volume Two

Wisdom, Feeling, History, Boy

“To introduce into the philosophy of War itself a principle of moderation would be an absurdity.”

Carl von Clausewitz book On War

Variant translation: To introduce into the philosophy of war a principle of moderation would be an absurdity.
As quoted in The Campaign of 1914 in France and Belgium‎ (1915) by George Herbert Perris, p. 56.
Source: On War (1832), Book 1, Chapter 1, Section 3, Paragraph 3

“It was ironical that Communism (at least the Dictatorship of the proletariat) should first come to Russia - a nation which in economic matters was one of the least developed among all the countries in Europe. Furthermore, Communism came as a coup in Russia, not through any class struggle on the part of the workers. It came through the conspiratorial intrigue of V. I. Lenin, who was encouraged by the German High Command to go into Russia during the closing months of World War I and use a small, hard core of revolutionaries to seize the provisional government which had but recently forced the Tzar to abdicate and was at the moment representing the working class, as much as anyone else, in setting up a democratic constitution. Communism therefore did not come to Russia as the natural outcome of class struggle but like any other dictatorship - by the military might of a small minority.”

W. Cleon Skousen book The Naked Communist

The Naked Communist (1958)

World, Communication, Nature, Parting

“[I]f Kim Il Sung had won the war, Korea today would not look like North Korea. I think it would still be a much less free and prosperous place than the South is now, but it would resemble China and Vietnam more than the North now does. Its system has been shaped by the need to distinguish itself, to seal itself off from the rival state, and to pursue nuclear armament.”

Brian Reynolds Myers (1963) American professor of international studies

On why the North Korean regime is so oppressive
2010s, North Korea's Unification Drive (December 2017)

Thinking

“All the Hellenistic States had thus been completely subjected to the protectorate of Rome, and the whole empire of Alexander the Great had fallen to the Roman commonwealth just as if the city had inherited it from his heirs. From all sides kings and ambassadors flocked to Rome to congratulate her; they showed that fawning is never more abject than when kings are in the antechamber…w:Polybius dates from the battle of Pydna the full establishment of the universal empire of Rome. It was in fact the last battle in which a civilized state confronted Rome in the field on a footing of equality with her as a great power; all subsequent struggles were rebellions or wars with peoples beyond the pale of the Romano-Greek civilization -- with barbarians, as they were called. The whole civilized world thenceforth recognized in the Roman senate the supreme tribunal, whose commissions decided in the last resort between kings and nations; and to acquire its language and manners foreign princes and youths of quality resided in Rome. A clear and earnest attempt to get rid of this dominion was in reality made only once -- by the great Mithradates of Pontus. The battle of pydna, moreover, marks the last occasion on which the senate still adhered to the state-maxim that that they should, if possible, hold no possessions and maintain no garrisons beyond the Italian seas, but should keep the numerous states dependent on them in order by a mere political supremacy. The aim aim of their policy was that these states should neither decline into utter weakness and anarchy, as had nevertheless happened in Greece nor emerge out of their half-free position into complete independence, as Macedonia had attempted to do without success. No state was to be allowed to utterly perish, but no one was to be permitted to stand on its own resources… Indications of a change of system, and of an increasing disinclination on the part of Rome to tolerate by its side intermediate states even in such independence as was possible for them, were clearly given in the destruction of the Macedonian monarchy after the battle of Pydna, the more and more frequent and more unavoidable the intervention in the internal affairs of the petty Greek states through their misgovernment, and their political and social anarchy, the disarming of Macedonia, where the Northern forntier at any rate urgently required a defence different from that of mere posts; and, lastly, the introduction of the payment of land-tax to Rome from Macedonia and Illyria, were so many symptoms of the approaching conversion of the client states into subjects of Rome.”

Theodor Mommsen (1817–1903) German classical scholar, historian, jurist, journalist, politician, archaeologist and writer

The Changing of the Relationship between Rome and Her Client-States
The History Of Rome, Volume 2. Chapter 10. "The Third Macedonian War" Translated by W.P.Dickson
The History of Rome - Volume 2

People, Youth, World, Reality

“[to guest saying the war is "going to go on for months"] There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2003-02-10
[O'Reilly: "We Do Not Speculate Here", FAIR.org, 2005-06-10, http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=2543, 2010-11-19]

Way

“Let us examine the language here. Evidently God is addressing this code to a patriarchy that will in turn disseminate it among the less powerful, namely wives and servants. And how long before these servants are downgraded further still…into slaves, even? Ten whole commandments, and not one word against slavery, not to mention bigotry, misogyny, or war.”

James K. Morrow (1947) (1947-) science fiction author

"Bible Stories for Adults, No. 31: The Covenant" p. 130 (originally published in What Might Have Been? Volume 1: Alternate Empires, edited by Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg)
Short fiction, Bible Stories for Adults (1996)

God

“Since the end of the period of belief, leaders exalt every defect, every kind of sadism, and gain all the more through their vices: vanity, ambition, war, death in a word.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

16
Mea culpa; suivi de la vie et l'oeuvre de Semmelweis (1937)

Death

“The memory of war weighs undiminished upon the people's minds. That is because deeper than material wounds, moral wounds are smarting, inflicted by the so-called peace treaties. … Material loss can be made up through renewed labor, but the moral wrong which has been inflicted upon the conquered peoples, in the peace dictates, leaves a burning scar on the people's conscience. … The Versailles Dictate cannot be an eternal document, because not only its economic, but also its spiritual and moral premises are wrong.”

Hjalmar Schacht (1877–1970) German politician

On the Treaty of Versailles, as quoted in Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (1946) by the United States Department of State, Vol. 2, p. 754.

People, Peace, Memory, Loss

“What does the term "anti-American" mean? Does it mean you are anti-jazz? Or that you're opposed to freedom of speech? That you don't delight in Toni Morrison or John Updike? That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias? Does it mean that you don't admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam? Does it mean that you hate all Americans?”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech entitled Come September http://ada.evergreen.edu/~arunc/texts/politics/comeSeptember.pdf. Speeches

Hate, Freedom

“Reporter: How many people who labor in the same musical vineyard in which you toil - how many are protest singers? That is, people who use their music, and use the songs to protest the, uh, social state in which we live today: the matter of war, the matter of crime, or whatever it might be.
Bob Dylan: Um…how many?
Reporter: Yes. How many?
Bob Dylan: Uh, I think there's about, uh…136.
Reporter: You say about 136, or you mean exactly 136?
Bob Dylan: Uh, it's either 136 or 142.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Press conference in Los Angeles, California (17 December 1965), as seen and heard in No Direction Home.

People, Music, Thinking

“Just as Cain hated and eventually killed Abel over this (1 John 3:12), many religious wars have been fought and are being fought between various groups who think their way to God is the only right way and any who disagree should be killed. Over the centuries, millions of Christians have been persecuted and killed for their faith. It is happening today in many countries around the world and is soon to come to America.”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 51

God, Hate, World, Faith

“A cry like the last yell when warring cities are opened up.”
Clamorem, bello supremus apertis urbibus.

Statius book Thebaid

Source: Thebaid, Book III, Line 56. J. H. Mozley's translation: "...that last cry when cities are flung open to the victors".

Cry

“We are entering a world of rapidly multiplying nuclear stand-offs like this. India vs Pakistan. Iran vs Israel. America vs. China. Within decades, North Korea vs Japan and South Korea. Not one Cold War, but many — and the risk is doubled each time.”

Johann Hari (1979) British journalist

How the world's hot-spots are turning into Cold Wars..., JohannHari.com, July 27, 2006, 2007-01-26 http://www.johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=645,

World, Time

“Remember, our hearts are one. Even when we are at war with each other, our hearts are always beating in unison.”

Yoko Ono (1933) Japanese artist, author, and peace activist

29 August 2009.
Twitter messages

Heart

“You could stand near him, listen to him speak, and feel as if you were in the presence of some wiser man, a true mullah. His uncles were the same. Rich, powerful men whose influence allowed them to profit from the war, not fight in it.”

Kameron Hurley (1980) American writer

Source: God’s War (2011), Chapter 38 (p. 277).

Men, Feeling, Fight

“Sociologists and historians have avoided looking for the family sources of wars and social violence. Whenever a group produces murderers, the early parental relationship must have been abusive and neglectful. Yet this elementary truth has not even begun to be considered in historical research; just stating that poor mothering lies behind wars seems blasphemous.”

Lloyd deMause (1931) American thinker

Source: The Emotional Life of Nations (2002), Ch. 6, p. 153.

Truth, Family, Parent

“We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be “you or me,” so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

From 1980s onwards, Norie Huddle interview (1981)
Context: Neither the great political or financial powers of the world nor the population in general realize that the engineering-chemical-electronic revolution now makes it possible to produce many more technical devices with ever less material. We can now take care of everybody at a higher standard of living than anybody has ever known. It does not have to be “you or me,” so selfishness is unnecessary and war is obsolete. This has never been done before. Only twelve years ago technology reached the point where this could be done. Since then it has made it ever so much easier to do.

Selfishness

“So if despite that, Hitler prepared war, he perpetrated the greatest lie and betrayal in the world. This trial clearly shows that Hitler did just that. I have no hesitation to state very clearly that Hitler was a liar and a betrayer on a mammoth scale. Even without the death of the 5 million extermination camp victims, Hitler would still go down in history as the greatest villain that ever lived.”

Hans Fritzsche (1900–1953) German Nazi official

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

Death, Lie, World, History

“I hope this book will throw a little light on the nature of human coutage and its lack.. when the last argument of kings viz cannon or war pursues its loud & murderous course.”

Vernon Scannell (1922–2007) British boxer and poet

Argument of Kings, 1987

Books, Hope, Nature, Light

“I knew that it was human nature which lay at the root of History and that no matter where I found myself I was bound to discover superficial similarities expressing and exemplifying that nature. It was human idealism and human impatience and human despair which continued to produce these terrible wars. Human virtues and vices, mixed and confused in individuals, created what we called “History”. Yet I could see no way in which the vicious circle of aspiration and desperation might ever be broken. We were all victims of our own imagination.”

Michael Moorcock book The Steel Tsar

Book 2, Chapter 1 “The Camp on Rishiri” (p. 339)
The Steel Tsar (1981)

Way, Imagination, History, Nature

“Wars fought exclusively on foreign soil do have marginally higher real output growth than peacetime periods, but real growth during all other wars is sharply below peacetime levels. Evidence for foreign and domestic wars is consistent with monetarist, fiscalist, and mixed theories of wartime booms.”

Bryan Caplan (1971) American political scientist

[Journal of International Money and Finance, 21, 2, April 2002, 145–162, How does war shock the economy?, 10.1016/S0261-5606(01)00046-8]

“.. more significant, perhaps, was the fact that during the war [1940-1945] many of the Surrealists came [from Europe] to America and we were able to see them as just other human beings like ourselves and not as mythical characters who had superhuman capacities and talents. I think that there was a feeling after meeting them [a. o. Marcel Duchamp, Andre Masson, André Breton, Max Ernst ] personally that, well, if these men can have these great achievements and talents, there is hope for us [younger American artists]”

Adolph Gottlieb (1903–1974) American artist

Quote of Gottlieb, in an interview (March 1960) with David Sylvester, edited for broadcasting by the BBC first published in 'Living Arts', June 1963; as quoted in Interviews with American Artists, by David Sylvester; Chatto & Windus, London 2001, p. 29
1960s

Men, Hope, Feeling, Thinking

“We do not want to fight — but we have fought before. And others in earlier times have made the same dangerous mistake of assuming that the West was too selfish and too soft and too divided to resist invasions of freedom in other lands. Those who threaten to unleash the forces of war on a dispute over West Berlin should recall the words of the ancient philosopher: "A man who causes fear cannot be free from fear."”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

1961, Berlin Crisis speech

Fear, Freedom, Time, Fight

“While it is much preferable to anarchy, government cannot abolish the evils of the human condition. At any time the state is only one of the forces that shape human behaviour, and its power is never absolute. At present, fundamentalist religion and organized crime, ethnic-national allegiances and market forces all have the ability to elude the control of government, sometimes to overthrow or capture it. States are at the mercy of events as much as any other human institution, and over the longer course of history all of them fail. As Spinoza recognized, there is no reason to think the cycle of order and anarchy will ever end. Secular thinkers find this view of human affairs dispiriting, and most have retreated to some version of the Christian view in which history is a narrative of redemption. The most common of these narratives are theories of progress, in which the growth of knowledge enables humanity to advance and improve its condition. Actually, humanity cannot advance or retreat, for humanity cannot act: there is no collective entity with intentions or purposes, only ephemeral struggling animals each with its own passions and illusions. The growth of scientific knowledge cannot alter this fact. Believers in progress – whether social democrats or neo-conservatives, Marxists, anarchists or technocratic Positivists – think of ethics and politics as being like science, with each step forward enabling further advances in future. Improvement in society is cumulative, they believe, so that the elimination of one evil can be followed by the removal of others in an open-ended process. But human affairs show no sign of being additive in this way: what is gained can always be lost, sometimes –as with the return of torture as an accepted technique in war and government – in the blink of an eye. Human knowledge tends to increase, but humans do not become any more civilized as a result. They remain prone to every kind of barbarism, and while the growth of knowledge allows them to improve their material conditions, it also increases the savagery of their conflicts.”

John Gray book Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia

Post-Apocalypse: After Secularism (pp. 264-5)
Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia (2007)

Religion, Way, History, Knowledge

“Traditional leadership is based on ascription. In former times, there was some degree of flexibility which enabled change. This was based on prowess in war and statecraft. The British fossilised the system and traditional leaders became government functionaries. Their authority was strengthened by the colonial administration.”

Joni Madraiwiwi (1957–2016) Fijian politician

Address to the Pacific Regional Workshop on Leadership Development, Lami, Fiji, 9 July 2005.

Change, Time

“Public opinion can become polarized into a bimodal distribution with only a few people in the centre and many more lying toward the extremes. But under such circumstances, democracy will probably break down into civil war, and spatial models of party competition will be irrelevant until order is restored.”

Thomas Flanagan (political scientist) (1944) author, academic, and political activist

Source: Game Theory and Canadian Politics (1998), Chapter 9, Invasion From The Right: Reform Party in 1993 Election, p. 142.

People, Democracy, Lying

“Notwithstanding all the honor which this country has bestowed upon the living and all the reverence that has marked its attitude toward the dead who have served us in a military capacity, we are not a warlike Nation. As a people we have not sought military glory. Because of our fortunate circumstances, such wars as we have waged have been for the purpose of securing conditions under which peace would be more permanent, liberty would be more secure, and justice would be more certain. It was this principle that peculiarly characterized the forces who acknowledged as their commander in chief Abraham Lincoln.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Ways to Peace (1926)

People, Peace, Justice, Dead

“In recent years we have been served up a lot of claptrap about the need for a national identity. We have been urged to sing imbecile jingles, flex our muscles like the sportsmen from telly commercials, and display a heart optimism totally unconvincing because so superficial an unnatural. Those who preach this doctrine are usually the kind of chauvinist who is preparing his country, not to avert war, but to engage in it.”

Patrick White (1912–1990) English-born Australian writer

Australians in a Nuclear War (1983)

Optimism, Singing, Heart, Country

“Reverend Lawson:You lured those boys in here and made filth of them!
Bob: We don't think human bodies is filth until they're corpses, Reverend Lawson!
Bill: We loved every inch of those boys.
Bob: Every chance we got.
Bill: And we sent them away to war, since they had to go, with every surface of them—
Bob: Tinglin' with kisses an' love.”

Robert Patrick (playwright) (1937) Playwright, poet, lyricist, short story writer, novelist

"Bill Batchelor Road"
Untold Decades: Seven Comedies of Gay Romance (1988)

Love, Boy, Kiss, Thinking

“This is not about the security of the United States. This is about domestic American politics. The national security of the United States of America has been hijacked by a handful of neo-conservatives who are using their position of authority to pursue their own ideologically-driven political ambitions. The day we go to war for that reason is the day we have failed collectively as a nation.”

Scott Ritter (1961) American weapons inspector and writer

Truth Out, 24 July 2002
2000

“It is not yet the Millennium. We have not yet reached these pure heights of civilization, the ascent to which is the Good Fight. But are we no nearer the summit because we do not stand upon it? Has the Good Fight gained nothing by the war? If you sail from Boston to Calcutta, when you are off Madagascar you are not yet in India, but you have rounded the Cape of Good Hope, you are not yet in India, but at least you are outside Boston Light. I do not say the country is yet beyond Boston Light, but if not, it is only because Boston Light is the sun of liberty that shines all over the world.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

World, Hope, Light, Sun

“God saw everything and it was very good; that's perfect; that's the way I want it. Satan's plan is to put it back to zero. He wants to reduce human population with reduced birth rates by abortion. […] Birth control, homosexuality, lower cholesterol (that lowers fertility), high cost of living, smaller families, eugenics, high infant mortality rate with vaccines, SIDS, child pornography, reduced population, high death rate among teens, suicide, drugs, alcohol, sexually transmitted diseases. Just kill everybody with chemtrails or wars or genetically modified foods that will lower disease resistance or with drugs. Islam teaches "if you don't join us, we have to kill you." 100 times in the Koran it says they are required to kill anyone who won't convert. It's required. People say, "It's a peaceful religion."”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Well there may be some peaceful people in it, but their religion isn't peaceful. Satan wants to reduce the population.
Creation seminars (2003-2005), The dangers of evolution

Death, God, People, Alcohol

“Because Africans and Americans share a belief in the values of liberty and dignity, we must share in the labor of advancing those values. In a time of growing commerce across the globe, we will ensure that the nations of Africa are full partners in the trade and prosperity of the world. Against the waste and violence of civil war, we will stand together for peace. Against the merciless terrorists who threaten every nation, we will wage an unrelenting campaign of justice. Confronted with desperate hunger, we will answer with human compassion and the tools of human technology. In the face of spreading disease, we will join with you in turning the tides against AIDS in Africa.”

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

2000s, 2003, Hope and Conscience Will Not Be Silenced (July 2003)

Hunger, World, Disease, Peace

“General Sherman, who had lived in the South, liked Southerners and did not at all sympathize with Northern racial views, yet became the most hated and feared destroyer of the South and its whole civilization. And I think he did so because he saw that as necessary to win the war. And I think Lincoln made some of his decisions—issuing the Emancipation Proclamation, for example, or turning Sherman loose — because he saw that as necessary to win the war.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

1990s, An Exchange With a Civil War Historian (June 1995)

Hate, Fear, Thinking, Decision

“So when the 1960's came along I was feeling split, schizophrenic. The war, what was happening to America, the brutality of the world. What kind of man am I, sitting at home, reading magazines, going into a frustrated fury about everything—and then going into my studio to adjust a red to a blue.”

Phillip Guston (1913–1980) American artist

Guston's quote is describing his departure from Abstract Expressionism 1961 - 1980 Source: 'It's About Freedom' - as quoted in 'It's About Freedom, Philip Guston's Late Works in the Schirn'; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt 11/6/2013 – 2/2/2014 http://db-artmag.com/en/78/on-view/its-about-freedom-philip-gustons-late-works-in-the-schirn/

World, Feeling, Home, Reading

“The evidence on this question is persuasive: the best way of eliminating war between nations, of minimizing domestic political violence, and of virtually making genocide and mass murder a horror of the past, is by fostering political freedom. Politically free nations do not make war on each other, have minimum domestic political violence, and virtually no genocide and mass murder. I call this the miracle that is freedom.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

“Democide: Rudy Rummel Interviewed” by Alberto Mingardi, The Laissez Faire City Times, August-September 1998 https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/INTERVIEW.ITALY.HTM

Way, Question, Freedom, Past

“The war against Russia will be such that it cannot be conducted in a knightly fashion. This struggle is one of ideologies and racial differences and will have to be conducted with unprecedented, unmerciful, and unrelenting harshness. All officers will have to rid themselves of obsolete ideologies. I know that the necessity for such means of waging war is beyond the comprehension of you generals but... I insist absolutely that my orders be executed without contradiction.”

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

Speaking about the invasion of Russia http://mentalfloss.com/article/28033/operation-barbarossa-biggest-military-adventure-history. 1940s

Fashion

“The premise is debatable that the perpetration of atrocities is sometimes a patriot's duty; that the poisoning of the public mind with distortion and falsehood designed to inflame passions is sometimes a patriot's duty; that the banishment of a loving Father of all men and the bowing down before a god of war is sometimes a patriot's duty. But if these be obligations resting upon patriots, let them be claimed as such in plain unvarnished language.”

Kirby Page (1890–1957) American clergyman

Must We Go to War? (1937)

Love, Men, God, Passion

“Industrial production, the flow of resources in the economy, the exertion of military effort in a war, the management of finances --all require the coordination of interrelated activities. What these complex undertakings share in common is the task of constructing a statement of actions to be performed, their timing and quantity (called a program or schedule), that, if implemented, would move the system from a given initial status as much as possible towards some defined goal”

George Dantzig (1914–2005) American mathematician

George B. Dantzig, Mukund N. Thapa (1997) Linear Programming: 1: Introduction. p.xxi

Effort, Time

“The revelation of the secret of water will put an end to all manner of speculation or expediency and their excrescences, to which belong war, hatred, impatience and discord of every kind. The thorough study of water therefore signifies the end of monopolies, the end of all domination in the truest sense of the word and the start of a socialism arising from the development of individualism in its most perfect form.”

Viktor Schauberger (1885–1958) austrian philosopher and inventor

Implosion Magazine, No. 6, p. 29 (Callum Coats: Energy Evolution (2000))
Implosion Magazine

Secret, Sense, Study, Water

“It is natural that I should bear entire responsibility for the war in general, and, needless to say, I am prepared to do so. Consequently, now that the war has been lost, it is presumably necessary that I be judged so that the circumstances of the time can be clarified and the future peace of the world be assured. Therefore, with respect to my trial, it is my intention to speak frankly, according to my recollection, even though when the vanquished stands before the victor, who has over him the power of life and death, he may be apt to toady and flatter. I mean to pay considerable attention to this in my actions, and say to the end that what is true is true and what is false is false. To shade one's words in flattery to the point of untruthfulness would falsify the trial and do incalculable harm to the nation, and great care must be taken to avoid this.”

Hideki Tōjō (1884–1948) former Prime Minister of Japan and Minister of War executed in 1948

Written in his prison diary https://books.google.com/books?id=aynFAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA217&lpg=PA217&dq=%22I+should+bear+entire+responsibility+for+the+war+in+general%22&source=bl&ots=ov6_NlNuJx&sig=W_gAxNsPYqUMqh-FE1WF4CbCQ-8&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QZHsVMKlLsKiNrnDg6AP&ved=0CDIQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q=%22I%20should%20bear%20entire%20responsibility%20for%20the%20war%20in%20general%22&f=false, as quoted in The Imperial Japanese Army: The Invincible Years 1941–42 https://books.google.com/books?id=LTZfBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA337&lpg=PA337&dq=%22I+should+bear+entire+responsibility+for+the+war+in+general%22&source=bl&ots=wiF4ARAlht&sig=EjofLr6zBGo9YG4b0dBGjL91VB0&hl=en&sa=X&ei=QZHsVMKlLsKiNrnDg6AP&ved=0CEIQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=%22I%20should%20bear%20entire%20responsibility%20for%20the%20war%20in%20general%22&f=false (2014), by Bill Yenne, Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford Publishing, p. 337. 1940s

Life, Death, World, Peace

“My poetry is a declaration of war, not an exordium to defeat. It is not the defeated soldier's drumbeat of despair, but the fighting warrior's will to win. It is not the de-spirited voice of dejection but the stirring shout of victory.”

Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1924–2018) 10th Prime Minister of India

New York September 7, 2000 Asia Society Annual Dinner
Quotes from ataljee.org

Victory, Fight, Despair

“Always remember, as bad as it may be for you, it is worse for the lost. They may have it better for a while if they go along with the beast and take his mark, but that “better” will come to an end. Those who obeyed Hitler had it good, too—for a few years. The lost face some of the same problems of economic collapse, wars, earthquakes, PLUS, they will be here for the next 1,040 days of God's wrath being poured out after the rapture and THEN eternity in the Lake of Fire!”

Kent Hovind (1953) American young Earth creationist

Source: What On Earth Is About To Happen… For Heaven’s Sake? (2013), p. 235

God, Problem

“We do not have the right to forget that reactionary imperialism exists and its forces actively operate in the world, that they encourage the arms race and that they try to restore the spirit of the Cold War.”

Andrei Grechko (1903–1976) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "The Role of Nuclear Forces in Current Soviet Strategy" - Page 53 - by Leon Gouré, Foy D. Kohler, Mose L. Harvey - 1974

World, Forgetting

“ISIL herded approximately 450−500 women and girls to the citadel of Tal Afar in Ninewa where, two days later, 150 unmarried girls and women, predominantly from the Yezidi and Christian communities, were reportedly transported to Syria, either to be given to ISIL fighters as a reward or to be sold as sex slaves, the report said. So where are the 'war on women' advocates? I know, crickets chirping. The progressive socialist feminist movement would rather not have Obama admit he was wrong than save these women.”

Allen West (politician) (1961) American politician; retired United States Army officer

2010s, Even the UN accuses ISIS of human rights abuses, but the left stays silent (2015)

Women, Sex, Girl, Communication

“We have been hurt more morally that physically because of what had happened against us in both deeds and words by you. Despite all this you will always remain our son whatever happened. We still pray that you continue to be president of the U. S. A. We Endeavour and hope that you will gain victory in the new election campaigne. You are a man who has enough courage to annul a wrong and mistaken action. I am sure that you are able to shoulder the responsibility for that. Enough evidence is available, Bearing in mind that you are the president of the strongest power in the world nowadays, and since Nato is waging an unjust war against a small people of a developing country. This country had already been subjected to embargo and sanctions, furthermore it also suffered a direct military armed aggression during Reagan’s time. This country is Libya. Hence, to serving world peace … Friendship between our peoples … and for the sake of economic, and security cooperation against terror, you are in a position to keep Nato off the Libyan affair for good.”

Muammar Gaddafi book The Green Book

The Green Book (1975), Letter to Barack Obama

Friendship, People, World, Peace

“While thinking when sober, our success at reaching our goals by using the First Baltic Front troops, the Memel operation, it can't be disregarded, that they [the troops] not only honorably accomplished their powerful strategic operation, but also an infusion of victory for the Soviet armed forces and an entrance into the final stages of the war.”

Hovhannes Bagramyan (1897–1982) Soviet military commander

Quoted in "I. C. Bagramyan: A Photo Album About A Soviet Marshal" - Yerevan - 1987

Thinking, Success, Victory

“An international system consists of a group of interacting behavior units called "nations" or "countries," to which may sometimes be added certain supra-national organizations, such as the United Nations. Each of the behavior units in the system can be described in terms of a set of "relevant variables." Just what is relevant and what is not is a matter of judgment of the system-builder, but we think of such things as states of war or peace, degrees of hostility or friendliness, alliance or enmity, arms budgets, geographic extent, friendly or hostile communications, and so on. Having defined our variables, we can then proceed to postulate certain relationships between them, sufficient to define a path for all the variables through time. Thus we might suppose, with Lewis Richardson that the rate of change of hostility of one nation toward a second depends on the level of hostility in the second and that the rate of change of hostility of the second toward the first depends on the level of hostility of the first. Then, if we start from given levels of hostility in each nation, these equations are sufficient to spell out what happens to these levels in succeeding time periods.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1950s, National images and international systems, 1959, p. 120-121

Hostility, Peace, Behavior, Communication

“The First World War had begun — imposed on the statesmen of Europe by railway timetables. It was an unexpected climax to the railway age.”

A.J.P. Taylor (1906–1990) Historian

The First World War ([1963] 1970) p. 20

Age, World

“But we have an opportunity before us to reassert our desire and to lend the force of our example for the peaceful adjudication of differences between nations. Such action would be in entire harmony with the policy which we have long advocated. I do not look upon it as a certain guaranty against war, but it would be a method of disposing of troublesome questions, an accumulation of which leads to irritating conditions and results in mutually hostile sentiments. More than a year ago President Harding proposed that the Senate should authorize our adherence to the protocol of the Permanent Court of International Justice, with certain conditions. His suggestion has already had my approval. On that I stand. I should not oppose other reservations, but any material changes which would not probably receive the consent of the many other nations would be impracticable. We can not take a step in advance of this kind without assuming certain obligations. Here again if we receive anything we must surrender something. We may as well face the question candidly, and if we are willing to assume these new duties in exchange for the benefits which would accrue to us, let us say so. If we are not willing, let us say that. We can accomplish nothing by taking a doubtful or ambiguous position. We are not going to be able to avoid meeting the world and bearing our part of the burdens of the world. We must meet those burdens and overcome them or they will meet us and overcome us. For my part I desire my country to meet them without evasion and without fear in an upright, downright, square, American way.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Freedom and its Obligations (1924)

Hostility, World, Fear, Peace

“You can't make war against terror. Terror is a technique of battle. It's a tactic that has been employed since time immemorial. You can conduct clandestine action against terrorists, and that must be done.”

John le Carré (1931) British novelist and spy

Radio interview (November 2008)

Time

“The Syrian crisis must be resolved by a vote by Syrians. We are concerned by the civil war and foreign interference. The government [of President Bashar al-Assad] must be respected by other countries until the next [2014 presidential] elections and then it is up to the people to decide.”

Hassan Rouhani (1948) 7th President of Islamic Republic of Iran

"Iran leader warns on Syria intervention" http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/breaking-news/iran-leader-warns-on-syria-intervention/story-fn3dxix6-1226665312188, The Australian, (June 17, 2013)

People, Country

“Apple fans should be scared to death … Apple is fighting a very similar war to the one it fought — and lost — in the 1990s. It is trying to build the best integrated products, hardware and software, and maintain complete control over the ecosystem around them. This end-to-end control makes it easier for Apple to build products that are 'better,' but it makes it much harder for the company to compete against a software platform that is standard across many hardware manufacturers”

Henry Blodget (1966) American equity research analyst

Windows in the 1990s, Android now Android Is Destroying Everyone, Especially RIM — iPhone Dead In Water http://www.businessinsider.com/android-iphone-market-share-2011-4 in Business Insider (2 April 2011)

Death, Fight

“Europe owes its greatness to the fact that the primary loyalties of the European people have been detached from religion and re-attached to the land. Those who believe that the division of Europe into nations has been the primary cause of European wars should remember the devastating wars of religion that national loyalties finally brought to an end. And they should study our art and literature for its inner meaning. In almost every case, they will discover, it is an art and literature not of war but of peace, an invocation of home and the routines of home, of gentleness, everydayness and enduring settlement.”

Roger Scruton (1944–2020) English philosopher

England and the Need for Nations (2006)

People, Peace, Religion, Art

“Democratic freedom is a method of nonviolence and an antidote to war.”

Rudolph Rummel (1932–2014) American academic

Source: The Blue Book of Freedom: Ending Famine, Poverty, Democide, and War (2007), p.16

Freedom

“Born of war, both Bolshevism and Fascism drew their basic education from war. They transferred to politics the lessons of the trenches: familiarity with violence, the simplicity of extreme passions, the submission of the individual to the collectivity, and finally the bitterness of futile or betrayed sacrifices.”

François Furet (1927–1997) French historian

Source: The Passing of an Illusion, The Idea of Communism in the Twentieth Century (1999), p.163

Education, Passion

“America today is a confused society, caught up in a terror war, a culture war, and a media war, where honesty and professional standards have vanished.”

Bill O'Reilly (1949) American political commentator, television host and writer

2007-03-23
The O'Reilly Factor
Fox News
Television

“Such a stupid act. Sometimes heroics revolted him; they seemed like an insult to the soldier who weighed the risks of the situation and made calm, cunning decisions based on experience and imagination, the sort of unshowy soldiering that didn’t win medals but wars.”

Iain Banks Culture series

Source: Culture series, Use of Weapons (1990), Chapter VIII (p. 183).

Stupidity, Imagination, Decision

“We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war.”

Condoleezza Rice (1954) American Republican politician; U.S. Secretary of State; political scientist

opening statement to 9/11 Commission http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/04/08/rice.transcript/, May 19, 2004.

Dependency

“The British can sign and find a way to repudiate their signatures. They've done it over and over again. You need to go back to the Treaty Of Limerick. You have Malta and Egypt, for instance. They can always find high moral reasons for such repudiation. They are opportunists. Griffith, however, having given his word, would stick to it whatever the consequences, even though it meant the disaster of a civil war. They knew that.”

Robert Erskine Childers (1870–1922) Irish nationalist and author

Taken from a 1922, conversation between Childers and Brennan in regards to Arthur Griffith's decision to sign the Anglo-Irish Treaty (1921), cited in "Allegiance" by Robert Brennan, Browne & Nolan, Dublin (1950), pp. 254-55.
Literary Years and War (1900-1918), Last Years: Ireland (1919-1922)

Way

“Thrace, steeped in the passionate love of war.”
Studiis multum Mavortia, Thrace.

Statius book Achilleid

Source: Achilleid, Book I, Line 201

Love, Passion

“Slavery was at the root of what the Civil War was all about. If there had been no slavery, there would have been no war, and that ultimately what the Confederacy was fighting for was to preserve a nation based on a social system that incorporated slavery. Had that not been the case, there would have been no war. That's an issue that a lot of Southern whites today find hard to accept.”

James M. McPherson (1936) American historian

James M. McPherson "James McPherson: What They Fought For, 1861&ndash;1865" https://web.archive.org/web/20160309201904/http://www.booknotes.org/FullPage.aspx?SID=55946-1 (22 May 1994), Booknotes, United States of America: National Cable Satellite Corporation 1990s

Fight

“The war will continue a long time. Chiang Kai-shek may attempt to continue hostilities throughout his ifetime and as long as Chiang continues, Japan must continue.”

Seishirō Itagaki (1885–1948) Japanese general

Quoted in "Time" - by Briton Hadden, Henry Robinson Luce - Australia - 1923 - Page 29.

Hostility, Time

“Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but a long, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man — war, poverty, and tyranny — and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.”

Adlai Stevenson (1900–1965) mid-20th-century Governor of Illinois and Ambassador to the UN

Acceptance speech, Democratic National Convention, Chicago, Illinois (26 July 1952)

Pain, People, Truth, Decision

“A war was on. … On July 14 he was expelled from his home with the rest of his family. He never returned to the city he loved. He never forgot the scenes of Lod in 1948, nor did he forget the idea of violent resistance. Can the Israeli reader understand how he felt?”

Gideon Levy (1953) Israeli journalist

This Biography Makes It Clear: The Founder of the Palestinian Popular Front Was Right (April 15, 2018)

Love, Family, Home, Idea

“War is a culture, bellicosity is addictive, defeat for a community that imagines itself to be history's eternal victim can be as intoxicating as victory. How long will it take for the Serbs to realize that the Milosevic years have been an unmitigated disaster for Serbia, the net result of Milosevic's policies being the economic and cultural ruin of the entire region, including Serbia, for several generations? Alas, one thing we can be sure of, that will not happen soon.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

"Why Are We in Kosovo?", The New York Times (2 May 1999)

Imagination, History, Communication, Victory

“I had anger but never hate. Before the war, I was too busy studying to hate. After the war, I thought, What's the use? To hate would be to reduce myself.”

Elie Wiesel (1928–2016) writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Laureate, and Holocaust survivor

Interview in O : The Oprah Magazine (November 2000)

Hate, Business, Study, Anger

“I told [the Commonwealth Commissioners] I lived in the virtue of that life and power that took away the occasion of all wars… I told them I was come into the covenant of peace which was before wars and strife were.”

George Fox (1624–1691) English Dissenter and founder of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)

Statement of 1651, quoted in Quaker Faith and Practice http://www.quaker.org.uk/qfp/chap24/24.01.html#24.01, Britain Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends

Life, Peace

“In 1993 Osama bin Laden began speaking in detail to Muslim and Western journalists about his beliefs, goals, and intentions, and began publishing commentaries on these matters in the media…. While bin Laden's words have not been a torrent, they are plentiful, carefully chosen, plainly spoken, and precise. He has set out the Muslim world's problems as he sees them; determined that they are caused by the Unites States; explained why they must be remedied; and outlined how he will try to do so. Seldom in America's history has an enemy laid out so clearly the basis for the war he is waging against it.”

Michael Scheuer (1952) American counterterrorism analyst

Through Our Enemies' Eyes (pp. 45-6).
2000s

World, History, Problem

“Religion finally severed the unity which all willed but none could trust. An heroic nation of monotheists sought to impose its faith on a vaguely pantheist world. For the first and last time the Second Men stumbled into a world-wide civil war; and just because the war was religious it developed a brutality hitherto unknown.”

Olaf Stapledon book Last and First Men

Source: Last and First Men (1930), Chapter VII: The Rise of the Second Men; Section 3, “The Zenith of the Second Men” (p. 110)

Men, World, Faith, Religion

“The fundamental problem posed by modernization is whether human animals can adjust as readily to longevity, affluence, and peace as they have in the past to shortgevity, poverty, and war.”

Marion J. Levy Jr. (1918–2002) American sociologist

Marion J. Levy Jr., cited in: Frances Carol Locher, ‎Ann Evory (1978), Contemporary Authors: A Bio-bibliographical Guide to Current Writers. p. 371

Peace, Problem, Past, Animals

“The things you hear now about European unemployment -- that there are structural problems, that real wages have failed to adjust, that there are inflationary fears -- are the same things that were said during the early 1930. It is well established that government spending began to pull Germany out of its slump in 1935. There is no known reason why spending for peace can't do as well at getting the economy going as spending for war.”

Lawrence H. Summers (1954) Former US Secretary of the Treasury

Lawrence Summers in: David Warsh (April 27, 1986) "It Did Happen Here, Too", Boston Globe, p. A1.
1980s

Fear, Peace, Problem

“A "just war" – if there could be such a thing – would not require conscription. Volunteers would be plentiful.”

Ben Salmon (1889–1932) American activist

An Open Letter to President Wilson http://archive.org/details/LetterToWilson1919 (October 14, 1919) by Ben Salmon

“I began studying the political history of race in America. Having worked in Congress and at the White House, I have some familiarity with the nature of politics and how politicians think. I thought I could use this knowledge to illuminate this one aspect of the race problem in America in ways that might help us better deal with its long, sordid history. What quickly jumped out at me is a fact that seems obvious in retrospect, but which I had never really thought about. Virtually every significant racist in American political history was a Democrat. Before the Civil War, the Democratic Party was the party of slavery. It was based largely in the south and almost all of its leaders were slave owners, including Andrew Jackson and Thomas Jefferson, considered by Democrats to be co-founders of their party.”

Bruce Bartlett (1951) American historian

Source: 2000s, Wrong on Race: The Democratic Party's Buried Past (2008), p. viv

Way, History, Nature, Knowledge

“When freedom rises from the killing floor,
No lock of iron or rivet can restrain the door.
And no kind of army can hope to win a war
Like trying to stop the rain or still the lion`s roar,
Like trying to stop the whirlwind scattering seeds and spores
Like trying to stop the tin cans rapping out jailhouse semaphore.”

Joe Strummer (1952–2002) British musician, singer, actor and songwriter

Joe Strummer and Bono, "46664", written for Nelson Mandela's HIV/AIDS festival in 2003.
Lyrics

Hope, Freedom

“A case can be made... that secrecy is for losers. For people who don't realize how important information really is. The Soviet Union realized this too late. Openness is now a singular, and singularly American, advantage. We put it in peril by poking along in a mode of an age now past. It is time to dismantle government secrecy, this most pervasive of Cold War-era regulations. It is time to begin building the supports for the era of openness that is already upon us.”

Daniel Patrick Moynihan (1927–2003) American politician

Secrecy, ch. 8 (1998)

People, Age, Support, Time

“She has never harmed us, nor would she should we have fallen into her hands. It is only the men of her kind who war upon us, and I have ever thought that their attitude toward us is but the reflection of ours toward them. They live at peace with all their fellows, except when duty calls upon them to make war, while we are at peace with none; forever warring among our own kind as well as upon the red men, and even in our own communities the individuals fight amongst themselves. Oh, it is one continual, awful period of bloodshed from the time we break the shell until we gladly embrace the bosom of the river of mystery, the dark and ancient Iss which carries us to an unknown, but at least no more frightful and terrible existence! Fortunate indeed is he who meets his end in an early death. Say what you please to Tars Tarkas, he can mete out no worse fate to me than a continuation of the horrible existence we are forced to lead in this life.”

Edgar Rice Burroughs book A Princess of Mars

Source: A Princess of Mars (1917), Chapter 9

Life, Death, Men, Fate

“It is barely conceivable that there are people who like war.”

Henry Kissinger (1923–2023) United States Secretary of State

Transcript of telephone conversation with poet and anti-war activist Allen Ginsberg from the National Security Archive http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB263/19710423-1950-Ginsberg-FIX.pdf (23 April 1971) 1970s

People

“Women should be permitted to volunteer for non-combat service, […] We have no real way of knowing whether the kinds of training that teach men both courage and restraint would be adaptable to women or effective in a crisis. But the evidence of history and comparative studies of other species suggest that women as a fighting body might be far less amenable to the rules that prevent war from becoming a massacre and, with the use of modern weapons, that protect the survival of all humanity. That is what I meant by saying that women in combat might be too fierce.”

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) American anthropologist

"Remarks about the Military Draft" (June 1968) in Margaret Mead, Some Personal Views (1979), edited by Rhoda Metraux, pp. 35–36
1960s

Women, Men, Way, History

“It was for all the members of the Cabinet a relief. Never before had a declaration of war been welcomed with such satisfaction. France having done all that was incumbent upon her to maintain peace and war having nevertheless become inevitable, it was a hundred times better that we should not have been led, even by repeated violation of our frontiers, to declare it ourselves. It was indispensable that Germany, who was entirely responsible for the aggression, should be led into publicly confessing her intentions. If we had had to declare war ourselves, the Russian alliance would have been contested, national unanimity would have been smashed, it would probably have meant Italy would have been forced by the clauses of the Triple Alliance to side against us.”

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

Diary entry (3 August 1914), quoted in John Keiger, 'France' in Keith Wilson (ed.), Decisions for War 1914 (London: University College London Press, 1995), p. 140.

Peace, Time

“The heads of these divisions, like barons in a feudal system weakened at the top by mutual suspicion and jealousy between king and prince, were constantly at odds if not at war…For the most part the barons were knowledgeable people performing in a way the times had completely outdated, a fact of which they were quite unaware.”

Dean Acheson book Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department

Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department (1969), State Department Management, Leadership Perspectives

People, Jealousy, Way, Knowledge

“Mister Gladstone is an Englishman and a scholar. Had he walked by the side of that soldier, remembering Cromwell's Ironsides who trusted in God and kept their powder dry, and the old Continental militia, I think he would not have declared as he did that 'Jefferson Davis had created a nation', but he would rather have said, 'If Bunker Hill sends the first soldiers to this war, it is already decided. My lords and gentlemen, John Bull had better touch no American bonds which Bunker Hill does not endorse.”

George William Curtis (1824–1892) American writer

1860s, The Good Fight (1865)

God, Thinking

“Courage (in a soldier) is maintained by a certain anger; anger is a little blind and likes to strike out. And from this follows a thousand abuses, a thousand evils and misfortunes that are impossible to predict in an army during war.”

Joseph Joubert (1754–1824) French moralist and essayist

Courage, Evil, Anger

“People who don’t read are brutes. It is better to write than to make war, isn’t it?”

Eugéne Ionesco (1909–1994) Romanian playwright

The Paris Review interview (1984)

People, Reading

“Now in my opinion, out of all the countries I have personally known, England is the one where public affairs are best conducted and regulated with least violence to the people. There no buildings are knocked down or demolished through war, and disaster and misfortune befall those who make war.”

Philippe de Commines book Mémoires

Or, selon mon advis, entre toutes les seigneuries du monde, dont j'ay connoissance, où la chose publique est mieux traictée, et où règne moins de violence sur le peuple, et où il n'y a nuls édifices abatus, ni démolis pour guerre, c'est Angleterre; et tombe le sort et le malheur sur ceux qui font la guerre.
Bk. V, ch. 19.
Mémoires

People, Personality, Country

“Of course wars are fought by teenagers — you realize that — they really ought to be fought by the politicians and the old people who start these wars.”

James Clavell (1921–1994) American novelist

Interview with Don Swaim (1986)

People

Quotes about war page 42

Quotes about war
page 42