
Letter to Andrew Jackson (3 December 1806)
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)
Statement by Justice Jackson on War Trials Agreement http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/imt/jack02.htm (12 August 1945)
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)
Letter to Andrew Jackson (3 December 1806)
1800s, Second Presidential Administration (1805-1809)
Speech to Liberal-Socialist Alliance, New York City (8 December 1941), as quoted in From Megaphones to Microphones (2003) by Sandra J. Sarkela et al.
Context: There is now all this patriotic indignation about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and Japanese expansionism in Asia. Yet not a word about American and European expansionism in the same area.... We must make a start. We must renounce war as an instrument of policy.... Even as I speak to you I may be guilty of what some men call treason.... You young men should refuse to take up arms. Young women tear down the patriotic posters. And all of you — young and old — put away your flags.
1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)
“War must always start with imperfect instruments.”
The Illusion of Power. p. 20.
Men Against Fire: The Problem of Battle Command (1947)
1930s, Address at Chautauqua, New York (1936)
“Not chaffering war but waging war, not with gold but with iron—thus let us of both sides make trial for our lives”
Nec cauponantes bellum sed belligerantes;
Ferro non auro vitam cernamus utrique.
As quoted by Cicero in De Officiis, Book I, Chapter XII
“We must cure ourselves of the habit of war.”
Australians in a Nuclear War (1983)
Context: I have derived immense comfort, hope, faith, inspiration from a great American, the Cistercian monk-teacher-activist Thomas Merton. Initially a contemplative religious, Merton's spiritual drive was aimed at halting the dehumanization of man in contemporary society, a sickness he saw as leading to mass violence and ultimately nuclear war. War of any kind is abhorrent. Remember that since the end of World War II, over 40 million people have been killed by conventional weapons. So, if we should succeed in averting nuclear war, we must not let ourselves be sold the alternative of conventional weapons for killing our fellow men. We must cure ourselves of the habit of war.
Address at the University of Pennsylvania (2002); quoted in "White House playing into Soros' hands?" by J. Michael Waller, in WorldNetDaily (1 December 2003) http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=35893