Civil Disobedience (1849)
Context: The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.
On Protracted Warfare (1938)
On Protracted Warfare (1938)
Original: (zh-CN) 历史上的战争分为两类，一类是正义的，一类是非正义的。一切进步的战争都是正义的，一切阻碍进步的战争都是非正义的。我们共产党人反对一切阻碍进步的非正义的战争，但是不反对进步的正义的战争。对于后一类战争，我们共产党人不但不反对，而且积极地参加。前一类战争，例如第一次世界大战，双方都是为着帝国主义利益而战，所以全世界的共产党人坚决地反对那一次战争。反对的方法，在战争未爆发前，极力阻止其爆发；既爆发后，只要有可能，就用战争反对战争，用正义战争反对非正义战争。
1910s, The World Movement (1910)
“There is neither a foreign war nor a civil war; there is only just and unjust war.”
Source: Les Misérables
News conference at the Baptist World Alliance's centenary conference in Birmingham, England (30 July 2005), as quoted in "Carter: Iraq War is 'Unjust'" in FOX News (30 July 2005) http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,164229,00.html
Post-Presidency
“Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust.”
"Why Are We in Kosovo?", The New York Times (2 May 1999)
Context: Not surprisingly, the Serbs are presenting themselves as the victims. (Clinton equals Hitler, etc.) But it is grotesque to equate the casualties inflicted by the NATO bombing with the mayhem inflicted on hundreds of thousands of people in the last eight years by the Serb programs of ethnic cleansing.
Not all violence is equally reprehensible; not all wars are equally unjust.
No forceful response to the violence of a state against peoples who are nominally its own citizens? (Which is what most "wars" are today. Not wars between states.) The principal instances of mass violence in the world today are those committed by governments within their own legally recognized borders. Can we really say there is no response to this?
Le guerre, le insurrezioni e la pace nel secolo XIX, vol. 4 https://archive.org/stream/leguerreleinsur00monegoog#page/n374/mode/2up (Milano: Società Internazionale per la Pace, 1910), p. 278 https://archive.org/stream/leguerreleinsur00monegoog#page/n658/mode/2up.
Original: (it) Chi non vede che la colpa di questo ritorno all'età ferina non è dei soldati che nel furor della lotta diventano barbari e feroci, ma di quelle potenze e di quei governi che, tenendo schiavi popoli anelanti a libertà, rendono le guerre inevitabili?
As quoted in Content and Meaning of National Law in the Context of Transnational Law, edited by Henricus Joseph Snijders & Stefan Vogenauer, page 31, footnote (translation by Rick Lawson)
2000s
Quoted in "Nuremberg Diary" - Page 5 - by G. M. Gilbert - History - 1995
