Quotes about war and peace

Related topics
Norman Cousins photo

“If the United Nations is to survive, those who represent it must bolster it; those who advocate it must submit to it; and those who believe in it must fight for it.”

Norman Cousins (1915–1990) American journalist

Editorial (1956) on importance of preservation rather than breaches of world peace.
Saturday Review

Norman Cousins photo
Alan Watts photo
Enrique Peña Nieto photo
Henning von Tresckow photo
Simone Weil photo

“But a war of any scope will give rise to others as formidable.”

Simone Weil (1909–1943) French philosopher, Christian mystic, and social activist

"Reflections on War" (1933); also in Formative Writings (2009)
Context: The prospects of revolution seem therefore quite restricted. For can a revolution avoid war? It is, however, on this feeble chance that we must stake everything or abandon all hope. An advanced country will not encounter, in the case of revolution, the difficulties which in backward Russia served as a base for the barbarous regime of Stalin. But a war of any scope will give rise to others as formidable.

Antonio Negri photo
Conor McGregor photo

“One thing about martial arts: People can say this fight game is dangerous and its brutal but my mind is strong. I'm fit in body and mind and that's something that not a lot of other careers can give to a person.”

Conor McGregor (1988) Irish mixed martial artist and boxer

Setanta Sports interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AaZQw3Dh0K0 (September 2014)
2010s, 2014

Daniel Radcliffe photo
Isoroku Yamamoto photo

“In the first six to twelve months of a war with the United States and Great Britain I will run wild and win victory upon victory. But then, if the war continues after that, I have no expectation of success.”

Isoroku Yamamoto (1884–1943) Japanese Marshal Admiral

Statement to Japanese cabinet minister Shigeharu Matsumoto and Japanese prime minister Fumimaro Konoe, as quoted in Eagle Against the Sun: The American War With Japan (1985) by Ronald Spector. This remark would later prove prophetic; precisely six months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese navy would suffer a major defeat at the Battle of Midway, from which it never recovered.

Swami Sivananda photo
Alok Vaid-Menon photo
Zafar Mirzo photo
Robert Browning photo