Quotes about war and peace

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“They may call me a sinner, but I am at peace with myself.”

Brigitte Bardot (1934) French model, actor, singer and animal rights activist

“I operate from a place of delusion-that’s what the Fame is all about… I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be - and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth.”

Lady Gaga (1986) American singer, songwriter, and actress

. "The Rise of Lady Gaga." by Brian Hiatt, in Rolling Stone (11 June 2009): 57-61.

“If we want to transform reality, we begin with ourselves. We do not ask the world to change, and we do not fight against society. It has to be us ourselves who affirm our own values.”

Alejandro Jodorowsky (1929) Filmmaker and comics writer

Psychomagic: The Transformative Power of Shamanic Psychotherapy (2010)

“Establishing lasting peace is the work of education; all politics can do is keep us out of war.”

Maria Montessori (1870–1952) Italian pedagogue, philosopher and physician

“The real cause I consider to be the one which was formerly most kept out of sight. The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired the Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.23-[6]. (See: Thucydides Trap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thucydides%20Trap) <br class="br">History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“Thus they toil on in trouble and danger all the days of their life, with little opportunity for enjoying, being ever engaged in getting: their only idea of a holiday is to do what the occasion demands, and to them laborious occupation is less of a misfortune than the peace of a quiet life. To describe their character in a word, one might truly say that they were born into the world to take no rest themselves and to give none to others.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, Chapter III
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“That war is an evil is a proposition so familiar to every one that it would be tedious to develop it. No one is forced to engage in it by ignorance, or kept out of it by fear, if he fancies there is anything to be gained by it.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book IV, 4.59-[2]; "Nobody is driven into war by ignorance, and no one who thinks that he will gain anything from it is deterred by fear." ( trans. http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/thucydides/thucydides-passages.php?pleaseget=4.59-64 Benjamin Jowett) <br class="br">History of the Peloponnesian War, Book IV

“To come to this war: despite the known disposition of the actors in a struggle to overrate its importance, and when it is over to return to their admiration of earlier events, yet an examination of the facts will show that it was much greater than the wars which preceded it.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Variant translation: "People always think the greatest war is the one they are fighting at the moment, and when that is over they are more impressed with wars of antiquity; but, even so, this war will prove, to all who look at the facts, that it was greater than the others." Translation by Paul Woodruff.
Book I, 21-[2]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Sparta, made war inevitable.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.23-[6].
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“But what most oppressed them was that they had two wars at once, and has thus reached a pitch of frenzy which no one would have believed possible if he had heard of it before it had come to pass.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book VII, 7.28-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book VII

“By day certainly the combatants have a clearer notion, though even then by no means of all that takes place, no one knowing much of anything that does not does not go on in his own immediate neighborhood; but in a night engagement ( and this was the only one that occurred between great armies during the war) how could anyone know anything for certain?”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book VII, 7.44-[1]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book VII

“war is a matter not so much of arms as of money”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.83-[2]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“It must be thoroughly understood that war is a necessity, and that the more readily we accept it, the less will be the ardor of our opponents, and that out of the greatest dangers communities and individuals acquire the greatest glory.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.144-[3]
Variant translation: We must realize, too, that, both for cities and for individuals, it is from the greatest dangers that the greatest glory is to be won.
As translated by Rex Warner (1954).
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“The Spartans meanwhile, man to man, and with their war songs in the ranks, exhorted each brave comrade to remember what he had learned before; well aware that the long training of action was of more use for saving lives than any brief verbal exhortation, though ever so well delivered.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book V, 5.69-[2]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book V

“Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the history of the war between the Peloponnesians and the Athenians, beginning at the moment that it broke out, and believing that it would be a great war, and more worthy of relation than any that had proceeded it.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.1-[1] (opening lines...)
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“It is a common mistake in going to war to begin at the wrong end, to act first, and wait for disaster to discuss the matter.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book I, 1.78-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book I

“The fate of those of their neighbours who had already rebelled and had been subdued was no lesson to them; their own prosperity could not dissuade them from affronting danger; but blindly confident in the future, and full of hopes beyond their power though not beyond their ambition, they declared war and made their decision to prefer might to right, their attack being determined not by provocation but by the moment which seemed propitious. The truth is that great good fortune coming suddenly and unexpectedly tends to make a people insolent; in most cases it is safer for mankind to have success in reason than out of reason; and it is easier for them, one may say, to stave off adversity than to preserve prosperity.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book III, 3.39-[3]
History of the Peloponnesian War, Book III

“they possess most gold and silver, by which war, like everything else, flourishes.”

Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War

Book VI, 6.34; "they have abundance of gold and silver, and these make war, like other things, go smoothly" ( trans. http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/thucydides/jthucbk6rv2.htm Benjamin Jowett) <br class="br">History of the Peloponnesian War, Book VI

“There is but one way to bring about the triumph of liberty, of justice, and of peace in Europe's international relations, to make civil war impossible between the different peoples who make up the European family; and that is the formation of the United States of Europe.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom (1867)

“This justice, which is so universal but which nevertheless, owing to the encroachments of force and to the influence of religion, has never as yet prevailed in the world of politics, of law, or of economics, should serve as a basis for the new world. Without it there is no liberty, no republic, no prosperity, no peace! It should therefore preside at all our resolutions in order that we may effectively cooperate in establishing peace.”

Mikhail Bakunin (1814–1876) Russian revolutionary, philosopher, and theorist of collectivist anarchism

Reasoned Proposal to the Central Committee of the League for Peace and Freedom (1867)